Adwords mystery

Hi yuliak,

Sites like ispionage.com are extrapolating from very small data samples and tend to be very inaccurate.

As far as conversion percentages for your niche, it sounds like you are looking for an industry average conversion rate. For that information we would need to know the specifics of your particular niche, the data might be available however it isn't likely to be meaningful to your business. Please allow me to explain.

There are a lot variables that will effect the conversion rates, a campaign will typically target many market segments and each segment will have it's own individual conversion rate, every keyword you target will have it's own individual conversion rate, each channel segment will have it's own individual conversion rate. Each value proposition, each ad variant will have their own individual conversion rates. Conversion variables like lead generation verses onlines sales, will each have their own individual conversion rates.
Ad position will effect conversion rates, landing page designs, headlines, value propositions, and CTAs all have significant effect on conversion rates. I could go on, but you probably get my point.

While it is interesting to compare your own conversion to the industry benchmarks, as previously stated, it generally is not meaningful for your own business. The reason is that every company has a different business model, a different strategy, and different goals.

• If your strategy and goals are to grow market share, you will likely have a lower average conversion rate than someone that is maximizing current profits.
• A strategy of maximizing current profits will generally have much lower conversion rates than a strategy of maximizing ROI.

Industry benchmarks include all of these different strategies and tactics as an average of aggregated totals. It won't be relevant to a company that has very specific goals and strategies which are not reflected in the industry benchmarks. Industry benchmarks are more useful when comparing differences between industries, not as a standard for players within an industry.

Comparing your metrics to your direct competitors, the ones that have a nearly identical marketing strategy, is much more meaningful, but not nearly as much as comparing your actual metrics to the goals of your carefully crafted marketing plan.

A lot of advertisers tend to focus on averages and benchmarks, market leaders rarely compare their performance to averages that aren't based on the same strategy, they instead focus on planned verses actual. You might consider industry benchmarks when crafting your marketing plans, just don't look at them as a standard, because averages lie. Your own standards should be relevant to your chosen strategy and not based on an average of mixed strategies and tactics.

Hi yuliak,

Yes, start with the obvious keywords first. You do want to test every keyword that is extremely relevant, so go ahead and do very thorough keyword research. Closely monitor your Search Terms report for new potential candidate keywords as well as obvious negative match keyword candidates.

Some keywords will be clearly targeting your prospective customers, while others will be a little vague, but might still be be profitable if you can get low enough CPC. Sometimes a keyword you think won't work well turns out to be an excellent performer. It all boils down to testing segments to see what works and constantly adjusting your bids to reach a targeted ROI goal. Just make sure all of your keywords are highly relevant, not simply related to your product/service.

Make sure your account structure is well organized and highly granular so that you can easily manage things down to the individual keyword level. Treat you ad groups as marketing experiments, every ad, and every keyword is a test, allow your test result data to inform your decisions. After a few cycles of testing and adjusting you should be a in good shape going forward.

As far as industry conversion data, most companies tend to hold their individual conversion rates as a highly sensitive secret. As stated earlier, individual conversion data is highly useful, but aggregated conversion data isn't that meaningful, so for that reason obtaining the aggregated data is generally not done. Simply put the value of the data doesn't merit the cost of obtaining the data.

If you feel that the aggregated data in your case is worth $5,000-$10,000 then you can contract with a competitive intelligence provider and they will attempt to gather the data for you, it is just not going to be cheap to acquire.

Hi yuliak,

What geographic locations were you targeting? Try narrowing down the targeted locations and/or create separate campaigns for each country you are targeting. Go into your campaigns' advanced location targeting settings and select "People in my location" to narrow the targeting.

Did you try adding adding India to your excluded locations in your campaign settings? That should block most of it.

Please don't take this negatively but I laughed so hard I almost fell of my chair after reading this part They should not be clicking on your ads.

Anyway, do what @Dburk said. You may also take this a step further and add all US states in location targeting, as opposed to targeting the whole Country. This is to ensure your Ads are not displayed even if anyone located outside US searches on Google.com, and not their respective country specific Google tld (like .in, .ca etc.) So as long as they don't use a Proxy server whose IP address is from any of the US State, your ads will not show up.

Having said that, 3 leads from your first try in a competitive niche like Web Design is good performance. I hope you do well in the coming days.

Hi yuliak,

The default settings in your AdWords campaigns use your targeted locations and applies the following rule: "People in, searching for, or viewing pages about my targeted location". People in India will still see your ads if they include a reference to any of your targeted locations in their search term.

I recommend changing the setting under the "Location options (advanced)" section of your campaign settings to Target "People in my targeted location". That will prevent your ads from being triggered outside of your preferred locations.

You can go a step further and specifically Exclude people located in India, or any other locations you choose as well.

The ideal settings for location targeting is just one of thousands of things you need to learn before can reach an intermediate level of knowledge in PPC advertising. Google makes it very easy for practically anyone to open an account and create a campaign. They will even offer to setup the campaign for you. This does not mean you will be successful. There is a fairly steep learning curve to becoming competent at PPC advertising. Prepare yourself to dedicate much time and resources to learning this craft.