How to reverse engineer with Google Adwords

10 replies
  • PPC/SEM
  • |
Hi,

I run a travel website where I sell tours on a commission basis (average of 15%, per sale).

Over the last three months I spent $3000 on Google Adwords ads. I studied Adwords techniques and took two online courses. I also hired an Adwords agency to manage my account. During those three months I generated $1000 in sales. So for every $3 I spent I earned $1 in sales. My capital has now run out and I can no longer afford to run a Google Adwords campaign. I would be tempted to conclude that Google Adwords is too expensive for someone making only 15% commission. Except for the fact that I regularly see the ads of a competitor who I know is making no more than 20% commission. If Google Ads was not profitable for him, he wouldn't still be doing it. I would like to reverse engineer his Adwords strategy. Any ideas on how I might do this?
#adwords #engineer #google #reverse
  • Profile picture of the author KosenIvra
    Wow, you got your self in quite a complicated situation, 3000 USD is a gigantic investment, and if you only recover a portion of that, I would too reconsider moving to something else.

    I really dont know how you could reverse engineer your competitor strategy, maybe you should have a look at what he is doing in his social media regarding content, and how his website is build, those things could give you a good idea on his strategy.

    I would also say that the problem might also be that you are not making a good segmentations on your adwords strategy, 3000 dollars sounds like a lot of money.
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  • Profile picture of the author derekwong28
    There are services that allow you to spy on your competitors are see what keywords they are bidding on e.g. Keywordspy, Spyfu, SEM Rush etc. But their lists are neither complete or totally accurate.
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  • I would not waste my time or money on "spy" services for the reasons Derek gave.

    What you have to do is be smarter than competitors. Even if spy services were more complete and accurate, knowing what competitors are doing does not make you smarter. Maybe you hired the wrong Adwords agency. Travel is competitive and I've never managed such a campaign so I may not be much better than that agency.

    Is a 15-20% commission what a brick and mortar travel agent gets? Seems low to me. If so, then you are competing with them too and they have a leg up on you, even if they may have more overhead.

    One thing I'm thinking of is that people don't buy travel services right away. You do say it was 3 months but how long do people typically take when first inquiring and making the purchase?

    Lastly, don't blame it all on your campaign. Your site may be to blame.
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  • Profile picture of the author ppcmaestro
    Adding onto what Lucid Web Marketing has mentioned, here are a few more nuggets you might want to look at -

    1. Loss in terms ROI is Short Term - If you have spent but lost money, thats short term. What you have gained is valuable data. This data now can help you optimize your campaigns effectively. The important part now is-

    "You have learnings, now how are you going to make changes to make it profitable?"

    Think about this and take action.

    2. Optimizing - You can now literally optimize everything, meaning everything.
    a. Your keywords, your adcopies, your ad extensions, your bids.
    b. Your hourly bids
    c. Your day wise performance, will let your know when do people purchase the most
    d. Look at the top paths in analytics
    e. Look at the conversion time analysis report. Find out after how many visits do your visitors convert
    f. As LucidWebMarketing mentioned, find out how much is the lifecycle of a customer.
    g. What about the LTV of those customers who converted? Did they refer you someone?
    h. Did your organic and direct visits increase after you started with PPC Marketing? Were there any conversions from there?
    i. Did you check if Mobile/Tablets performed?
    j. Did you check your bounce rate?
    k. Again as LucidWebMarketing mentioned, what about your landing pages, did you split test between a few of them? Did you make changes to landing pages to see if they perform better?
    l. Did you try Travel Click to Call? Travel calls are a big thing. Why dont you try for yourself. Its a big industry in itself in the affiliate marketing arena.

    See Adwords and Online Marketing would look -ROI or no ROI at the beginning, but over the period of time, it does convert and outperform for all.

    Regards,
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    I'm not sure that you will glean much new information from any of those "spying" programs.

    Where your competitor is likely beating you is in conversions, and none of those programs are going to tell you how to convert better. Improving your conversions means improving your ads as well as your landing page. That is what I would be studying. What about their landing page is better than yours? Is it easier to shop on their site? Is the checkout process smoother? Are the prices different?

    It's not so much the commission prices that are making AdWords profitable for them. If you are converting 3% of traffic into a sale, but they are converting 4% or 5%, that is a big difference.

    They also might be doing some re-targeting advertising which can make an AdWords campaign much more profitable.
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  • Profile picture of the author Fraggler
    Through coincidence I actually spoke to the OP on the phone and looked into his account for him. The account was setup and managed poorly by a very large agency and due to issues with the checkout process conversion tracking wasn't properly setup - something I think an adwords provider shouldn't move ahead on without getting it resolved.

    Despite the lack of tracking, it was pretty much a case of the adwords provider being focused on just sending passable broad traffic rather than good traffic with intent to buy. It was a mess and unfortunately not unheard of from this provider. Other points made in the thread do apply but the core campaign was never going to work.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jodie Davis
    This is an incredibly helpful post.

    I just launched a pretty gutsy Adwords campaign for Christmas, knowing it's a long term play, but figuring it's the best time to make sales in the process of gathering the data I need to get to tweaking.

    ppcmaestro your list gives me a lot to work on and is exactly what I needed right now.

    Observations/Questions:

    1. I have noticed a significant increase in organic traffic in concert with my campaigns, so there must be a correlation.

    2. Regarding bounce rate, I haven't played with landing pages yet. I send people directly to my product page ex. https://www.thecuckooclockdesigner.c...-cuckoo-clock/
    So I haven't been concerned about the bounce rate. Knowing that my product isn't an impulse buy, my goal is to be able to remarket to people who show an interest.
    Good strategy?
    (Am working with Google to get that setup.)

    3. Checkout process: Right now I'm using PayPal. So I don't think that's an issue? Should moving to something like Stripe be a priority?
    I don't know that there's a way that I can tell if cart abandonment is due to trouble checking out, or people wanting to buy that $500 cuckoo clock, but talking themselves out of it at the last minute.
    I know I need to start retargeting abandoned carts.

    Since launching this I can see what people mean when they say Adwords is a significant traffic driver and business builder. And also why people say one can lose one's shirt if it isn't managed wisely. I find it a blast!
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  • Originally Posted by Jodie Davis View Post

    1. I have noticed a significant increase in organic traffic in concert with my campaigns, so there must be a correlation.

    There is no correlation between organic and paid traffic. They are two separate entities and one does not affect the other.


    Have you done something that would improve your organic ranking? If so, then that may be the reason. For that matter, are you sure you are looking at the right data and not mixing organic and paid traffic? Is there something else, like seasonality, that could account for more searches and clicks?


    Now, there are those who say that having an ad can improve your organic getting more traffic. I think some study a few years ago said this. I'm skeptical but who knows.


    Bounce rate: I'm not one to fixate on bounce rate myself, unlike many others. If it's 100% however, there's a reason, likely not targeting the proper keywords. In your case, maybe the high price tag. At any rate, the only other page I see one can go to is the checkout. So your bounce rate will likely be high unless a high percentage of visitors actually buy in which case that would be good for you.


    Good strategy to remarket to previous visitors, unless poor targeting means there may be a soft interest.


    PayPal is fine as far as I'm concerned. Add Stripe too and cover those users as well.
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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Originally Posted by LucidWebMarketing View Post

      There is no correlation between organic and paid traffic. They are two separate entities and one does not affect the other.
      Hi Lucid,

      I have to disagree strongly with your assertion.

      To say that paid advertising has no impact on organic traffic is like saying that TV Ads have no effect on store traffic. Why would any business advertise a brand if there was no impact at all from brand advertising?

      Advertising was a powerful and effective marketing tool long before the world wide web was invented, yet no one was ever able to "click", or "tap" an ad to convert from a newspaper, magazine, radio or television ad. Somehow, like "magic", people would show up for store grand openings, community events, or sales events, sometimes days later and traveling miles away from the place they originally saw the ad impression.

      It's easy to forget that search advertising works outside the bounds of the click event because we are so wrapped up in measuring converted clicks. Your ads can have great power that reaches far beyond the click event, especially if you purposely design your campaigns for a multi-touch strategy.


      Originally Posted by LucidWebMarketing View Post

      Have you done something that would improve your organic ranking? If so, then that may be the reason. For that matter, are you sure you are looking at the right data and not mixing organic and paid traffic? Is there something else, like seasonality, that could account for more searches and clicks?


      Now, there are those who say that having an ad can improve your organic getting more traffic. I think some study a few years ago said this. I'm skeptical but who knows.
      I believe Google is attempting to give users exactly what they are looking for, and it is for that reason, that advertising of any nature, radio, TV, display ads, outdoor ads, etc all have the potential to drive demand for a product or service. If people start searching specifically for your products, services, or branded information, influenced by your advertising campaigns, Google will recognize this and give their users exactly what they are looking for, that's all Google wants to do, and they are very good at doing it.

      Many people are capable of creating really great content, content that Google users find very useful, but only if they do in fact discover it. Advertising campaigns can help many people discover your content, content that they might not have discovered otherwise. If your content is useful to people then some will likely bookmark, share, and link to your content. Those behaviors are frequently discovered by Google, and other search engines, and used as signals in their ranking algorithms.

      For years I have created branding and awareness campaigns on AdWords and other platforms, measuring the resulting organic search traffic generated by those campaigns as one of the primary KPIs for campaign's performance, effectiveness, and goals. So you might say that I have indeed been studying and utilizing this data for many years now, so I have more than a decade of data that proves it works, and works well for many different kinds businesses.

      Branding & Awareness campaigns will drive demand and generate organic searches for branded search terms that tend to convert at a much higher rate then generic search terms. It also can have a positive measurable effect on the CTR of your listings, both paid and organic, as well as influencing the conversion rates, even for generic search terms. Improving CTRs on your organic listings can have a very positive influence on your rankings.

      Don't believe me? Test it for yourself.
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  • Profile picture of the author fasteasysuccess
    I'll make this pretty easy for you and do definitely disagree with some of those suggestions and opinions. Spyword tools are useful if used for correct reasons and used the right way. You can use the keyword spytools to see the "winners" of keywords competition using and is helpful and a time saver, however there's more to be a success.

    Also, you need to look at their landing page, website and funnel and go through it. What are they doing different from you and what are they dropping the ball on.

    You also mentioned not undertsanding how making money when only getting x percent, but do they have backend offers that cover ad costs or put them ahead of the game? For example you mentioned spending 3 to get 1 buck back, however if you had backend offers, then those could take you from losing cash to making money. Can easily change the game.

    Then Test, Test, Test!

    Just those quick steps alone can take you from losing money to making money really quick.
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