A period of reflection

[Mark_A]

Our G Ads spend got larger than we were comfortable with, so I cut back the bids on our largest spenders. In most cases I was able to remain in top position with a much lower bid, which surprised me. Our spend did come down, but with it also our enquiry levels.

At the same time our G organic sessions remained broadly unchanged so I am guessing the most interesting enquiries we are now missing have to be from the ads program.

So I am reflecting: we can't return to the previous spend, but why given we are still bidding top or second place are our enquiry levels down?

[buckworks]

A few thoughts:

What happened to the overall click volume since you reduced the bids? Did impression shares change for any terms? (That would be my first suspect.)

Are you still top or second on exactly the same queries as before? Or has something shifted in the queries you're appearing for? If impression shares changed more for some terms than others, that could affect the balance of what you're appearing for.

Is the competition doing anything different? For example, it can affect your CTR if a competitor comes up with a more appealing description.

Finally, do you have tracking in place so you know which terms your enquiries are most likely to come from?

[Rndm]

Good thoughts above.

If you reduce your budget Google will reduce the amount of times that your ad is shown in order for your budget to last through your ad schedule. You may be #1 or #2 just for less auctions.

To build on the impressions thoughts above, outside of keywords it could also be time of day, region, or device. Are you getting less visits during high converting hours, regions, or devices?

Also it could be seasonality or even placebo (just a dry spell that is unrelated to the reduces spend). I also do a lot of PPC and over the last month certain time periods have felt off which doesn't surprise me as Google has had quite a few bugs lately.

[RhinoFish]

"so I cut back the bids on our largest spenders."
Cut back bids on the least efficient converters instead.

[RhinoFish]

Find and cut wasted spend, I guarantee you can find lots.

Feed the winners, starve the losers!

[Mark_A]

Hi buckworks, thanks for your response:

What happened to the overall click volume since you reduced the bids? Did impression shares change for any terms? (That would be my first suspect.)

Overall (total) impressions seem to have remained similar but clicks have declined.

Are you still top or second on exactly the same queries as before? Or has something shifted in the queries you're appearing for? If impression shares changed more for some terms than others, that could affect the balance of what you're appearing for.

I will have to go back and check again, but I was surprised that on so many of my high bids, (with impressions) I could reduce the bid significantly and remain in top positions. I will have to go through again and see how things look now..

Is the competition doing anything different? For example, it can affect your CTR if a competitor comes up with a more appealing description.

Oh, if you mean on their ad, yes that makes sense. We are bidding for so many keywords I am afraid that level of local detailed knowledge is not something I have at the moment. Perhaps if I just look at my top 10 keywords I could look deeper.

Finally, do you have tracking in place so you know which terms your enquiries are most likely to come from?

I don't have great tracking. For me a conversion is an enquiry, which can be an incoming phone call, an online chat, or an email following a website visit. Later a proper conversion, what it is all about, is when a prospect company actually places an order with us.

[Mark_A]

Hi Rndm, thanks for your post

If you reduce your budget Google will reduce the amount of times that your ad is shown in order for your budget to last through your ad schedule. You may be #1 or #2 just for less auctions.

We have a daily budget restricting the spend but I don't think we have achieved that level in the last few months, if ever.

To build on the impressions thoughts above, outside of keywords it could also be time of day, region, or device. Are you getting less visits during high converting hours, regions, or devices?

The hours are limited to UK office hours (we are B2B) and the spread seems what I would expect. There is an increase in mobile usage even though I have mobile ads adjusted to something like -75% we are still starting to get plenty.

Also it could be seasonality or even placebo (just a dry spell that is unrelated to the reduces spend). I also do a lot of PPC and over the last month certain time periods have felt off which doesn't surprise me as Google has had quite a few bugs lately.

When I first cut back, there were things like Easter bank holidays which explained things, and we have another UK bank holiday weekend now but in the last weeks, week working days I would have expected more sessions from G ads than we have had.

I will go through them again with a fine tooth comb and try to see what might have been pruned too much.

[Mark_A]

Hi RhinoFish

"so I cut back the bids on our largest spenders."
Cut back bids on the least efficient converters instead.

I needed to reduce our spend so I looked at the keywords on which we were spending most and reduced our bids on them especially where I thought our bids had been getting silly. It surprised me though that for many of them say our bid was £3.23 the average cpc might have been £1.65 and the bid required to achieve top place might have been £1.63, so in that case I would have reduced our bid from £3.23 to £1.63 .. and my thinking was that such a change should not have affected resulting sessions from that keyword ..

Find and cut wasted spend, I guarantee you can find lots.
Feed the winners, starve the losers!

I need to go digging in the account again :-)

[Mark_A]

An additional point springs to mind. I changed our G Ads positions, we didn't change our organic position, but enquiries have reduced.

This reinforces the feeling that because G ads are at the top of the page, and this is where the traffic is, it is now ads broadly speaking that brings the enquiries! Less point than ever in spending money on SEO?

[RhinoFish]

Stop thinking about position and CPC.
Focus on outcomes!
Once you have tracking tightened up, adjust everything to have the same CPA (or ROAS, even better).
:-)

[Mark_A]

Hi RhinoFish, tracking is tricky. For special promotions we can track who we win as business easily but more day to day stuff can come in via phone calls, emails, contact form (rarely), web chat, and the like - and it is hard to tell who came from which traffic source, and whether as a result of SEO or PPC.

[engine]

For special promotions we can track who we win as business easily but more day to day stuff can come in via phone calls, emails, contact form (rarely), web chat, and the like - and it is hard to tell who came from which traffic source, and whether as a result of SEO or PPC.

Landing page references can help. Ask people to quote a reference from the landing page when they phone. Sometimes you've just got to ask.

BTW, you mentioned UK office hours - I found I could pick up the early birds and late workers by going slightly beyond the 9 to 5-ers. eg, 7-30 to 6-30. That extension of turned out to be one of the best, but it does depend upon the product or service.

[RhinoFish]

Closing the feedback loop is super important, figure out the best way for you, there are many ways to do this.

[Mark_A]

Hi engine, our G PPC runs from 07:00 to 19:00 Monday - Friday. As to landing pages etc, interesting idea, will have a think, thanks..

It isn't so hard to determine if someone comes from Google, but splitting G arrivals into PPC and Organic is harder.

Hi RhinoFish, yes it would be good for me to get a better grip on this certainly.