Advertising Specialist Products in Adwords

I'm worried about a lack of clicks

[vordmeister]

Firstly many thanks to AWA and the team for sending me a voucher to try out Adwords.

I decided to try to advertise a specialist software program. It's so specialised that I'd imagine there would be no members on this forum who would have any use for it at all.

I've picked out some terms (terms are "specialised widget" and my ad title and description get the point across that I'm offering "specialist widget software"). I'm running search network only as the field doesn't really lend itself to Adsense entrepreneurs. I'm only managing 30 impressions a day, but after 3 days still no clicks.

I've been advertising by word of mouth so far (easy in a small field) but I'd like to catch everyone else.

What are the downsides of having amassed near 100 impressions and zero clicks on Adwords? There are only a couple of other advertisers and they've gone really broad match and are off topic.

And what should I do? I'm happy to keep running the ads as they should increase visibility if nothing else, but I don't think there will be many clicks and even fewer conversions, and reading around here I'd expect a whack for poor performance.

[buckworks]

Keywords sometimes get whacked for having too few searches, but since you're getting impressions you should be okay in that regard.

100 impressions is too soon to make judgements about click through performance. If the CTR turns out to be really low after you accrue more impressions, you might end up with a lower quality score but you could still keep running the ads.

Don't be too quick to dismiss the content network. It would take careful targeting to make the content network productive for you, but if there are pages out there that discuss your specialized widgets, they would be a good place to get some visibility.

Do some scouting in the organic results for some of your target searches and find out whether there are relevant pages running AdSense.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

<off topic>

Firstly many thanks to AWA and the team for sending me a voucher to try out Adwords...

Hahah! Mainly because there was an entire thread in this forum recently, questioning the depth and breadth (and healthiness) of my participation and 'role' here in the AdWords forum, I'd like to make it very clear that I was in no way involved in having sent you a voucher, vordmeister. :)

OK, I do know that you were just being kind and funny - but I'll still use this as an opportunity to say that I have worked rather hard over the years to never, ever, know who anyone at WebmasterWorld is, in terms of their participation in AdWords. To the point of turning off my sticky mail nearly all the time, as just one example.

I do wish you the best of success in your test of AdWords, vordmeister. It can take quite a bit of study and hard work to use AdWords in an optimal way - but, predictably, I think it's usually worth it.

</off topic>

AWA

[vordmeister]

Apologies AWA, I haven't seen that thread. My voucher was the one sent to many (all?) Adsense publishers. This software program is another interest of mine. I'll do my best to use it to learn the Adwords system and any advice as I go along would be much appreciated.

Thanks Buckworks. The first page of Google results is full of academic pdfs on the subject. There are some scaper sites amongst the dreggs after them but nobody apart from academics seem to write about the subject. Obvious thing would be to phone them up and ask them for a link - I'd not thought of that for some reason, been pushing the industry side of things - thanks for pushing me towards a logical jump.

[buckworks]

Scour Webmaster World for posts by Wheel about the subject of courting academics for links. He has shared a lot of valuable food for thought that would likely be of great help.

[vordmeister]

Today quality score fell to 2 or 3 on all terms and ads stopped displaying.

I think the product is just too specialised for Adwords. There aren't any other adverts for the same terms, and while I bet I would get a high CTR in the long term I would not expect lots of impressions or clicks in the short term.

Thanks for pointing out the Wheel posts. I'll also work on off-line promotion through conferences and the like.

[LucidSW]

> terms are "specialised widget" and my ad title and
> description get the point across that I'm offering
> "specialist widget software"

Then why don't you bid on the term "specialist widget software"?

Let's suppose your software is specialized to landscape designers, a sort of CAD for those professionals. If you bid on "landscape designers", the searchers are not likely to be looking for software. In fact, most would be looking *for* a landscape designer. Your ad would therefore have no relevance at all. That's why you are not getting clicks and getting a low QS. I'd check the keyword relevancy by the way with a low QS like that.

OK, so "landscape designer software" and "software for landscape designers" is extremely niche and you wouldn't get many impressions. However, you would be targeting exactly the type of people who would buy your product. Continue with off-line promotion but try to catch others looking for you online. You may also want to take a look into targeting sites on the content network that people visit who may have an interest in your product such as blogs and forums.

[Acrill]

I second echo what Buckworks says about the Content Network. It just might be right for you.