Should I continue with this PPC Adwords campaign?

[RichPargeter]

Hi Warriors,

First off let me tell you I'm a relative PPC newbie but I've decided that this is what I want to focus my efforts on at the moment.

Last Saturday I started a PPC campaign marketing an affiliate product from ClickBank.

Within 8 hours I had made 2 sales... I was pretty chuffed as I'd never sold anything through Clickbank before.

Now since then I have made a further 3 sales over the past week... but at the moment I'm operating at a loss.

I haven't made any sales over the past 3 days so I spent yesterday optimizing my Ad Groups and creating separate landing pages from my most successful keywords and themes.

My current spend on Adwords since 07/11/09 is £118.68 and my commissions earned are roughly £64.27 (I've had to convert this from $107.84 to GBP). I earn approx £12.85 per sale.

Because I'm now £54.41 down I'm not sure if this campaign can be turned into a profit.

Can you help?

My Overall Stats for the week are as follows:

Impressions: 46200
Clicks: 950
CTR: 2.06%
CPC Total: £118.68
Sales: 5
Revenue: £64.27

My conversion rate is currently: 0.53%

As of today 14/11/09 my new landing pages and ad groups have better CTR's and the CTR from landing page to merchants site is an average of 60%

I'm also finding that my daily budget of £20 isn't lasting the day.

So Warriors, what should I do?

Should I pump up my daily budget to last the whole day?

Or should I sack the campaign completely?

Personally I'm thinking that even though I'm getting a 60% CTR from landing page to merchants site on todays figures but no sales... then maybe this campaign isn't going to work after all.

I hope you can help.

Apologies if this post is a bit 'garbled'...not even sure if that's a word!

If you need any more info to make things clearer let me know

Cheers,

Rich

[Jumperdude]

Rich

I also recently started using Adwords, but we have been using it for a long time to sell our items in our online store. I am only now starting to use it to sell affiliate products. I am sure there are quicker and cheaper methods to earn, like article marketing etc, but I decided to focus on Adwords because I have to understand how it works.

I am not using landing pages. Takes too long, I link directly to the merchant site. Linking directly does have a long list of negatives. I think you should continuw to use landing pages.

As per your numbers above. It seems you are selling, but the keywords you are using are probably a bit expensive for the money you earn per sale. The best advice I can give, rather focus your efforst on longtail cheaper "buying" keywords in your niche.

[tryinhere]

what is your quality score on those keys and do you have other ads running to improve the 2% ctr ?

[RichPargeter]

Originally Posted by tryinhere

what is your quality score on those keys and do you have other ads running to improve the 2% ctr ?

My average QS is 7/10

Ad Group 1 CTR: 6.17%
Ad Group 2 CTR: 5.20%
Ad Group 3 CTR: 4.25%
Ad Group 4 CTR: 4.0%
Ad Group 5 CTR: 3.73%
Ad Group 6 CTR: 2.12%

I'm split testing 2 ads in each ad group.

What can I do to try to improve the 2% CTR?

Thanks,

Rich

[Preciseim]

Hi Richard,

Are you capturing any email addresses? Because If I am reading this rightly it does not look like a profitable campaign yet. If you are grabbing some email addresses then you can always follow up with some bigger ticket items.

Well done for getting some sales anyway

[tryinhere]

What can I do to try to improve the 2% CTR?

is it possible to eye or spot a theme that was working in those ads giving a better ctr above it and add a new ad based on the better ones and remove the worst one.

It seems like your close and some continual tinkering will bring it into line and as that happens you qs should move to 10 lowering costs and it could be a winner but in the end its gut call.

from what you have said i would stay with for a bit longer looking for improvement and as long as i could improve my numbers each day i would stay working with it.

Should I pump up my daily budget to last the whole day?

with that the answer is no for me, you would want a profit before slaming in the big boys

[jasonmorgan]

I'm not a PPCer but it sounds like you are not receiving enough in commissions to make up for the cost per click.

Some tweaking might help some but the cost vs. profit sounds bad.

Can you find an alternative product to sell with a higher payout or maybe add in some related products that would appeal to the same visitors?

[RichPargeter]

Originally Posted by Preciseim

Hi Richard,

Are you capturing any email addresses? Because If I am reading this rightly it does not look like a profitable campaign yet. If you are grabbing some email addresses then you can always follow up with some bigger ticket items.

Well done for getting some sales anyway

I'm not getting optins yet because I need to see if the campaign is going to be profitable before I start building a list.

If it turns out to be that's one thing I will bear in mind,

Thanks

[RichPargeter]

Originally Posted by tryinhere

is it possible to eye or spot a theme that was working in those ads giving a better ctr above it and add a new ad based on the better ones and remove the worst one.

It seems like your close and some continual tinkering will bring it into line and as that happens you qs should move to 10 lowering costs and it could be a winner but in the end its gut call.

from what you have said i would stay with for a bit longer looking for improvement and as long as i could improve my numbers each day i would stay working with it.

with that the answer is no for me, you would want a profit before slaming in the big boys

Yes I think I can still fine tune the ad groups into even more tighter themes and then play around with the ads themselves.

When you say "improve the numbers each day" would you expect the CTR to go up and down or would you be looking for an increase every single day?

My CTR on the campaign has ranged from 1.65%-2.49%

Which figures should I really be concerned with as I made 2 sales on a day where my CTR was 1.65%

This is really frustrating. The first day I made 2 sales while spending just £2.72 on clicks then over the last 3 days I haven't made a sale while I've been optimizing the campaign... I suppose that's PPC for you!

Thanks for your help,

Rich

[Jumperdude]

I agree with Try. Do not close things up just yet. Get your quality score up and try to do some pre-selling in your ads. This will lower your CTR, but you will get more ready to potential customers clicking through to your site.

[RichPargeter]

Originally Posted by Jumperdude

I agree with Try. Do not close things up just yet. Get your quality score up and try to do some pre-selling in your ads. This will lower your CTR, but you will get more ready to potential customers clicking through to your site.

Thanks for that. I definitely give the pre sell ads a go to exclude the tyre kickers!

[be strong]

newbies never should try pay per sale for starters with adwords

conversions are much higher with pay per lead than sale

what is the epc average for the campaign?

[tryinhere]

Originally Posted by RichPargeter

When you say "improve the numbers each day" would you expect the CTR to go up and down or would you be looking for an increase every single day?

Rich, use your gut feel so each day is not a it must or else but if your making headway then all is good, move slow in many ways if your not sure.

It was mentioned above you need a higher paying product ? / yes or you need lower costs and that will equal the same outcome.

So yes keep adding new ads to your campaign to improve the ctr, as your campaign ages and your ctr improves your quality score should improve lowering your costs.

from there you can hone in even more with [exact] or "phrase" keys if you do not have them.

If you want to pm me a few of your ads i will will re write a few for you to try ? i might get lucky on a few for you

[gordi555]

I would say don't give up just yet.

How many keywords have you got in the ad groups with lower then 0.5% CTR? Do you remove your lower CTR keywords? Are you track which keywords make sales the most? Do you ads illustrate that people have to purchase the product? what's your average ad position for the keywords? Are you using "buy" keywords or "browse" keywords? Are you tracking which countries convert the most? Are you tracking what time of day converts the most?

Test test test my friend and should put you in profit!

[gordi555]

P.S. I'm from the UK Rich and would be happy to help you out. I'm going through the Adwords certification process and lots of experiance on this so please feel free to PM me. Used Adwords with ClickBank myself a few times.

[RichPargeter]

Originally Posted by gordi555

I would say don't give up just yet.

How many keywords have you got in the ad groups with lower then 0.5% CTR? Do you remove your lower CTR keywords? Are you track which keywords make sales the most? Do you ads illustrate that people have to purchase the product? what's your average ad position for the keywords? Are you using "buy" keywords or "browse" keywords? Are you tracking which countries convert the most? Are you tracking what time of day converts the most?

Test test test my friend and should put you in profit!

Hi gordi555,

Thanks for the reply... My gut feeling says I should stop with the campaign because I really do feel that with a bit of tweaking I could be making sales everyday.

This is the longest I've stuck at PPC and I'm telling myself that any loss I'm making is paying for the education that I'm getting for future campaigns... but I'd love for this one to make a profit so that I can apply to another campaign and scale it up.

I've got a few of questions regarding your questions if you'd be able answer them please:

1. Should I delete lower than 0.5% CTR keywords and after how many impressions.

2. I'm trying to set my Max CPC so that I end up in positions 3-4. How often should I keep tweaking these bids to achieve this.

3. Do you have any advice on finding "buy" keywords or can you give me some examples because I think the way I've got my ads set at the moment they're not implying there is a product to buy and I might be attracting too many tyre kickers.

4. I am tracking countries - my visitors are mainly from the US so should I exclude the other countries I have set up (UK, AUS, CAN, NZ). I'm tracking times as well but because my daily budget isn't lasting the whole day I miss a few hours. For example when the day resets at 00:00 UK time I get a flood of traffic which gradually tales off around 7am GMT then picks up again around 9am. My budget normally runs out by 6pm.

Should I increase my daily budget? or set my ads to show at specific times?

Thanks again for taking the time to reply,

Cheers,
Rich

[RichPargeter]

Just a quick update I've just checked Clickbank and I've made another sale, so I must be doing something right somewhere

Does anybody know how long it takes for CB to update?

[gordi555]

Hi Rich,

Happy to help where possible!

1. Well done on the CB sale. From my experiance it updates around 8 to 12 hours but could be wrong. Anyone else know?

2. Yes you should delete the low CTR keywords as it harms your quality score of the campaign. I normally give it a week for the stats to build up. If the keyword is low, it has to go!

3. Regarding position of ads, I would check at end of every day and tweak by £0.02 each time (got to keep it as optimised as possible!).

4. Buying keyword examples are anything with product name it, do a Google Keywords Tool lookup and put the product in, do a search that triggers your adwords to appear and see what the competition are doing - if the competition keep running the ad it must be worth doing. Exact match types are best keywords to gain sales or leads. Look for keywords that contact "buy" "discount" "purchase" etc. Think in the mind of someone who is pre-sold!

Another good tip is to point out that it's a purchasable product or service to elimate none paying browsers. Puting in the price or "buy now" into your ad copy can help but depends on the landing page. Split test this!

Never just put a 1 or 2 keyword phrase length in to your keywords in broad match mode. You'll get plenty of impressions but a low CTR - it's all about ROI so make it very targeted which in turn will improve your QS and lower your CPC.

Oh and ALWAYS turn the content network OFF unless you can get it for £0.01 or £0.02 a click.

5. For times and countries, simply use more budget for the countries that are turning into sales. Split your adgroups up if needed, even create more campaigns that target certain countries and times - test accelerated delivery and normal. Oh and ALWAYS split test and ensure the "display ads evenly" is selected under your campaigns settings. Test test test and then once you're earning profit, test twice as hard as the day before.Time frames: If your product is business related, test in business hours. If working from home related, test after business hours. Think like your target buyer, be your target buyer!

No, don't increase your daily budget at this stage, you're making sales and are testing just fine. Increasing your daily budget wont change your findings. Wait till your well in profit to change your daily budget. That way you'll see if 2 x spend = 2 x profit.

Hope this helps - let us know how you get on so you can help other PPC'ers out. All the best!

[tryinhere]

Rich, sounds like gordi has thrown you a good offer for some help so i would jump on that. With this one

3. Regarding position of ads, I would check at end of every day and tweak by £0.02 each time (got to keep it as optimised as possible!).

Go into you setting and set a alert for the campaign based on your average position and as an example you may set the alert if > position 7 ( you would then increase as described or if < position 3 for example and if so you would reduce the amount.

Those positions are examples only so please work with gordi on the best settings for your campaign but what happens here is your campaign now auto alerts you exactly on what needs a tweak.

you can also set alerts for any low performing ctr keys and ads, and this then gives you a very good easy to use base to work with.

As mentioned in regards your daily spend, it is no good increasing it now, but it makes me think you have accelerated bidding set if you are running out, if so by setting that to normal you bids will be better distributed during the 24 hour period.

[RichPargeter]

Originally Posted by gordi555

Hi Rich,

Happy to help where possible!

1. Well done on the CB sale. From my experiance it updates around 8 to 12 hours but could be wrong. Anyone else know?

2. Yes you should delete the low CTR keywords as it harms your quality score of the campaign. I normally give it a week for the stats to build up. If the keyword is low, it has to go!

3. Regarding position of ads, I would check at end of every day and tweak by £0.02 each time (got to keep it as optimised as possible!).

4. Buying keyword examples are anything with product name it, do a Google Keywords Tool lookup and put the product in, do a search that triggers your adwords to appear and see what the competition are doing - if the competition keep running the ad it must be worth doing. Exact match types are best keywords to gain sales or leads. Look for keywords that contact "buy" "discount" "purchase" etc. Think in the mind of someone who is pre-sold!

Another good tip is to point out that it's a purchasable product or service to elimate none paying browsers. Puting in the price or "buy now" into your ad copy can help but depends on the landing page. Split test this!

Never just put a 1 or 2 keyword phrase length in to your keywords in broad match mode. You'll get plenty of impressions but a low CTR - it's all about ROI so make it very targeted which in turn will improve your QS and lower your CPC.

Oh and ALWAYS turn the content network OFF unless you can get it for £0.01 or £0.02 a click.

5. For times and countries, simply use more budget for the countries that are turning into sales. Split your adgroups up if needed, even create more campaigns that target certain countries and times - test accelerated delivery and normal. Oh and ALWAYS split test and ensure the "display ads evenly" is selected under your campaigns settings. Test test test and then once you're earning profit, test twice as hard as the day before.Time frames: If your product is business related, test in business hours. If working from home related, test after business hours. Think like your target buyer, be your target buyer!

No, don't increase your daily budget at this stage, you're making sales and are testing just fine. Increasing your daily budget wont change your findings. Wait till your well in profit to change your daily budget. That way you'll see if 2 x spend = 2 x profit.

Hope this helps - let us know how you get on so you can help other PPC'ers out. All the best!

Hi gordi555,

Fantastic advice thank you, I really appreciate your help and I'm sure any other newbie PPC'ers will be finding tons of value in this thread.

I made 2 sales in total yesterday so fingers crossed.

I've another couple of questions if you don't mind.

1. Should I leave all the CTR 'tinkering' like deleting keywords and moving top performers into their own ad groups to just ONCE a week?

And then spend the rest of the week split testing new ads and landing pages and leaving those for a week until I see some results?

2. Regarding BROAD, PHRASE & EXACT match types. If I start a campaign using all three versions at what point should I be deleting the broad version of a keyword. And if the exact match gets a significant CTR should I also delete the Phrase match type as well?

Cheers

[RichPargeter]

Originally Posted by tryinhere

Rich, sounds like gordi has thrown you a good offer for some help so i would jump on that. With this one



Go into you setting and set a alert for the campaign based on your average position and as an example you may set the alert if > position 7 ( you would then increase as described or if < position 3 for example and if so you would reduce the amount.

Those positions are examples only so please work with gordi on the best settings for your campaign but what happens here is your campaign now auto alerts you exactly on what needs a tweak.

you can also set alerts for any low performing ctr keys and ads, and this then gives you a very good easy to use base to work with.

As mentioned in regards your daily spend, it is no good increasing it now, but it makes me think you have accelerated bidding set if you are running out, if so by setting that to normal you bids will be better distributed during the 24 hour period.

Thanks for the tip but where do I find out how to set up alerts?

I am running using the accelerated setting as I tried standard but didn't like Google deciding when to show my ads. There's probably arguments for and against but I'd prefer to be in control of when my ad show

[gordi555]

Glad to help

Congrats on the sales too! Love that feeling you get when you login and notice the sales!

1. Yes sounds like a solid plan! You're improving the traffic and then improving what they do once they get to the target page. Just make sure you note down all the changes you make and start by split testing - too many changes and you wont know what worked! A safe way is to compare A against B, not have C, D, E, F etc.

2. For the keywords, I would test to see what is bringing the sales in. Don't turn off broad and phrase just yet because we don't know what is making the sales. Bring the phrase match and exact match into the mix and track! If Broad isn't converting it's harming your CTR, and ultimatly, your QS.

Another tip, don't delete campaigns or ad groups just yet, pause them. Some of the QS comes from account history and structure!

I often see people unable to improve past a 7/10 QS, the remaining 3 points (in my opinion) is regarding CTR (5% is good for 10/10), account history and campaign setup.

Hope this helps!

Oh yeah, are you passing along campaign, adgroup and keyword along using your ClickBank tracking codes?

[gordi555]

Originally Posted by RichPargeter

I am running using the accelerated setting as I tried standard but didn't like Google deciding when to show my ads. There's probably arguments for and against but I'd prefer to be in control of when my ad show

I do this too, I want to test and see results as quickly as possible.

On the reverse though (using gradual 24 hours showing), it does help you determine what times of day are most profitable!

[RichPargeter]

Originally Posted by gordi555

Glad to help

Congrats on the sales too! Love that feeling you get when you login and notice the sales!

1. Yes sounds like a solid plan! You're improving the traffic and then improving what they do once they get to the target page. Just make sure you note down all the changes you make and start by split testing - too many changes and you wont know what worked! A safe way is to compare A against B, not have C, D, E, F etc.

2. For the keywords, I would test to see what is bringing the sales in. Don't turn off broad and phrase just yet because we don't know what is making the sales. Bring the phrase match and exact match into the mix and track! If Broad isn't converting it's harming your CTR, and ultimatly, your QS.

Another tip, don't delete campaigns or ad groups just yet, pause them. Some of the QS comes from account history and structure!

I often see people unable to improve past a 7/10 QS, the remaining 3 points (in my opinion) is regarding CTR (5% is good for 10/10), account history and campaign setup.

Hope this helps!

Oh yeah, are you passing along campaign, adgroup and keyword along using your ClickBank tracking codes?

I've already deleted some ad groups because I started the campaign with way too many keywords. I've just checked that the couple of ad groups that I had which were 10/10 have dropped to 7/10 hopefully I can bring these back up. All part of the learning curve I suppose.

I'm using Prosper 202 so I can track which keyword triggered which ad group and ad. I've only got the one campaign running at the moment, I think I need to get my head round this one first, although I'm eager to try another one.

[gordi555]

Yeah I think you're doing fine with your progress. Keep it up