[MSC]

When the other business I am involved was launched over 2 yrs ago we ran a google adwords campaign for a month (under the guidance of a google adwords consultant), spent over £250 and got one sale (under £15). About 6 weeks later the business was getting organic search results and monthly sales of over £1500 through those organic search results and they have risen dramatically since then.

So obviously we didn't think it was worth continuing with adwords.

Now my new venture...I started a campaign last week (under my own guidance ) with a daily budget of £5, got a grand total of 38 clicks in 3 days and not one sale. I know those figures aren't enough to go on but how do you measure success? Obviously SALES but are there average CTR to aim for to know you are on the right track without spending a load of money?

Also I know I can improve on the above results esp after reading more about it, but I am just not sure how to know when enough is enough

[Dotwhack]

Well in a nutshell, you should be looking at the overall picture of how much can you afford to spend per acquisition (sale/lead). It depends on how much margin you make, the cost of google clicks etc.

Generally a campaign with a click through rate of 3% is deemed as good.
You don't really want to aim for position 1 - its more cost effective to aim for position 3-5 really.

You need to check your bounce rates on your web stats too - are the visitors you're attracting looking round your site or exiting straight away. A high bounce rate suggests you're landing them on the wrong pay, your site isn't relevant or there's something wrong with your content.

I'm afraid there's isn't a 'you should aim for xxx' type answer. Lots of people measure in lots of ways. Remeber to split test as much as possible on adwords to test different advert copy etc. The more your test, the more you'll be able to fine-tune your results

[admagic]

Originally Posted by MSC

When the other business I am involved was launched over 2 yrs ago we ran a google adwords campaign for a month (under the guidance of a google adwords consultant), spent over £250 and got one sale (under £15). About 6 weeks later the business was getting organic search results and monthly sales of over £1500 through those organic search results and they have risen dramatically since then.

So obviously we didn't think it was worth continuing with adwords.

Now my new venture...I started a campaign last week (under my own guidance ) with a daily budget of £5, got a grand total of 38 clicks in 3 days and not one sale. I know those figures aren't enough to go on but how do you measure success? Obviously SALES but are there average CTR to aim for to know you are on the right track without spending a load of money?

Also I know I can improve on the above results esp after reading more about it, but I am just not sure how to know when enough is enough

There cannot be a definitve answer - so pleas other adwords gurus dont pick nits with this!!

Here is a set of rough rules of thiumb!
All rules made to be broken....

UNLESS

(a) You are listing in the top 5, you need to drop the keywords related or up your bids - below that the fact that people dont see it is costing you CTR by giving impressions without clicks.

(b) Unles You are getting 10% CTR, your ad is not good enough, or focussed enough on the keyword expression - or try dropping the broad match completely in favour of just exact and phrase match

I am disappointed if my "money keywords" - the most important arent closer to 20 or more.
How can you do that?? All sorts of tricks can help......

eg If you are in a set of bland ads and cant think of much to say
...using the expression often helps

Dont Buy Skin Care products
Until You Have Read This!
WARNING.yourdomain.com

of course, you need some great sales copy too, if you are to avoid a bounce
but you will normally get CTR!!!


(c) Unless you page is graded "good" quality for your keywords you need to be more specific with the landing.

(d) Unless (b) and (c) are true, you are paying more for your clicks than you need, and (who knows quite wear the cutoff is) but if your page is rated poor quality/and or your CTR is well below 1% - google will penalize - if not outright slap you on price!

(d) Unless you are making profit of at least 100% of advertising, dont bother!! - trouble is that is not quite how it seems - because

(e) Getting people in with a freebie , then marketing to the email address, can often be the way to extract the maximum lifetime value from a customer ! - so unless this is the type of purchase people normally make the FIRST time they look, it is better going for a sign up.

And every real case is in someway an exception to the general rules!!

Two words of advice.

Seriously look at site targetted ads.

Start considering "back door" keywords.

.. think how your customer thinks, where do they go? what magazines do they read? what websites do they visit? what books do they buy? what other products do they buy? who are the experts in that field? what are the experts websites? DVDs do they watch? what has OPRAH just had on tv...that wouldinterest them as customers? what information products can you give them to satisfy?

Somewhere in there is an anwer that will give you far cheaper clicks than your competition......typically back door keywords result in a 2 stage sale...

Without compromising stuff I am doing, I dont want to give many examples. But once I did pretty well on property sale information, targetting the name of a franchise (using legal methods( in that niche - where property keywords are exppensive, got the clicks as cheap as chips.

[MSC]

Thank you dotwhack, I really appreciate it. What would be a high bounce rate??

WOW thank you admagic, that is brilliant!
The back door keywords is very interesting.
What does 2 stage sale mean?
(hope you don't mind me asking, you've given so much help already and I really appreciate it!)

[admagic]

Originally Posted by MSC

Thank you dotwhack, I really appreciate it. What would be a high bounce rate??

WOW thank you admagic, that is brilliant!
The back door keywords is very interesting.
What does 2 stage sale mean?
(hope you don't mind me asking, you've given so much help already and I really appreciate it!)

"High bounce rate"

... people coming in , looking at the copy and leaving without ordering or going on further... which is all about making your ad, your keywords and copy line up.

eg if you use the "WARNING! Dont buy a xxxx until you have read this"

then the page you start with must explain the warnings about why certain products are better in some situations ...... ie lines up with the ad....and does not go straight to the sales page - otherwise there will be a disjunction between the ad, and what the copy says. So a lot of people will bounce.

catchy or cute never work

so I sometimes see an ad with a headline SEX
and when you turnover it says...now I have your attention, please let me tell you about dining room chairs.
in that situation the customer feels cheated, and will bounce, never to come back.

so if the ad says you will give them a warning , that is what the page must be - not an immediate pitch for a product...

proof of whether that is occurring is found in the "time on page" - if the are only spending a couple of seconds before moving on - then the message has not connected

if they spend time reading and still dont buy - then the offer,copy and other things need looking at.

"2 stage sale"

eg first of all offering something free ( eg information) to get an email then turning offering them a sale....the offer can be straight on the back of the email capture as a "one time offer"

in your case it could be offering a free sample in exchange for the price of a mailing....then pitching the offer for a months supply in the envelope you send


Finally ...dont get too hung up on %s...dotwhack said 3% - and if you use large amounts of keywords pointed at some fairly generic ads then that might well be the number ....google are happy 2-4 and wont slap you in that band.

But If you use small groups of keywords ( I prefer) tightly focussed into specific ads, with lots of ad groups and campaigns - you can indeed get the 10% I talked about - or even 20 or more DEPENDING ON ALL SORTS OF THINGS- which is what I tend to do.

Point I am making is all of these are finger in the air...and depend on a lot of things.

Clearly the highest percentage conversion - (not CTR) comes from - offering a great freebie for list building - and then with a video squeeze page you can get 30% or more sign up -

When a free offer is immediately taken to a one time offer, you can get many more buy than would have bought if they had been taken straight to the offer in the first place. ie the squeeze page for list building far from reducing conversion, can actually increase it!

You know what I will say next

You will never know unless you test!

[MSC]

So do you think instead of the goal being to make a sale, the goal should be signing up to the mailing list? I can see how that might be a good longer term goal.
Thanks again admagic, giving me laods to think about!

[Mike Seddon]

Originally Posted by MSC

So do you think instead of the goal being to make a sale, the goal should be signing up to the mailing list? I can see how that might be a good longer term goal.
Thanks again admagic, giving me laods to think about!

I completely agree with Admagic here. It's also called Relationship Marketing and a few other names.

Offer something free and of value on your website in exchange for their email.

Get yourself an autoresponder and set up a list of emails that continue to offer value (ie: further tips, advice etc).

All the time you MUST give true value because you are trying to establish that you are genuine and do offer value.

Then later in the emails you can start to sell what you have to offer.

Conversion rates are much higher. Also, make sure what you sell them is off great value because it's always easier to sell to people who have been pleased with purchases from you in the past.

Incidentally, I recently read that trying to sell to someone on their first visit to your website fails 99% of the time. In otherwords you need 100 clicks to get a sale. So, it really doesn't work.

Cheers
Mike

[MSC]

Thanks Mike. It makes sense what you are saying. I am going to work on adwords and what I can offer in terms of extra value next week

[gregsta]

I like to use PPC for recon with my clients. Basically I put together some keywords with the client that will drive traffic to their site. The PPC lets me know what keywords have a high number of impressions, clicks and bounce rates.

This lets me know what I need to optimise for. As soon as I can get the site up there in the first page I can switch off the advertising for that word.

I hate PPC, it can be usefull for finding things sometimes but to me it is like the dodgy used car dealer part of the internet. For want of a better phrase its like searchengine spam.

I reckon it should only be used as part of an SEO/PPC campaign. Email marketing is the way forward. As Mike said relationship marketing is were its all at. Going by the 80/20 rule (80% of business is generated by 20% of customers) email marketing (opt in) will drive the best traffic to your website that actually wants to buy from you and knows you.

Hope this helps!

[admagic]

Originally Posted by gregsta

I like to use PPC for recon with my clients. Basically I put together some keywords with the client that will drive traffic to their site. The PPC lets me know what keywords have a high number of impressions, clicks and bounce rates.

This lets me know what I need to optimise for. As soon as I can get the site up there in the first page I can switch off the advertising for that word.

I hate PPC, it can be usefull for finding things sometimes but to me it is like the dodgy used car dealer part of the internet. For want of a better phrase its like searchengine spam.

I reckon it should only be used as part of an SEO/PPC campaign. Email marketing is the way forward. As Mike said relationship marketing is were its all at. Going by the 80/20 rule (80% of business is generated by 20% of customers) email marketing (opt in) will drive the best traffic to your website that actually wants to buy from you and knows you.

Hope this helps!

PPC is great for testing and optimising copy conversion prior to a joint venture too!

One of the big mistakes people make in joint ventures is saying ...will you promote me, without a good case to do it.

If you can say "my site is proven to convert to JV partner revenue of £231 for every 1000 targetted visitors and here are the stats to prove it: then JV partners sit up and take notice -

Since you talk in their language which is money!!