I get the impression that many of you are spending large amounts on Adwords. It seems like it would be a good idea to run a short trial to gauge whether Adwords is right for my friend and whether they will get a recent return. As I've never done this before any tips on how to handle this would be much appreciated.
Duration: how long is it planned to last? How much time do you think you will be spending each week?
Scope: What areas are you targeting? How much research do you think you will need to do on keywords and how will the scope affect potential work on changes made as a result of ongoing campaign results?
Budget: How much is the friend planning to spend?
So your charge could be made up of base fee (initial work) + sliding scale (regular tasks x unit of time) + percentage.
Use geographical targeting, keyword suggestions, negative keywords, look at the daily budget suggestion and run it for a period. Then analyse the results, see what converts, see where the sweet spots are with the spend and readjust.
Scope: Pretty specific. I have his website logs so I already have a good idea about the keywords people use to find his site. He is based in one city and offers a very specific service so I can geographically target the ads very tightly. Good point on ongoing scope changes.
Budget: I have no idea. I suspect that he could be willing to spend a fair whack - knowing what he does I guess he charges a fair bit for his professional services and therefore could afford to spend a decent amount per click - assuming that once we get the clicks his site 'lures' the visitor to make an appointment. I need to have further discussions with him on that.
The problem is that he and his wife don't really understand the net and they assume that if they type [highly generic competitive keyword] into Google their site will come up as number 1 (which is why I suggested paid ads in the first place). I have to be very careful about setting expectations here which is tricky since I don't have any Adwords experience of my own.
I like your idea about the initial fee for the base work followed by a percentage. At least then although it's in my interests to get their budget up, they’ll only increase the budget if I do a good job of getting them clicks/enquiries. Thanks for your thoughts - this is helping me get a better idea of what is needed.
I missed the bit in the Google demo about a daily budget suggestion. That sounds userful because I could give that to the client as an indicator of expected costs. Thanks for mentioning it.
Duration: If successful, this would be a long-term campaign - like having a Yellow pages ad. He is a medical consultant so we're not talking about special offers or anything - he offers the same service for the same fee all year round.
No, it's not like a Yellow Pages ad at all! (IMO)
1) The advantage of something like Adwords is its flexibility and its ability to target. Thus if you see one aspect of his services are more popular or provide more return you can adjust your ads.
2) Don't forget the effect that Adwords can/will have on the site - building landing pages designed to convert specific queries and or other pages giving further information about popular queries.
3) Even if he is offering the same services, don't disregard ad "blindness". If someone regularly looking at the same SERPs "sees" the same ad all the time they will ignore it. But they may well "look" at something new. (Of course, it also depends on ROI.)
4) Look at posts on dual-run testing on this site once you've got used to Adwords.
I've started putting those into the Google campaign management section. How accurate is Google's Adword click-though forecasting? I ask because I'm in the 'Edit Keywords and CPC' screen and have added lots of various phrases. [Highly generic keyword] gets 7.4 clicks a day, [specific sub-type] phrases get between 1.5 and 0.2 a day, and anything more specific (i.e. adding a large city name to it) gets <0.1. I've put the CPC up to £5.00 just to ensure that it isn't budget keeping the numbers low to no effect. I'm wondering how accurate those figures are. I've specified that ads should run on search and content networks, and specified UK visitors only.
Dual-run testing - never heard of it but it sounds interesting so I shall look it up. Thank you.
A friend who I built a website for wants me to look into generating more traffic through Adwords....I assume that I'll need to spend quite a lot of time monitoring stats and tweaking the ads - my friend isn't very comfortable with doing things like this himself....It seems like it would be a good idea to run a short trial to gauge whether Adwords is right for my friend and whether they will get a recent return. As I've never done this before any tips on how to handle this would be much appreciated.
rich_b, you've landed in in an excellent place, here on WebmasterWorld. You will find this Forum to be populated with AdWords masters - who are very willing to share their hard won knowledge.
And, although is a bit off topic to your main question of how to charge, I'd like to suggest that you jump in as soon as possible with a small account, and spend some time learning the ropes. Then, once you have the basics down, expand. And rather than a short trial run, I think it might be better to run a longer, but inexpensive trial instead.
Honestly, very few advertisers start out with truly brilliant campaigns right out of the gate - so give yourself some time to learn.
Some tips:
* Hang out on this forum and read everything you can.
* Make use of the materials on the AdWords site as well.
* Always focus on being really targeted, rather than general. There is lots of info in past threads on this subject.
* Shy away from single-word keywords, and instead use more targeted multiple-word keywords that are very specific to your friend's product or service.
* Organize your account into Ad Groups in which all the keywords are about one thing, and the ad is also about that same thing.
* Make use of the 'Learning Center' which is a part of the Google Advertising Professional program. This is a pretty good (and also free) resource. Give it a look-see here: [google.com...]
I wish you (and your friend of course) the best of success!
AWA
I'd bill something for KW research, creative development, budget something for tracking for a month, after that a set number of hours per month at a set price. Sometimes with small campaigns like this you can just let them run with virtually no maintenance, other times friends become to friendly and suck up all your time.:)
Skibum - Luckily my friend is always too busy to ask too many questions. His wife isn't though - but it's ok, all she expects is Google page 1 listings for every keyword on their site… ;). I'm glad you mentioned the time sink issue. I had a feeling it might turn out like that but it's good to hear confirmation from a pro. Also, thanks to you, stever and ewhisper for the info on billing structure. I might have felt a bit uncomfortable billing for ad tracking and monitoring but I can now see that it's an 'industry standard', as well as necessary, activity and I need to account for it.
...I understand the rationale behind this approach but when I enter those types of phrase each one has a click forecast of <0.1 which doesn't sound good to me. As I type this I think I might have thought of the answer - should I stop worrying about the <0.1 rating and just assign lots of specific phrases (about a specific topic as you said) to an ad and then all those <0.1 ratings should add up to enough clicks to make the ad worthwhile?
Bingo! I couldn't have said it better myself, rich_b.
I think you're spot-on - at least as a place to start. Then don't hesitate to experiment with other targeted words as well, being sure to monitor and adjust as you go.
I'd never let a low Traffic Estimate scare me away from a targeted keyword that I strongly believed in. It is, after all, just an estimate - and your actual results can vary by a good bit.
AWA
