Pay per Click Campaign - do's & dont's

herthabsc

I am going to undertake a PPC Campaign for the first time. Has anybody any hints about going about this? Has anybody used any outside companies for their campaign starting off and who would you recommend? I have heard that if PPC goes wrong you can lose a lot of money so I want to be careful before I begin! Cheers

le souteneur

I have had very limited experience if setting up google Adwords and bing ads (never actually saw the resulting traffic generated however). You can get a lot of information from both of these sites when you set up and they have a lot of analytical related to search numbers and potential click through rates (bing were better on this). They both have good tutorials on how to set up however. As regards cost, you can set a maximum cost per day in order to limit the expense to you. The whole goal is to get the right people clicking on your ad so the correct key words is important to ensure that people don't click who weren't really interested. That's about all my knowledge really. Good luck

micromary

Thanks very much for that. Good advice

le souteneur wrote: »

I have had very limited experience if setting up google Adwords and bing ads (never actually saw the resulting traffic generated however). You can get a lot of information from both of these sites when you set up and they have a lot of analytical related to search numbers and potential click through rates (bing were better on this). They both have good tutorials on how to set up however. As regards cost, you can set a maximum cost per day in order to limit the expense to you. The whole goal is to get the right people clicking on your ad so the correct key words is important to ensure that people don't click who weren't really interested. That's about all my knowledge really. Good luck

thesteve

Pay as much attention to your negative keywords as you do to the rest of the campaign. e.g. the words that you don't want to show your ad. Take the following example;

- You own a translation company and are advertising for clients.
- You set up keywords for the languages you translate from/to
- So when someone types in "german english translation", your ad appears

- However, when someone types "german english translation jobs", your ad also appears
- Someone looking for a job clicks your ad, costs you money, and sends you their resume
- Fair enough if you're looking for staff, that's ok, but if you're not, you've spent money for nothing

Hence, "jobs" or "employment", etc. are negative keywords that you'd want to use.

Best of luck!

Atomico

The main tips I would have are:

-Make sure your campaigns are really tight. This means ensuring that you have a limited variety of keywords in each ad group. If you have an ad group for 'blue widgets', you should only have plural and singular versions of that keyword in that ad group, as well as match type variations. This may be time consuming but it is very worth it as it will keep your CTR low whilst minimising your CPC.

-Track everything, test everything, ensure your ads are set to rotate starting out (find this option in campaign settings and select it at campaign creation).

-Add negatives as mentioned.

-Ensure your keywords and ad text are tightly matched. Your keywords should appear in your ad text headline, this will make your headline appear in bold text when someone googles using your keywords. This will increase your ad relevance and have a very beneficial overall effect in keeping your click-throughs high and your costs down.

I have a lot of experience in this area and do freelance AdWords management and SEO. Feel free to PM me with any questions.

herthabsc

Thanks for the great advise. Just finishing off my first campaign. I can't find negative keywords anywhere or where you place them..?

thesteve

https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2453983?hl=en

cgriffin

Adwords can be a very subjective matter depending on what product or service you are selling and who your target market is demographically.

I'm by no means an expert in this field but for what it is worth here is a few things I tend to do

1: Be very specific and use the google keyword tool to heavily research what keywords you use.

2: As opposed to using negative keywords initially try using many exact keywords (or more so keyphrases) only.

3: Ensure the advert redirects to the right page on your site. Its amazing how many companies seem to send all ads to home page and then expect the visitor to know where to go from there. The bounce rate it this situation must be massive.

4: Bid high initially. If you are getting clicks you can reduce it without too much of a negative impact

5: Combine ad with an offer. It you want them to click you got to make it worthwhile. Use something like a discount coupon code to encourage the click through and more importantly the chance that the click through leads to the sale.

6: If its not working consider firstly is what I am offering price competitive? Secondly is the page the visitor is landing on descriptive enough to convince them that they want this product and they want to buy it from me?

Be aware that you are unlikely to get it 100% right straight away. What is more important is understanding where you are going wrong and making the necessary changes to help improve your return on investment.

Peterdalkey

It is easy to get very caught up in planning/testing/tracking/refining adwords campaigns and forgetting that organic results position, which is the Nirvana. Adwords are complimentary to really good SEO, but not the other way around.

People read content but may or may not even notice adverts, it is the same for newspapers, magazines and even TV. SEO is much more demanding in terms of user input and time but that same work generally also improves the overall quality and value of the site to visitors.

If you are in a very specific niche market, the use of adwords can be very minimal, you can get sustained high organic ranking relatively easily. If you are in a very popular consumer segment, you may only be able, at best, to make page 1 with your adverts. There is no one size fits all solution, the trick is to gain the highest ranking at the MINIMUM cost to get the very best ROI and generate the most business.

We have a particular site where we were able to secure the specific generic product .com domain name for a technical medical product, it ranks no1 on every Google search that contains the term. We spend our adwords budget on our other sites!!

Graham

Although we haven't used Adwords in a while now, our biggest revelation was realising where the ads were placed made a massive difference to the conversion rate.

Ads on the main Google search pages converted reasonable well, ads that appeared on non-google properties did almost nothing. Although thing have improved, there are still far too many 'made for adwords' sites with junk/auto-generated content that almost never convert. If it's still possible I'd limit my initial ad-run to Google search pages only and only consider moving outside of this once I'd mastered the basics.

Remember to geo-target your ads as appropriate to your product/service.

Set a daily limit to your ad-spend.

Whatever your goal is (sign-ups, sales etc), track the conversion rate. If your goal is sales, try and track where the most profitable sales come from to further refine your ad targetting. Use Google Analytics to help with this, we used to use Urchin (before Google Analytics bought it) and it can be a mine of useful information.

Regularly track which keywords people are clicking on, quickly remove any that are not relevant. I'd start with exact match for my chosen keywords, using smart match keywords is great for Google but can be a money-pit for you.

TLDR - make your targets as tight as possible at the start.

Atomico

Peterdalkey wrote: »

People read content but may or may not even notice adverts, it is the same for newspapers, magazines and even TV.

One of the most common comments I hear from clients / prospective clients is along the lines of "sure does anyone even click on those ads (AdWords ads), I have never clicked on one".

The interesting thing is that not only are they clearly noticed and clicked on (responsible for Google's ~€40 billion in annual revenue) - a huge number of people are unaware of the difference between ads and organic listing! Econsultancy reported on that recently, amazing stuff.

Peterdalkey wrote: »

SEO is much more demanding in terms of user input and time but that same work generally also improves the overall quality and value of the site to visitors.

Very true, as it forces you to take a more high-level approach which leads you to look at so many more elements than just your AdWords account.

Atomico

Graham wrote: »

Although we haven't used Adwords in a while now, our biggest revelation was realising where the ads were placed made a massive difference to the conversion rate.

Ads on the main Google search pages converted reasonable well, ads that appeared on non-google properties did almost nothing.

This will mainly be because search ads and are geared towards direct response and are designed to convert, whereas display ads (on publisher sites) are much more suitable for branding and awareness. They also have infinitely greater reach than search ads. It all depends on your sector though, and how valuable display is to your business as part of the overall approach.

worded

.... Quoting ...

The interesting thing is that not only are they clearly noticed and clicked on (responsible for Google's ~€40 billion in annual revenue) - a huge number of people are unaware of the difference between ads and organic listing! Econsultancy reported on that recently, amazing stuff.

.....


When people know he web addresses they often use the google search to find the site and not the address bar. When the site lists as an ad they then click on it ! Win for google and a waste of € for the company. I've seen so many people do it when they know the address. What can be done to stop that ! Google must love it

herthabsc

I must admit that I have just done my first campaign. Maybe I am new to it but it was a pain in the ****. I checked on its status to find that all my keywords have now jumped to "minimum bid" of €3 or unlikely to get a bid. This is completely different to yesterday. It appears in my eyes that Google have changed the goalposts overnight!!!

I received a "voucher" from Google 2 weeks ago advising that I can turn the first €25 into €100. I don't know if anybody has got this offer? I rung and left a voicemail to get back to me.

Research has shown that 70% click on organic listings and 30% PPC. I don't know what recent figures are now. Personally I click only on organic listings. SEO is being dealt with at the moment but in the meantime I have been told by various people that a PPC campaign (small at the beginning) is important to do therefore I am doing a small campaign. One thing for sure is that I am setting a low budget. If you do not keep a eye on this you could be easily fleeced.

Thanks for all the help and advise.

Atomico

herthabsc wrote: »

I must admit that I have just done my first campaign. Maybe I am new to it but it was a pain in the ****. I checked on its status to find that all my keywords have now jumped to "minimum bid" of €3 or unlikely to get a bid. This is completely different to yesterday. It appears in my eyes that Google have changed the goalposts overnight!!!

I received a "voucher" from Google 2 weeks ago advising that I can turn the first €25 into €100. I don't know if anybody has got this offer? I rung and left a voicemail to get back to me.

Research has shown that 70% click on organic listings and 30% PPC. I don't know what recent figures are now. Personally I click only on organic listings. SEO is being dealt with at the moment but in the meantime I have been told by various people that a PPC campaign (small at the beginning) is important to do therefore I am doing a small campaign. One thing for sure is that I am setting a low budget. If you do not keep a eye on this you could be easily fleeced.

Thanks for all the help and advise.

Most likely it is because you are in education which is hugely competitive, or you have very broad, one-word keywords, or the keywords are not all that relevant to what you are offering (unlikely since you are following the advice on here).

Peterdalkey

Atomico wrote: »

One of the most common comments I hear from clients / prospective clients is along the lines of "sure does anyone even click on those ads (AdWords ads), I have never clicked on one".

The interesting thing is that not only are they clearly noticed and clicked on (responsible for Google's ~€40 billion in annual revenue) - a huge number of people are unaware of the difference between ads and organic listing! Econsultancy reported on that recently, amazing stuff.


Much commercial research has an agenda and should always be tempered with educated personal knowledge and experience, tailored and refined to ones own specific interests. Broad trends are very useful but can never be specific enough to be given sole consideration weighting.
I am not suggesting that they are worthless, far from it and we spend significant money each month on adwords. If nobody clicked on them, the cost would be zero!.
If you do manage to get one the 2 or 3 slots at the top of the page, I will buy that people may believe them to be regular organic results, but the shortage of text is a sure sign they are ads to most searchers!! Users are becoming more educated and experienced as the web becomes an intrinsic part of daily life, marketers just have to be better at staying ahead of the curve. Ads in the side bar are very clearly just ads! That said it the text of the ad hits the consumers desires/keywords, they are more likely to click on it.

The point I was trying to make is that best results are obtained by having a customised approach to your site/market and always seeking to find the best achievable ranking with organic but supporting that with adwords positioning. I am not involved in online marketing other than as a user.


There is a big difference between what one might like and what is achievable/affordable, especially in popular topics/products. It looks like the OP has just found this out from their last post!!

Atomico

Peterdalkey wrote: »

Atomico wrote: »

One of the most common comments I hear from clients / prospective clients is along the lines of "sure does anyone even click on those ads (AdWords ads), I have never clicked on one".

The interesting thing is that not only are they clearly noticed and clicked on (responsible for Google's ~€40 billion in annual revenue) - a huge number of people are unaware of the difference between ads and organic listing! Econsultancy reported on that recently, amazing stuff.


Much commercial research has an agenda and should always be tempered with educated personal knowledge and experience, tailored and refined to ones own specific interests. Broad trends are very useful but can never be specific enough to be given sole consideration weighting.
I am not suggesting that they are worthless, far from it and we spend significant money each month on adwords. If nobody clicked on them, the cost would be zero!.
If you do manage to get one the 2 or 3 slots at the top of the page, I will buy that people may believe them to be regular organic results, but the shortage of text is a sure sign they are ads to most searchers!! Users are becoming more educated and experienced as the web becomes an intrinsic part of daily life, marketers just have to be better at staying ahead of the curve. Ads in the side bar are very clearly just ads! That said it the text of the ad hits the consumers desires/keywords, they are more likely to click on it.

The point I was trying to make is that best results are obtained by having a customised approach to your site/market and always seeking to find the best achievable ranking with organic but supporting that with adwords positioning. I am not involved in online marketing other than as a user.


There is a big difference between what one might like and what is achievable/affordable, especially in popular topics/products. It looks like the OP has just found this out from their last post!!

I've definitely noticed an increase in CPCs for sure. Which only further highlights why you need to know what you are doing! So it should be case of investing your time in teaching yourself with some outside help, or getting someone for a short period to set it up and manage it for you.

Hint hint from my perspective on the last point...

Peterdalkey

and from your posts on here, I suspect you would do a good job!! :-)

cgriffin

herthabsc wrote: »

I must admit that I have just done my first campaign. Maybe I am new to it but it was a pain in the ****. I checked on its status to find that all my keywords have now jumped to "minimum bid" of €3 or unlikely to get a bid. This is completely different to yesterday. It appears in my eyes that Google have changed the goalposts overnight!!!

I received a "voucher" from Google 2 weeks ago advising that I can turn the first €25 into €100. I don't know if anybody has got this offer? I rung and left a voicemail to get back to me.

Research has shown that 70% click on organic listings and 30% PPC. I don't know what recent figures are now. Personally I click only on organic listings. SEO is being dealt with at the moment but in the meantime I have been told by various people that a PPC campaign (small at the beginning) is important to do therefore I am doing a small campaign. One thing for sure is that I am setting a low budget. If you do not keep a eye on this you could be easily fleeced.

Thanks for all the help and advise.

Good to see you are learning from the experience.
You are doing some of the right things it seems. Keep the budget low.
Now you got to work out if 3 Euro per click is worth it.
In simple terms if you are selling something for 10 Euro and you got a 30% margain you would need to convert every click to break event.
If you make a margain of 100 euro on what you are selling then you got a lot more scope.
Are you using Google Analytics to track how you are doing? Are visitors from the campaign landing on the page and leaving pretty much straight away?
It is googles job to place your ad on their search engine but your job to word it in a compelling way that people want to click on it and more importantly when they do click what they are clicking on has to be compelling enough to convince them they wish to do business with you.
SEO will not happen for you overnight but for me personally it is pretty much the be all and end all. Good originally written content optimised to generate traffic can be very rewarding especially when combined with a strong Off Page SEO strategy (I don't mean directories!)

thecommander

cgriffin wrote: »

Good originally written content optimised to generate traffic can be very rewarding especially when combined with a strong Off Page SEO strategy (I don't mean directories!)

Original content is fine for a blog or the likes, but what about when working with an online store that carries alot of items similar to other sites? Any tips on that?

Atomico

thecommander wrote: »

Original content is fine for a blog or the likes, but what about when working with an online store that carries alot of items similar to other sites? Any tips on that?

Good quality content will still work, you could just add a blog or a news section to the online store and you will get the benefit from it too.

Key thing is to figure out what people are looking for, the intent behind the search, and then tailor your strategy to fit.

cgriffin

thecommander wrote: »

Original content is fine for a blog or the likes, but what about when working with an online store that carries alot of items similar to other sites? Any tips on that?

A lot of online stores make the mistake of copying and pasting the info provided by the manufacturer. This obviously does not and will not work as google and other search engines has seen this information many times before.
No excuses for creating your own way of describing the product it just takes a bit of imagination.

thecommander

cgriffin wrote: »

A lot of online stores make the mistake of copying and pasting the info provided by the manufacturer. This obviously does not and will not work as google and other search engines has seen this information many times before.
No excuses for creating your own way of describing the product it just takes a bit of imagination.

Cool. Was just wondeirng if google picks up on that.

cgriffin

thecommander wrote: »

Cool. Was just wondeirng if google picks up on that.

Got to be done right though using title tags, meta description tags, H tags etc properly. I find using google keyword tool works well for researching what content to write on each product page.
It really does take a lot of time to do it right.
Anyway we are going off the point of CPC a bit sorry.