Using Adwords for market research

adwords to determine viability of site

[pmmenneg]

Hi all. Quick question:

I want to use AdWords to test out a few ideas for sites that I have. I am going to be creating a site, and am trying to figure out which niche to target. So, before getting a domain name (that would be niche specific, and I am still trying to determine the niche), I wanted to do a little eyeball research using Adwords.

I created a few ads for each of the two or three niches I want to potentially target. These ads CAN'T point to a real site, as one does not exist. Pointing to a non-existant domain name, or one I don't own, resulted of course in an error in AdWords, with it complaining about the URL.

So, any ideas on my best approch here? I am trying to use adwords to do research on the domain/niche I am going to use, but can't use aadwords unless I already have the domain... should I just go buy a bunch of domains and then follow-through with this testing on these? Will AdWords allow for an ad to link to an essentially blank, placeholder domain?

Thanks again for any help/advice.

Paul

[cyberandroid]

point to a competitors site for testing

one that doesnt advertise on adwords

[RhinoFish]

your plan to use adwords for anything less than a ready-to-go website is filled with problems, find another way to do your pre-niche-decision research.

here's one idea... become an affiliate for some merchants (that allow direct to merchant ppc) and plop some real traffic directly on their site.

[esllou]

I will allow you to link to my site. I know, I'm too nice for my own good sometimes.

[MadeWillis]

What exactly would running as adwords campaign for a site that doesn't exist or pointing ads to a competior's site do for you? I doubt much.

Are you trying to guage cpc? convesion estimate? what?

There are plenty of other ways to research a niche without having to pay for it. It just depends on what information you are looking for.

[pmmenneg]

Well, I am trying to determine between three niches to see which one looks to have the most promising results in terms of getting eyeballs... so adwords made sense as I will be using it once the site has been built to attract visitors, so this kind of takes the guess work out... I could literally pause the ad, build the site then open it back up again and know with confidence that I will be getting x return on my advertising investment.

It also seems like a cheap and easy way to gauge which of the niches will be the most attractive for me (in terms of ease of attracting potential visitors), and it would take 5 minutes for this research to be up and running (just build the niche specific ads, with a few variations to the wording of each, so maybe nine ads total), and shouldn't cost more than say $100 to figure out which of the niches work best.

I guess it just seemed like an out-of-the-box solution to the problem of picking my target audience.

[netmeg]

Your best approach is not to use AdWords for this.

(!)

[pmmenneg]

OK, any suggestions?

[MadeWillis]

It also seems like a cheap and easy way to gauge which of the niches will be the most attractive for me

Have you ever used Adwords? Sure it's easy to setup, but knowing which keywords to bid on, which negatives to add, controlling cost, and building optimal landing pages is not always so easy. The more competition, the harder it gets.

I would never use Adwords as a tool to estimate traffic and conversion levels before having a site up. How can you guage conversions without having any conversion data?

There are loads of free tools out there, just visit google and search!

start here:

Adwords Keyword Tool
Google Trends
Google Traffic Estimator
Google Ad Planner
etc
etc

[AdWordsAdvisor]

Will AdWords allow for an ad to link to an essentially blank, placeholder domain?

May I be really blunt?

No. Horrible user experience. Please, don't provide a horrible user experience and slow down the ad reviewers who are reviewing real ads with what will be a guaranteed disapproval.

Have you tried exploring either or both of these free tools?

Google Trends - [google.com...]

Google Insights for Search - [google.com...]

<added just before posting> Oh wait, I see that MadeWillis already mentioned Trends. But I'll leave it in there for the URL which I am pretty sure is OK in this case. If not, my apologies to buckworks and the other mods, and feel free to delete them.

AWA

[buckworks]

Those URLs are no problem, AWA. :)