PPC Experts, Help...ASAP!

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Guys,

I took over a ppc campaign that someone was doing and it was terrible. There were two campaigns, each one with one ad group and hundreds of keywords in that ad group. Then, there was only one ad with each ad group.

I told this guy that I can improve it a ton just by doing the correct things like using tightly themed ad groups, split testing, using keywords in the ad copy, sending the clickers to a specific landing page etc.

So.......I started a new campaign, put it together correctly (using Speed PPC) and now after a couple of months the guy is not happy.

I have better ctr than the last guy and am getting lower and lower cpc but we are blowing through the budget very quickly and we are getting less conversions than the guy with the messed up campaign.

What could cause this? Last year in October and November they sold over 20 of these high ticket items. This year I sold about 12!

Any ideas? Btw the site is the exact same as for the last campaign. Also, I have negative keywords too.

Any help would be appreciated. In fact, I would pay someone a small fee if they are an expert and wanted to look at the actual campaign.
#experts #helpasap #ppc
  • Profile picture of the author Melonhead
    Taking over an existing campaign that needs changes is never easy. But any changes to an advert campaign whether it's PPC online or offline mag adverts need to be made one change at a time and then measure the results to see if change was negative or positive.

    If you changed a whole bunch of things all at once without measuring the impact of each change you're going to have a much harder time figuring out why you're having a problem. But hey......that's hindsight and it's 20/20.

    Sounds like your problem is conversion.

    Did the landing page copy and/or design change?

    When you look at your ppc ads would a visitor clicking through be satisfied with how the ppc advert relates to the landing page web copy?

    What position are your Quality Scores at in your campaign?
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  • Profile picture of the author dburk
    Hi kershawm,

    Optimizing account structure and CTR is only a small part of managing a PPC campaign. Obviously cost per conversion is important, however total profit is the most important metric.

    Bid management is crucial for achieving maximum campaign profit levels. Have you done sufficient testing to find the incremental bid cost for various ad positions? That is very important for optimizing account performance.
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    • Profile picture of the author kershawm
      Thanks for this information. I think bid management is where I need to improve. This is really my weakest area.

      How do you do this effectively? Is there any good training material out there?
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  • Profile picture of the author Lucid
    Why exactly is he not happy?

    If because a lesser number of sales, you must show and explain that he may have got a lot more clicks before but of lesser quality. Raw numbers mean nothing. It's the percentages and ROI. Maybe you have doubled the conversion rate (higher quality clicks) and thus doubled or more his ROI.

    If there's only 20 sales over a 2-month period, that's too small of a sample. Too many variables that could affect the numbers. There could be more competitors, lower position and a bunch of other things. If you were comparing 200 vs 120 on the other hand, much better.

    But my guess is you are improving the bottom line with a better campaign from what you are saying. You do get clients like that, just comparing number of sales without looking at the bigger picture. It's your job to make them understand. Some don't or don't want to. I dump them but usually they just leave angry. I've had a few realize later and come back because they can't improve on what I did.
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    • Profile picture of the author Defunct
      20 Sales its quite low for a year so it could be anything really.

      There is such little data to analyse with 20 sales.

      What you can do is set the date to last year, change to the keyword tab and then select see search terms to ALL.

      Sort by conversions and see which search terms converted that MIGHT be missing from your new campaign, or just compare them.

      I still think 1.5 sales a month is wide open to this type of problem regardless, it's really difficult to make decisions off such small data without guessing.

      You can always re-enable the old ad groups.

      Did you perhaps remove the content network that was enabled in the old campaigns?

      Did you remove any broad keywords?
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  • Profile picture of the author George Phillip
    What is the CPC ?
    What is the CTR ?
    Do you use negative keywords ?
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  • Profile picture of the author dburk
    Hi kershawm,

    I went back and reread this thread, Lucid and Defunct made a very good point about not having enough data, which I also alluded to.

    Could it be an issue of managing client expectations? I notice you said "I told this guy that I can improve it a ton".

    When you have a low volume, high ticket item it can take a number of months to get enough conversion data to be actionable. You should try to explain this to the client and let him know there is a period of testing necessary to garner the needed data to improve his campaigns, and that during this initial data collection period he should not look for improvements. But that the changes you made will allow you to test and collect data at a more granular level and adjust bids for each individual ad and keyword.
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    • Profile picture of the author kershawm
      Thanks everyone.

      I actually had to start a new campaign because the other ppc guy controlled the old one.

      Basically, I took all of the old campaign's keywords and settings, then transferred them to the new account. But, I broke them up into really tight ad groups with specific ad copy and split tests for each ad group. I included the keywords in the ad copy, etc........

      However, the only thing that I didn't copy were the bids. I basically have a high max cpc for all of the keywords then I enabled the auto bidding function to maximize clicks. This is probably where I need to improve. Does anyone have advice on this? Do I bid separately on each keyword and how do know what to bid? It sounds difficult to figure out.
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      • Profile picture of the author dburk
        Originally Posted by kershawm View Post

        Thanks everyone.

        I actually had to start a new campaign because the other ppc guy controlled the old one.

        Basically, I took all of the old campaign's keywords and settings, then transferred them to the new account. But, I broke them up into really tight ad groups with specific ad copy and split tests for each ad group. I included the keywords in the ad copy, etc........

        However, the only thing that I didn't copy were the bids. I basically have a high max cpc for all of the keywords then I enabled the auto bidding function to maximize clicks. This is probably where I need to improve. Does anyone have advice on this? Do I bid separately on each keyword and how do know what to bid? It sounds difficult to figure out.
        Hi kershawm,

        This video will give you the basics of bidding properly:


        In you particular circumstance the bid simulator may not be useful due to your low click volume. You will likely need to manually capture your data to perform the same function. If you know a little programming you could probably role-your-own script to scrape the data from reports, like I did, to automate the process a bit.
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      • Profile picture of the author Defunct
        Originally Posted by kershawm View Post

        Thanks everyone.

        I actually had to start a new campaign because the other ppc guy controlled the old one.

        Basically, I took all of the old campaign's keywords and settings, then transferred them to the new account. But, I broke them up into really tight ad groups with specific ad copy and split tests for each ad group. I included the keywords in the ad copy, etc........

        However, the only thing that I didn't copy were the bids. I basically have a high max cpc for all of the keywords then I enabled the auto bidding function to maximize clicks. This is probably where I need to improve. Does anyone have advice on this? Do I bid separately on each keyword and how do know what to bid? It sounds difficult to figure out.
        Ah ok, this can cause problems because, Google will try find the lowest competition keywords which are often not the keywords that convert.

        You should only do this with clients that are interested in clicks only or can't track conversions for some reason.

        Email the old company and try get that data, if they managed the clients account, it's the clients account not theirs, so you should be able to get access.
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        • Profile picture of the author kershawm
          Good stuff guys! Thanks.

          One more thing, I am going to trim the fat on the keywords, which are hundreds. I have used all the match types to start the campaign and I have a lot that get the occasional click but don't have enough for a good sample size to see if they convert.

          What do you suggest for trimming the fat? So far it sounds like I should get rid of the keywords that have a low quality score (as long as they are not converting). Are there any other guidelines. For example, if they have 150 clicks but no conversions, should I pause them?

          I am also trying to qualify the visitors by adding the price to the ad copy. Are there any other good ways to only get quality clickers and eliminate the tire kickers?

          Thanks!
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          • Profile picture of the author dburk
            Originally Posted by kershawm View Post

            Good stuff guys! Thanks.

            One more thing, I am going to trim the fat on the keywords, which are hundreds. I have used all the match types to start the campaign and I have a lot that get the occasional click but don't have enough for a good sample size to see if they convert.

            What do you suggest for trimming the fat? So far it sounds like I should get rid of the keywords that have a low quality score (as long as they are not converting). Are there any other guidelines. For example, if they have 150 clicks but no conversions, should I pause them?

            I am also trying to qualify the visitors by adding the price to the ad copy. Are there any other good ways to only get quality clickers and eliminate the tire kickers?

            Thanks!
            Hi kershawm,

            You need to deal with low quality scores immediately. Take a look at those keywords with low QS and try to ascertain the reason. If it's something you can fix then do so, it could be a poorly written ad, not enough relevance between keyword, ad text and landing page relevance, or it could be keyword that is too ambiguous or perhaps just too competitive. don't let these issues remain for any length of time.

            STOP ads for broad match keywords for search campaigns. They are only useful for getting new keyword ideas and will eat your budget with poorly targeted traffic. Focus on exact match only. Use phrase match keywords to find exact match keywords that you didn't think of, then add those to your exact match list.
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  • Profile picture of the author patadeperro
    Ok kershawm, this is what i will suggest you to do:

    1.- Install the conversion tracker (Reporting and tools/Conversions).

    2.- Define the action that will be the conversion (I think in this case will be the sales)

    3.- Once you have done that Google will show you what keyword is converting the best.

    4.- What you will do is to review the budget you have and obviously increase it for this specific keyword.

    5.- Immediately erase the keywords that have a Quality score below 5 for the campaign and their conversion really sucks.

    With this you will IMMEDIATELY start generating more conversions no matter what the other guy is doing, furthermore this will bring more sales.

    Hope it helps
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  • Profile picture of the author CikaPero
    Obviously you are generating unwanted traffic (users that won't make conversions are generating clicks). You need to eliminate these unwanted clickers.

    AdWords is very flexible system, you can optimize it in various ways. You should set appropriate targets to your campaigns. Even try to target based on time of the day.

    Is is all about research.. Too bad you don't have more relevant data (12 conversions in year is too low) to make some valid assumptions.
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    • Profile picture of the author cotton9
      I am also trying to qualify the visitors by adding the price to the ad copy.
      With larger ticket items, you need to be careful adding the price to the ad copy. I would definitely test this (if possible) for both conversions and clicks.

      1) Brian Tracy preaches that when selling, "Price out of place kills the sale." - Meaning you should delay revealing the price until the prospect is convinced of the benefits of what you're selling.

      2) Displaying a high price in the ad copy may actually stimulate curiosity, as opposed to weed out the tire-kickers. "Wow! That's expensive. I wonder what a product that costs that much looks like?" *click!*
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  • Profile picture of the author mark587905
    What is your maximum spend per kw before you pause it?
    What is your CTR?
    What is your CPC?

    You need to know the above and keep adding kws to test until you weed out the non convertors and are left with the profitable kws. It takes time, patience and a lot of testing and therefore budget.
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  • Honestly, I know you are getting paid to manage their PPC campaign. But have you looked at SEO and getting the site ranked organically. Given the high ticket nature of the item, and assuming it is somewhat of a specialty item I would be shocked if you couldn't pluck some of the low hanging fruit through just normal SEO work.
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