I don't think adwords is for me.

[Luxoria]

Here's what I got going...

I am advertising my ecommerce store that sells unique (nichey kindof) wall art/home decor at the average price of $65 per unit. Expected order totals are around that same $65.

So if each unit cost me $40 that gives me $25 wiggle room for coupons, ads, and overhead. (assuming extremely low overhead) So if I want spend $10 per sale on adwords and my site converts at 1% I can spend a max of 10 cents per click. Even at 2% conversion I can only spend 20 cents per click.

Right now I running a campaign to test the waters. I have 35 adgroups all set at a default of 20 cents. Each group has 10 to 60 keywords and the campaign has negatives installed. My QS is still mostly at sevens with a few 8,9,10s. (only on low traffic keywords) I am seeing about 5 clicks a day. Considering my store currently only stocks 64 items I can go from 35 adgroups to 64 and increase my clicks per day to 10 or so. (while staying in around 20 cents per click.)

What are my options to increase my PPC traffic while not going spend crazy? I am thinking my only options are to continue finding new keywords relevant to my products or to increase my bid on all the keywords.

My goal is to gradually increase my clicks to 250/500 a day.

Thanks

[Eschatonic]

If the 20c/day limit is a hard cap, you might find that refining your keywords is your only option. Expand your range into the long tail of low volume keywords, tighten your matching, and drop the keywords that are costing you more than you are converting - even if they are bringing in lots of clicks. Quality over quantity is vitally important at low bid levels.

If you're still focused on click volume, then you may have to consider running your bids for keywords a little higher temporarily in order to improve your ad position and reduce costs in the long run (this is less useful the better your ad position is at the moment, as this works because your QS is tied to your historical CTR).

Alternatively anything you can do to improve your landing page's conversion rate will give you more wiggle room, but that's relevant regardless of where your traffic comes from.

[ChristeneMint]

What ever blog you own, Google adword will help you to get more appropriate keywords to be targeted increasing chances of your blog to top in various search engines.

[Luxoria]

Thanks for the replies.

What do you mean by "Expand your range into the long tail of low volume keywords"? Are you suggesting adding longer keywords for example, instead of just using 'wall decor' go for 'beautiful illuminated wall decor'.

It looks like I will be giving a try to raise my bids up for a while to 40+ cents, so long as I don't loose money outright. I will be doing more research on this for sure. tyty

[Eschatonic]

The long tail in marketing refers to the large amount of low-volume sales, as opposed to the small amount of high-volume (a graph of sales ordered by quantity looks like it has a small head and a long tail).

As it refers to keywords, it means the ones that have a relatively low search volume and aren't necessarily obvious. Yes, this often means longer keywords, but often things that aren't obvious like mis-spellings, plurals, and other variations. They should also be phrase or exact matches rather than broad matches.

The important thing about targeting the long tail of keywords is that it is unlikely that all of your competitors will be targeting them (meaning that they are often very cheap), and it means that your offering is more relevant to people searching (which will improve CTR).

It means more work for you, and they aren't high volume which may be a concern for you, but it's likely to be much more efficient in terms of cost per acquisition.

[buckworks]

Something else that will help is testing different ad variations. Sometimes it's amazing how small changes in wording can improve both the clickthrough rate and the quality of user targeting.

[netmeg]

Make sure you run separate campaigns for search and display (on a limited budget I might just go with one network and not both to start out with)

Take a look at search query to see make sure your keywords aren't running on a lot of search terms that aren't strictly relevant to your offer.

As buckworks mentions, experiment with ad variations.

Make sure your keywords aren't too broad. Something like "wall decor" is VERY broad, covering everything from paint to mirrors. If your decor has a particular theme, or color scheme, or anything else identifying, go for keywords like that first. As you find success, then you can broaden your keywords.

Make sure you have some kind of Analytics running, and if possible, put in ecommerce tracking too, so you can actually track revenue.

[LucidSW]

"wall decor" is too broad. I wouldn't use such keywords. Like Netmeg said, that could be just about anything. People don't search that way. Well, they might at first but they refine their search once they know exactly what they want. So they might start with "wall decor" but then realize what they are looking for is a "painting", which is still too generic. Then they search more specifically such as "dogs playing poker painting". Now, you sell such a product so that's when you want to advertise to them, not when they were simply thinking of "painting".

[Luxoria]

Thanks again everyone, you all gave some really good specific advise.

It looks like it will take time, a considerable amount of time. Which is what I expected and planed for.

Yes, I have Analytics running and proper conversion tracking code installed. I drill down pretty deep when learning how visitors interact with my store. (even though I am not seeing triple digit visits per day yet, not even close) A side note because of this added code to my search page when no results come up it logs the keywords used for later inspection.

I am interested in testing ad variations. Is it as simple as writing another ad under an ad group and google serves them evenly and later I decided which one is working better? Or is there a specific tool for ad variations?

Also, when it comes to long tails I have a few like this: 'illuminated mexican hat home decor' and 'lighted mexican hat decor' (not the real keywords but close) As you can see they are decently specific but I see zero impressions for them. My landing pages for those keywords are 10/10 and 9/10. I suspect my QS is high because no one else is using those keywords.

[Eschatonic]

I am interested in testing ad variations. Is it as simple as writing another ad under an ad group and google serves them evenly and later I decided which one is working better? Or is there a specific tool for ad variations?

Yep. Provided you set the ad scheduling to rotate them evenly rather than an optimised rotation (using a Google algorithm). This option can be found in Campaign Settings > Advanced Settings > Schedule: Start date, end date, ad scheduling.

Remember statistical significance when it comes to testing. A good rule of thumb is to keep them running side-by-side for at least a week, especially if your impressions are low. And try to make as few changes as possible to your copy at a time, that way you know what it is that's driving changes.

As for your long tail: stick at it, and keep trying to find the variations. Traffic might be low for each of those keywords individually, but if you get enough of them the aggregate amount of traffic can be substantial.

[LucidSW]

> but I see zero impressions for them.

The longer tail will be searched for less often. But the point is not to get lots of traffic (how many people actually are searching for lighted mexican hat decor?). It's to get _targeted_ traffic. So what if that keyword is searched only once a day? At least you know what they're looking for and you have it. Therefore, with a proper ad, you have a high chance of getting that click, and at relatively low cost, and that click has a higher chance of converting. This is how you'll maximize your profits.

Your QS is not high because of few other advertisers using that keyword. It's high because it's relevant to your page and you get a high click rate relative to other advertisers using it.

[Luxoria]

hmmm, I see your point about the advantages (long term) of long tails. I will stick with it and see what happens.

Oh, thanks for the info, I will start rotating my adds after I get more ad groups and after a week or two so I can see which ad groups have enough impressions to warrant the time of rotating. Hopefully I can report back with my failure/success. =)

[ember]

I have a friend with a law degree and an MBA and even she can't figure out how to make Adwords work.

[netmeg]

Well maybe that's why! The last year I completed in school is 9th grade, and I feel I have a reasonably good feel for it. I don't always agree with it, but I understand it.