Adwords - 1 year later and over 100k - My feelings, let's talk
- PPC/SEM |
I've always been working with adwords, many years ago through an agency, then with small money by myself until last year when we decided to invest a lot more money. Now I have a full year of testing with big money and my observations are very ambiguous, so let's debate/talk.
Here I have developers/designers so I'm spoiled for doing a lot of landing pages and tests, so I did lol, about 25 to 30 different landing pages.
So far, my results has been like a roller coaster, so here's few of my primary observations:
More results when campaign is new
I found out that every time I created something new, I got more leads in week #1 than in week #2 to #4 combined. Makes me feels that google is trying to not have you get too much results, so you’ll test a lot and invest more money. This is a feeling that is supported by about 25 campaigns, not saying I’m right.
Very impossible to get a 10/10 QS in a competitive market
Ok this sounds brutal but, I tested everything (some will say not since I didn't got it), I have never passed 8/10. And actually, to please Mr. Google with an 8/10, I had to make my ad so boring with no catchy phrases and a boring title. For example, it’s like if you sell computers in chicago and your keyword is “Desktop Computers Chicago", well yeah you can have your ad title being “Desktop Computers Chicago" but seriously, is it appealing? Especially if all your competitors do it… On a side note, we always built our LP with google page insights in order to "give us a chance" to please Mr. Google.
Had my best results despite QS of 5 and less
I guess in my domain, ad relevance (not in gg pov but in a customers/prospects pov), having catchy titles and ads works better than pleasing google. Or for example, ignoring the red notice from google like "low QS low volume bblablabla" often still gave good results.
Had my worst results by trying to get a QS of 8+
Lately I have built a serie of 10 LP with very minor changes to target very specific keywords, having page insignts of 100/100 desktop/mobile with a load speed incredibly fast. Well, 5k later, got an average of 1 lead per $500 when I usually have 1 leads per $150. You may find this crazy but in IT, good keywords are in the $18 to $30+ and I’m targeting 1 lead every 10 clics.
Unexplainable suddent changes of my QS and leads results
Very often, things were on cruise control, getting good results, until suddenly I pass from an 8/10 to 5/10. The page is perfect, the price is still very high, but you can't find an explanation to losing 3/10.... New competitors? Yeah ok but 3/10 less? How can I lose ad relevance or user experience when it was ok for a month. PS: I never left an ad without monitoring for more than 2 days.
Now with that said, it's just feelings on my last year experience, I'm not perfect, I'm not saying everything I'm saying is logical neither not improvable... I'm just sharing my experience to open the discussion, to learn more about it and maybe ultimately make some of you learn a bit too. I hope this discussion will be very constructive.
PS: English isn't my primary langage.
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