Impossible to make money with Adwords?

Admittedly I used 3% out in the air not to make you feel bad. My main client gets more than 5% and a dozen groups are over 10%, the higher over 20%.

You seemed to have based your 1% or less on your organic results. Like I said, take a much closer, granular look and you will very likely find that you get much higher rates on targeted terms. So the trick is to get more quality traffic and remove the lesser quality traffic.

That's easier done on PPC since you have more control on the terms you show ads on. Also control on your ad. Given all that, don't think you'll get a 1% conversion rate with Adwords since you may be going on false assumptions.

Display may not be the right approach. I use display very little. So that may be a mistake. As Don said too, don't expect similar results with display as you do from search. You can if done right get good results from display meaning there's good and bad ways to use display, if you want to use display but search is definitely the first thing to do, attract those actually looking for your product.

@jaskaran826, I would not consider Google a monopoly. There are plenty of other search engines which means they are not a monopoly. The definition is the total (or near total) control of a product or service.

Now, they do have a very large portion of the market. So kudos to them to have achieved that. Basically, Google is a very innovative company in my opinion and everybody else is just trying to keep up.

I also challenge your claim of them "making changes that destroy businesses". Google is not in the business of building other businesses through the search engine or destroy them for that matter. They run their business the way they see fit. Yes, all those depending on them may suffer but they have to change themselves and adapt. They surely are not making changes to be ruthless and destroy businesses.

Hi keyon,

I will attempt to shine a little light into the "deep, dark water".

I understand how you feel. No one likes to blow "hundreds of dollars experimenting". So that begs the question "why do we experiment at all?"

If experimenting does not bring value why do it?

Let me ask this simple question, did your experiments in display ads bring you anything of value? If not, why not?

When done well, experimenting usually brings something of value. However, experimenting can be highly inefficient,especially if your experiment is not designed to bring a useful insight.

Marketing experiments are but one step in a process.Marketing is a process that involves multiple steps. If you do not follow through on all he essential steps of a process you will not get much value from your marketing efforts.

The goals of marketing are different from the goals of selling. In sales, the primary objective is to get a sale. The goal of marketing is to gain a useful insight. If you do not use the insights gained from your marketing experiments then, yes, you have "blown" that investment.

What were you testing in your experiments?

Did you get the data you were after?

Did the data provide a useful insight that you were able to apply to your marketing campaigns?

I suggest that you stop "blowing" time and money on experimenting and start investing money in experiments that bring value. At least then you will gain something of value.

Whenever we test display ads at my agency we always have a specific element that we have selected to test. For example, we might test several different value propositions to see which each segment responds to the most favorably. Our goal is to learn why people buy, and how to use that knowledge within our campaigns. That insight is often worth far more than the small investment it took to gain it.

Before making any investments, I suggest that you set a primary business goal, then select a strategy designed to achieve that specific goal. Setup your tracking and monitoring to measure the key metrics that measure your progress toward that specific goal.

Once you have your specific goal, strategy, and metrics selected. You will have a much clearer idea on which elements to test in your marketing experiments that will bring you the most valuable insights.

Please try to remember that marketing goals should center on gaining insights that improve performance. Sales goals are different from marketing goals and typically center on a specific number of units sold, total revenue, or average order value. You should set both sales goals as well as marketing goals, but keep in mind the differences of those separate goals.

Currently, is seems your strategy is to use Display Ads to get people to your website where they can view your Youtube videos, right?

Why not test the videos directly?

Video ads are probably the most efficient way to build awareness because you can tell more of your story within a video ad. It seems to me that video ads will reduce the number of steps your audience must take to hear your message.

More importantly, by testing Video Ads you will quickly learn which of your Youtube videos are helping your marketing the most and which are not. You will be able to learn which market segment responds the best to a particular video and perhaps why. That insight could then be used to create better video ads, and perhaps better display ads.

True, there is a sharp learning curve to master any type of digital advertising, so you want to be sure you are focusing in the channel that has the best chance for success, if that is video ads, or display ads, it seems like a good thing to run a short test to verify.