How Can One Make Adwords Work?

[Kevs]

I know this a general question, but I tried Adwords a long time ago and bailed.
I get pretty great organic results over many years, and from this maybe 3-5 sign ups a month.
Yet my logs say that thousands see my site from Google.
So that mean if I was having to pay for those clicks I would be broke.

Google sent me a free $100 coupon to try again.
So I'm trying again.
You need to spend at least $20 day on click that are $2.00+ each -- just to see what's going on.
It burns up quickly, and again, most people are just lookie loos.

Yet I know a few compeitors who do only Adwords and it works.
I guess they just jump in knowing its going to be 1k a month and give it a few month to work?

[piatkow]

You have to decide in advance how much money you can afford to burn before making a go/no go decision.

There are so many things that affect this. In the end if you have, say, a 10% conversion rate (I wish!) then the return on that sale must be more than the cost of 10 clicks. If the sales are fairly low value and the clicks expensive then Adwords may not be for you.

[engine]

As piatkow said, it's not for everyone.

It can work it two ways: As a pure product or service sales tool, or as a branding tool. Either way, the cost associated with it, as in any marketing activity, must be accounted for in the overheads of the product.

"Lookie loos" are always part of the overhead, however, maximizing the performance so that a "lookie loo" converts should also be part of the aim. For example, perhaps, offer a special deal when they reach your landing page?

[wheel]

Yes, burning through money at the beginning of a campaign is common. You need to increase your CTR, and one of the ways to increase your CTR is to get your ad ranked higher....and at the start of a campaign pretty much all you can do is increase your bid to increase your ad position. And that costs money.

You will also need to spend money testing out unsuccessful ad variants.

And you need to spend money to make sure your ad is displayed frequently enough so that you get enough impressions to allow you to make decisions on your ads and search terms.

In addition, there's something to be said for running a campaign wide open. Because if bid yourself into the #1 spot in order to get higher CTR, but don't have your spend high enough to show up there every time, then your competitors are going to show up in #1 on the searches your ads don't show for - allowing them to get higher CTR's and causing more competition for you.

All of that combined means yes, you are likely to have to pay some fairly heavy start up costs on an adwords campaign.

[netmeg]

AdWords doesn't work for every niche. You can't really find out until you try.

It's not nearly as easy as it used to be; you pretty much have to know the "best practices" for setting up your account, and those aren't necessarily what Google tells you are the best practices.

If your business is specific to a region, make sure your campaign is targeted only to that region.

Separate Content Network and Search campaigns, don't run them together. They work completely different. If you only have time to dip your toes in, start with Search.

Organize your account by theme. Don't try for too many keywords at first. Use very specific keywords, and make sure your ads and your landing page are very tightly themed to your keywords.

Don't be afraid to bid a little high to start out, but control your spend by setting a daily budget you can afford. At least till you can get a feel for the market.

Make sure you have some method set up to measure whether or not your campaigns are successful.

I have clients spending $20k a month, and I have clients spending $100 per month, and successful on both ends.

[wheel]

Also, go read the books by Andrew Goodman and Perry Marshall. They both seem to be still mostly relevant on the basics.

[Kevs]

Thanks Wheel/ others. I just spoke to a photographer friend who has done very well over many years with Adwords. Yes, you I would have to spend $1200 month over several month to see if it works or fails. My guess is it probably wont break even. Just being realistic.

[Kevs]

Just checked the keywords tool trafic estimator for the first time.
Just a single important keyword in my field -- says you could get 40 -50 click a day at $2.50 that would be a few thousand a month on just one keyword.

[netmeg]

I have never had to pay anywhere near what the traffic estimator estimates for cost per click. Just sayin'

[pavlovapete]

a few thousand a month on just one keyword

I was once like you :)

I wanted to know exactly what I was doing with Adwords before I did it. Turned out it wasn't so bad after all.

You can get a prepaid account to reduce your risk.
You can set you monthly/ daily budget and reduce your risk.
It takes about an hour for my adgroups to turn off after I flick the switch - so you can turn the campaigns off when you go to bed or over the weekend.

Take tiny steps, small calculated risks and see what happens.

Cheers

[Kevs]

That wasn't my question. You are stating the obvious Pav.

[pavlovapete]

As you wish. My apologies

[ronburk]

Since you're already getting good organic results, maybe you could use AdWords to choose direction for your content. Sometimes, a modest investment in a hopelessly broad keyword can bring in real, live, valuable, detailed data on what people are searching for that includes that term.

As a contrived artificial example, if I organically own some long-tail search like "Hudson clutch repair" or "Edsel brake disassembly", I might "waste" a bit of AdWords money on something broader like "antique repair" to mine the resulting logs for data on good candidates for branching out my content.

[Kevs]

Good Point Ron.
I did start leaning from the impressions. Where else can you see live what people are using to search right? but everything was set to broad, so I have no idea if they were adding their own adjective.

I did download the adwords editor:
1) How can one change all keywords to either phrase or exact match?
2) I could not succeed in downloading keywords to an excel file. I did succeed in downloading the whole campaign to excel, but the excel file did not have a column for impressions for some strange reason. what did I do wrong?

[pavlovapete]

no idea if they were adding their own adjective

you can see that info in the Adwords UI if there is enough volume - or you can mine you web server log files.

[Kevs]

Pav,
where in Adwords UI?
What is Ad ui?
Logs: that a lot of research.

[pavlovapete]

With Adwords UI I mean the web-based interface to Adwords - not the Adwords Edsitor and not the Adwords API.
[adwords.google.com...]

Go to Campaigns .. Click on your campaign .. Click on your Adgroup .. See Search Terms button .. All.

Depending on the volume you will see the terms that triggered your ad. If not enough volume you'll see "Other search terms"

Logs: easy enough if the tools are in place. I use an open source log parser that queries a folder of log files. A few seconds and it can query a month of logs for me.

[Kevs]

Pav ,
ok, thanks,
1) I see words in Phrase Match that are not in the keywords search term. Shouldn't every work in a phrase match be one you recognize?
2) I see hardly any search terms with cities. Don't most people put a city in their search term?
3) any idea how to download my keywords to excel with the impressions listed?

[pavlovapete]

1) [adwords.google.com ]
Phrase match keyword:
"tennis shoes"
Ads may show on searches for:
red tennis shoes
buy tennis shoes
tennis shoes photo

2) Google knows what city people are searching from and makes adjustments. I'm not sure what % of searches use a "geographic modifier"

3) [adwords.google.com ]
You'll need to select the right columns

Cheers

[Kevs]

THANKS Pav, great.
I thought that was what broad match does. You mean people can add any words they want with Phrase match? I thought phrase match you can invert the words but not add new ones.
So then the heck does broad match mean?

Of course Google knows only to use people from my city, but I would like to see if they chose a sub-city in their search. very important. I'd like to know how many people are typing Pasadenta or Costa Mesa, not Los Angeles. Any hope to see that?

[pavlovapete]

So then the heck does broad match mean?

:) - it is very broad. The example is your keyword is "shoes" and it will match your adds to a query "gumboots". Really, really broad.

Any hope to see that?

You could start a new thread and ask only that question from one of the big brains around here. I can only give you my opinion.

You might run a few broad match campaigns for the sub-city localities that you are after. That advertise on the sub-city name and see what you get.

Cheers

[Kevs]

Pav,
My God, Broad is insane. no?

What did this mean:

"You might run a few broad match campaigns for the sub-city localities that you are after. That advertise on the sub-city name and see what you get. "

[pavlovapete]

Yes it is insane

Phrase match using the following sub-cities:
"Pasadenta"
"Costa Mesa"

I've asked in another thread [webmasterworld.com ] if you can have two phrases as the keyword triggers e.g.

"Pasadenta" "widgets"
"widgets" "Costa Mesa"

That might help.

Cheers

[Kevs]

pav,
I can't enter the three sub cities of los angeles -- too much work. That's what google does for you. Anyone searching your keywords in this area, you come up. But I would like to see if they did put in an sub-city by name. it's good knowledge to know.