The last six months however, the campaigns are noticeably slowing down. Click through rates are slowly dropping and total leads are down. The clients are getting restless. To worsen this, we just started with a new client and are really struggling getting the campaign off the ground.
I spoke with someone else in the industry who's seeing the same type of thing.
The short answer is, we're still getting some inexpensive traffic, but not enough. The only thing I think we can do now is increase our bids - we'll get more traffic but at a higher price.
So here's my admittedly general question. Is adwords getting noticeably more competitive in terms of price lately? Or do I just need a swift kick in the pants?
In some industries, I've seen the CPC go down over the last 6 months.
In others, it's gone up.
In others, it's remained stable for 2 years now.
I'd examine bid pressure on Overture's bid tool, check out the total advertisers for your industries on 2nd & 3rd tier PPCs, etc.
A note on the 2nd & 3rd tiers. It's common to see more advertisers trying out these properties when their terms become too expensive to be in top positions for the tier 1 properties. So, just because they're there doesn't mean it's profitable - it means they're also trying to explore other search marketing avenues. So, the more trying it out means the more trying to find more exposure. Often, in industries where tier 1 budgets can be spent well, there are fewer tier 2 advertisers. There's always info to be gained about competitors if you know how to evaluate open marketplaces.
