High first page bids - Suggestions please!

[SEMblahblah]

I'm running a campaign in a highly competitive domain..most keywords have very high first page bids.
When we started on this campaign, most keywords had first page bids of the order of $7 to $10.
The client wanted to limit the daily spend to a small amount to test. So, we started out with lower bids (quite lower than the first page estimates)hoping to receive maximum clicks in the limited spend.
Most of our keywords had very low positions, we received very few clicks and the CTRs were extremely low. This I think affected the campaign adversely. As the CTRs were poor, I believe, this impacted the quality scores and the first page bids for quite a few keywords have now reached as high as $23. We can't afford to pay $10 for a click, forget $23 as the conversion rates would never be that high.

So, how do we get out of this mess. Basically, how would you guys handle a situation like this where the first page bids go sky high? Suggestions? Our landing page is pretty good and very relevant, I believe...ads are very targeted, we have tried different match types..infact we had started out with just phrase and exact ..added the broad much later.

What we're trying now -
competitor keywords, extremely long tail keywords (but these would again have low search volume), content network, managed placements (bidding $2 for these but no clicks as yet, very few impressions).

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

[Baylow]

You're on the right track with the content network which seems to be a bit cheaper on average (though at the cost of quality). However I think you have a more fundamental problem.

Considering how you started (With bids in the $7-$10 range) with a blank slate on quality score and history i'd suspect you're in a niche that happens to have some pretty hefty competition (something in the legal or lead gen space perhaps?). If that's the case then you probably need to decide whether or not you can actually afford to play with the "big dogs" on those main head/canonical keywords for your niche. The tail is probably your best option for finding cheaper keywords but remember for every 1 head keyword you need 100 tail keywords to match that volume. If you're not able to handle hundreds to thousands of tail keywords then you're going to have issues.

If you want to get back to the $7-$10 range that should be as easy as deleting those keywords AND adtext and recreating your campaigns from scratch with completely new ads. That should give you a short term boost that you can use to get back to neutral QS. If you want lower FPBs (and this is a bit counter intuitive) you're going to have to pay the $10 for a few weeks to pick up some good history before you can earn your spot on the page and can get the nice CPC discount that comes with a high quality score..

I hope that helps.

[SEMblahblah]

So, you're saying that I should delete some of the existing campaigns and post them again, this way I'll get a fresh QS?

The content campaign is doing fine. However, I've lost all faith in managed placements of late. They seem to be too expensive in general and you receive very few impressions unless you bid extremely high. When targeting placements, would it make a difference if I have keywords in that ad group or not? I mean, ofcourse, if I'm targeting the complete site, it would make sense..but when you target specific pages on the site, do you still have keywords in the ad group? Does that give any sort of a relevancy boost?

How do you go about managed placements? Do you spend a lot of money on these at high bids? Do you target an entire site and let google decide the best pages from the site? What values do you bid at in $ ?

Thanks in advance!

[eWhisper]

First page bids are based upon all of the geographies where you are advertising.

Another way of refining your campaign is to choose a smaller geo area to go after and then spread out from there.

Use Google Trends/Insights and find areas where people are more interested in your products, and then narrow down your geographic targeting and use more geo qualifiers in the ad copy.

If your impression share is low (you can find out what it is by running a campaign report and including the IS columns), then you're spreading yourself too thin.

[RhinoFish]

what are your quality scores for your prime keywords?

[Baylow]

SEMblahblah,

I've never personally used placement targeting as I've never really seen the need in my niche to target a single domain, so i can't really help you there.

On the search side, yes.. you can get a quick quality score boost (not really a refresh as you'll still have keyword > domain level QS effecting you). Don't use this technique too much as if you get that keyword > domain level QS too poor it'll be very expensive to start this keyword out in the future and your overall QS of your Domain can suffer hurting new keywords. However, if you feel you've fixed your adtext and should get a higher CTR this time around you can use this to get a 2nd chance.

Also eWhisper's suggestion (as always) is a good one if you have specific demographic areas that make sense for your niche.

[SEMblahblah]

I'll try deleting and re-adding a campaign to see if it works. However, would it help if I delete this account and create a new one? Would it give me a completely fresh start with slightly lower first page bids as they initially were? Or is the history related to keywords and the domain?

At present, I can see the first page estimates increasing on a daily basis. So, if I'm willing to pay $16 for a keyword to match up to the first page bids, Google demands $17 the next day and so on.

Thanks.

[Baylow]

It depends on how old this account is. I've had luck with migrating to a new account in the past.. so it may be worth it..

remember.. start your bids strong. if you land under the market natural FPB you end up running into that "ever increasing FBP" problem. I've seen this too.