I have been running Adwords advertising since 2005. I run a healthcare clinic and Adwords has been a great source of business. Since that time, I have generally appeared in the top 2 or 3 of the Sponsored Links section. Since the beginning of the year, I've dropped to the 4/5 position way over on the right side of the screen. You know, the area that no one really pays attention to.
I'll admit, I've been bad and haven't kept up on new tools, info, updates, etc., and now I think I'm paying for it (literally).
So, I've done a bunch of reading and feel more confused and frustrated than ever. I feel like just flushing my campaigns and starting all over the right way, and need some help.
Since I run a clinic that caters to the local community, I'm really only interested in customers within a 25-30 mile radius. I am currently running a locally targeted campaign, as well as a general campaign. If I never had a visitor/click from outside that area, I would be extremely happy.
So, where do I start? Should I stick with a locally tagerted campaign only? If I have a logical starting point I can settle down and get to the business of fixing things.
BTW, I know EXACTLY who my competition is if that's helpful. In my field there isn't that much competition, but enough who know what they're doing to relegate me to Tumbleweedville on the right side of the search results screen.
Thanks!
- The current state of your account - is it well organized, are the ads good, are your quality scores reasonable, what your minimum bids are, do you have all the keywords you need? Are you advertising on both Content and Search, and if so, do you have separate campaigns?
- Do you have Analytics running on your site? How do you currently measure how successful your campaigns are, and how can you *better* measure how successful your campaigns are?
- The current state of your competitors' accounts - are they simply outbidding you, or do they also have better keywords, ads, landing pages than you do?
Should I stick with a locally targeted campaign only?
ABSOLUTELY. Advertising outside your area would just be throwing money down a rathole; stick to your target market. If your patients don't come in from any further than 30 miles, then don't advertise in mile 31 and out.
And you want to make sure you're listed in the Google Local Business as well. Google it.
There have been a ton of changes over the years, and it can (unfortunately) be very daunting for the average small business owner or organization, who has other things to do besides this. So you may want to hire a professional either to manage your accounts or look them over and give you some suggestions. That will cost you a little money, but save a lot of time, and hopefully will ultimately save you money as well.
History:
Some history:
The local campaign is targeted to the area within 25 miles. I have 4 keywords, search network only, with a click through rate of less than 1% on all. Keyword analysis for all gives the message: The Ads Diagnostic Tool "quick test" does not work in this campaign because the campaign's geographic targeting is not supported
Regional campaign has 2 adgroups, each targeting one of each of the 2 main cities that I cater to (within 20 miles). Each adgroup has ~20 words/phrases, equally split between exact match, phrase match and broad match. Quality score ranges between 4-7/10, but mosltly 6s and 7s. CLick through rate ranges from .5% to 6 and 7%. Some of the phrase match don't display during searches because exact match already covers the bases. And exact match has a better click through rate.
Perhaps I should use the exact, phrase and broad match combinations from my general/regional campaign in a locally targeted campaign? THey seem to be performing much better than the stripped down keyword list I am currently using in the locally targeted. My keyword bid for regional is currenly 3x what I'm bidding locally. Just typing this question makes me realize what I'm doing doesn't make much sense.
I've read that poorly performing adgroups/campaigns/keywords can affect overall adwords performance. Is this true?
Thanks again netmeg. I appreciate your help and patience.
My only concern is that I seem to get more clicks from the regional campaign - although this could be wastful/irrelevant clicks.
1) Make sure your content and search campaigns are completely separate. Turn off Content on your existing campaigns and create new Content Only campaigns.
I'm not clear on why you're bidding regionally and locally both.
As for as poor performance affecting other aspects - yes, you have a number of quality scores, and they all contribute to overall account quality score.
You need to run the Search Query reports to find out what you're actually bidding on - you might need to use some negatives.
If you are running Content Network campaigns, you want to run the Placement Reports to see where your ads are appearing; as a general rules the first thing I do is exclude large auction sites, large video sites, large social networking sites and large free email sites.
If your click through rate isn't up to snuff, then take a look at your ads - make sure they're relevant, and they kind of need to 'pop' too, to stand out from the others.
If you have a good CTR but low conversions, then you need to pay attention to your landing page - the people who are clicking are interested but something may be putting them off (or missing) to prevent them from buying.
And finally - look for an AdWords Professional to help you get your account in shape
If you use sites like craigslist or twitter etc, you can also put the word out there.
Also Andy Beal launched a site called SEMVendor that puts your request out there to people who are looking to help - just Google it.
