Traffic Volume vs. Profitability

[Tonearm]

I'm a retailer and I've been working with AdWords for a very long time, but I can't seem to get it to produce anything significant.

I get about 25 clicks/day, and it's barely profitable so I can't increase my bids. Making my ads more generally appealing for a higher CTR is bound to push me over the unprofitable brink as well.

I seem to be stuck between traffic volume and profitability. If it's profitable, the traffic volume is very low. If I want more traffic, it's no longer profitable.

Does anyone have any advice for me here?

edit: My Quality Scores are 95% "Great".

[edited by: Tonearm at 4:32 pm (utc) on Aug. 7, 2007]

[mike_ppc]

25 clicks/day seems awfully low. If you can't afford to increase the bids (but I assume you are on the first page), you should try to add more keywords. I suppose you are in a very small niche, but 25 clicks a day is nothing..

[Tonearm]

I could switch from phrase match to broad match, but the last time I did that negative keyword management got a little ridiculous.

[netmeg]

Have you checked your impression share?

[Tonearm]

netmeg,

What's that?

[netmeg]

It's a new metric in the reports that will tell you how many times your ad came up out of the possible times it could have been shown. If you have lost impression share (IS) it will also tell you if you are losing impression share due to budget or ranking - then you know what you need to do to increase, and can make a slightly more informed choice on how (or if) you want to proceed. You also want to run the search query report if you aren't already.

[adwords.blogspot.com ]

[Tonearm]

Thanks netmeg,

I just ran the report, but I don't see how it's useful. My settings specify "show ads as quickly as possible" and I'm not maxing out my daily budget, so I'm not losing anything because of the budget. As far as impressions lost to ranking, can't you get more detailed info on that by looking at the average position of your keywords?

[Tonearm]

How are the people who are making decent money with AdWords doing it? Do they spend huge amounts of time managing their campaign?

I'm in a good retail niche and making good money with organic listings, but I can't make AdWords pay.

[smallcompany]

What was the base for your keyword list? Have you used your organic traffic results? Do you know what organic searches convert the best? How many clicks a day you get from organic traffic – let’s say top 10 keywords?

[BDuns]

IMO, you are either in a very competitive area, or your keywords are terrible. Judging by your click volume, it sounds like the keywords you use don't nearly cover all the different phrases people will search with, or your ad copy stinks. I don't know which is more tedious...many variations on phrase match, or many negative keywords on broad match.

Check out your competitor's ad copy, see what they're doing. Also use every single keyword research tool you can get your hands on.

[Tonearm]

My keyword list is based on organic referrals and a little bit of the AdWords Keyword Suggestion tool. I'm currently using phrase match only with around 300 keyphrases.

I get a total of around 200 organic referrals per day from Google, and that does not include Google image search referrals or the referrals of visitors who don't provide referral information (HTTP_REFERER).

I could do a better job tracking precise ROI, but I do use AdWords conversion tracking. I can't say I have a method for determining which organic keywords convert the best.

How many AdWords clicks per day are people pulling in, and at around what ROI?

edit:

My CTR for search is around 3.5%. I'm not in a very competitive area and I have healthy markups.

[edited by: Tonearm at 6:08 pm (utc) on Aug. 9, 2007]

[dpd1]

Sometimes I think it's just simply a matter of not that many people searching for certain products. I'm kind of in the same boat, as I sell a very niche type of product. I think people have to almost be hit over the head to notice it... It's not the kind of thing people wake up and go... 'I think I'll search for that today', because some of the products are so unique, that a lot of people don't even know there is such a thing. So how can you predict how a person will search for something they don't even know they want? I don't know what your products are, but it may be as simple as that. Sometimes I think a system like AdWords works best with the more everyday household type items and popular things that people already know about, and want to price hunt for... That's what will produce searches.

[netmeg]

My keyword list is based on organic referrals and a little bit of the AdWords Keyword Suggestion tool.

Have you run the Search Query Report? That might help.

Most of my client campaigns pull in easily over 1000 clicks per day (and on two of them, I have to restrict the budget to smaller than I'd like because the client freaks out otherwise) Many of the keywords routinely have CTRs of 20-50%. (I've got things maniacally tightly focused) And these are in fairly competitive markets.

The other thing is, you might have to get creative. I have a one-person-shop client who sells this little widget he designed and manufactured himself. It's a way cool little widget (I even bought one for myself) but nobody on earth would ever search for it, because it wouldn't occur to them that such a thing even existed. So now we're trying to promote it as a great gift idea when you can't think of something to get someone, great for graduations, and makes a good stocking stuffer, etc. etc. It'll never go on its own merits, but if we can place it as a niche gift, it should fly.

If everything else fails, get another pair or pairs of eyeballs to work on it. Ask your friends and family what they'd type into Google if they were looking for whatever it is you're selling. Do you have a search function on your own site? Make sure you are able to strip out the search queries from that - for one ecommerce client, we found out we'd been naming a product one thing, and all the clients had been searching for it with a totally different phrase. Offer to pay someone for an hour's worth of consulting on your ad text, search phrases and landing page.

Just some thoughts...

[Tonearm]

My products are actually common items all my customers know about and go searching for.

Which of my numbers sounds out of whack? Not enough keyphrases? CTR too low?

[Essex_boy]

Do they spend huge amounts of time managing their campaign - I think that this is the key, managment to tht Nth degree.

Do as the others have suggested look up more keywords etc buy a couple of good books on the subject etc

[Tonearm]

Management time is the key? I was afraid of that.

How much time do you spend per day for how many clicks?

edit:

Does the management time consist of adding negative keywords, finding new keywords, and tweaking bids?

[edited by: Tonearm at 7:54 pm (utc) on Aug. 11, 2007]

[netmeg]

What seemed low to me was your number of daily clicks. The reason I asked about the impression share report was I was wondering if you are in a niche that has low volume of searches, or if you are just getting a tiny piece of the pie.

I disremember if you mentioned how much time you spend managing your account now. Obviously, the more keywords you have (and the more competition you have) the more time you have to spend on it.

[buckworks]

You can approach this from more than one angle.

Spend some time testing and tweaking to improve how well your site closes sales with the traffic you do get. It might not sound like much to improve your conversion from, say, 1% to 2%, but achieving that would double what you could afford to pay for well-targeted clicks.

[King_Fisher]

Sometimes you are just in the wrong subject matter or niche.

Some niches just don't monetize well, if at all.

No sense flogging a dead horse. If it cant run get off and find yourself another ride!...KF

[Tonearm]

Do my numbers seem to indicate a bad niche? It doesn't seem like it to me, but I'm open to ideas. Are there any other numbers I could post to help determine this?

I'm up to around 50 clicks/day at this point. I recently spent a lot of time working on conversion rates and I'm up to about 2%.

Honestly, I've been at this business for a long time and I'm doing great with organic traffic. I just can't seem to crack AdWords.

I just ran the IS report and it's 15% for yesterday.