Struggling with ppc advertising

4 replies
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I recently posted a thread asking for general advice approx 1 week ago. So far I received 2 responses, 1 minimally helpful comment and a sales pitch to "join the war room" This is discouraging since no one actually offered advice or assistance, Jut a sales pitch! Im giving this one last try to see if anyone on this site has any desire whatsoever to hare some knowledge without requiring a paid membership. (Why would i pay to join when so far nobody has bothered to offer assistance in any way? BTW the one person who did respond has made a grand total of 4 posts!)

Anyways my issue is I started a PPC campaign through adwords and have in three days spent close to $400.00 in ads! All keyword are highly targeted and effective, Ads are well structured and placed, Using search network only, no broad keyword, etc. So far I have received approx 250+ highly targeted clicks with a cpc of around $1.50 avg. My CTR so far is around 5% which from what ive read i pretty good. My issue is none of this has led to a single sale! My site is approx 8 month old and I regularly receive orders without the use of ppc, Yet with a spike of 250+ visits above my average number of visits the last few days no sales. I realize this is a seemingly low number of site visits but every single visit is by motivated buyers searching for my product type.

I realize there are numerous variables to be factored in, But prior to the ppc campaign I averaged a sale for every 100+/- visits to the site. Now with another 250 very targeted visits i had anticipated roughly 2.5 sales, Yet Nothing sold. Prices are competitive and ppc campaign is targeting ONLY customers seeking to buy the type of products I sell. Common sense and experience tells me that this spike in interested buyers should have resulted in atleast a single sale. Its almost like the moment the ppc campaign started my sales halted (including sales normally made through organic searches)

At the current rate my adowrds costs are going to be much too high especially if sales do not resume very quickly. I know it makes no sense but it feels like this whole campaign has been counterproductive! Any knowledge or advice would be greatly appreciated!

To the Warrior Forum community,
It would be a good idea to offer new members some degree of assistance or help before trying to sell memberships! I made a plea for help a week ago and received essentially NOTHING from anyone here, Yet someone felt it was appropriate to pitch the war room membership, Why would I pay for a service that so far seems to ignore me? I was under the impression this was supposed to be a community who helped eachother! Give people a reason to want to upgrade to the war room before trying to sell an upgrade.
#advertising #ppc #struggling
  • Profile picture of the author Marty Foley
    My suggestions would be:

    * Make sure you have Google Analytics on your site, and setup conversion goals to track all important visitor actions (conversions).

    * Your analytics data can then reveal which organic search terms are converting for you. Make sure you are bidding on them in Adwords.

    * If you want to test conservatively to keep costs down, bid ONLY on those keyword terms which have converted in the past.

    * Start to bid on less targeted terms, only AFTER your most targeted terms are converting at an acceptable ROI.

    * Don't forget the importance of landing page conversion rate optimization, because generating targeted traffic is only part of the equation.

    ~ Marty Foley
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    • Profile picture of the author Shawnd414
      The advice is much appreciated, Thanks for taking the time to respond. Ive actually already dealt with most of this, Pretty much everything you described. I am already targeting the top effective keywords that have proven profitable. My CTR is good, Landing page has been reworked, etc. Thats what is so confusing about this, The adwords campaign should be showing results without a doubt.

      The only thing that springs to mind is the short duration of the campaign, Maybe I just havent allowed enough time to pass. The issue is at roughly $150 a day for adwords I cannot sustain the campaign for very long without returns. Immediately prior to the campaign i was seeing low but steady sales with extremely limited exposure, Now I have this large spike of Extremely targeted visitors and nothing has happened. My other concern is that google in one way or another causing fraudulent clicks (found several supposed cases of this through simple search) Anyways im just out of ideas at this point, Have done everything logical to maximize returns and sales and have seen no improvement in the short period.

      Again though, I do appreciate you taking the time to give some input and advice. Its just that ive already taken these steps with no apparent improvement. Now im just stumped!
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      • Profile picture of the author Marty Foley
        Yes, it may take longer to see results.

        In relation to this, a handy Adwords feature is the Search Funnels > Time Lag Report, which shows the length of time it takes - in days or hours - for visitors to convert. Problem is, in your case there haven't yet been any Adwords conversions to report.

        Did you double-check that everything in the conversion path still works properly, such as your shopping cart or lead form, and didn't get messed up (maybe when conversion or analytics tracking code was added, or pages were altered)?

        ~ Marty Foley
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  • Profile picture of the author dropout
    I would pretty much forget everything about click fraud unless you can see in your server logs that the same IPs keep accessing your site. Google has been dealing with this for years, and all we as advertisers can do is trust that they keep their game up in this area.

    You need to set rules for how much money you can spend on a keyword before you move on from it. I realize it is frustrating that you have keywords that have converted organically, but in Adwords they go nowhere, however you have to deal with the data you are seeing. Also you don't mention if your conversions happened from the same set of keywords or if it was a sale here and there from long tail keywords.

    You don't mention how many conversions you have had over those 8 months. 100 clicks/conversion sound like a lot to me: unless you sell really expensive items I would imagine there are keywords out there that could convert better for you. Hard to say more about this though without having a look at your site/campaign.

    Let's take computer motherboards as an example. Do you bid on generic terms like "pc motherboard" or brand specific terms like "asus motherboard"? Do you bid on specific product names like "ASUS P8Z77-M"? I realize this might not be easy in your niche, but try to think about how you could possibly get more targeted.

    Finally, I agree that it seems weird that conversions are not happening. Your CTR is good and you have tested multiple landing pages. Have you tried to model a landing page on what the competition does?
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