Adwords traffic
Discussion
We run an adwords campaign that basically starts 1st March each year (and runs till Sept).
Its generally pretty stable at £300-£500 for March over the last few years.
This year we paid over £1000.
So a quick look at the clicks and I would expect to see way more, right? Wrong. I am only seeing around 30% more clicks for well over twice the spend.
Nothing has changed in our settings.
Anyone else seen anything similar?
Getting a bit worrying as we only spent £1700 since 1st March compared to £700 last year! Clicks +35% over that period.
Its generally pretty stable at £300-£500 for March over the last few years.
This year we paid over £1000.
So a quick look at the clicks and I would expect to see way more, right? Wrong. I am only seeing around 30% more clicks for well over twice the spend.
Nothing has changed in our settings.
Anyone else seen anything similar?
Getting a bit worrying as we only spent £1700 since 1st March compared to £700 last year! Clicks +35% over that period.
Are you using the increased spend to run a broader campaign (more words), or a deeper campaign, more spending on the same words. Could your audience be saturated? At a guess you've taken the low hanging fruit and will need to evolve your strategy. Once you've gone past the sweet spot increased spending will provide for diminishing returns.
Look at the 'tail' of the clicked words.
I've found that you can have hundreds if not thousands of single clicks on words that are linguistically relevant but not contextually relevant nor related to content. It's too easy to focus on the top keywords that are receiving clicks and forget about the other end of the list.
Something else to consider, is that visibility via adwords WILL also help your visibility organically. We were doing quite well organically, but also had an adwords spend. When we cut the adwords spend (as we were finding TV to be more effective) our organic rating dropped as well. It's not (at least not officially) linked, but your 'relevance' based on CTR from keyword searches is still affected by clicks on paid-for links, so reduced visibilty with awords has a knock on effect.
I've found that you can have hundreds if not thousands of single clicks on words that are linguistically relevant but not contextually relevant nor related to content. It's too easy to focus on the top keywords that are receiving clicks and forget about the other end of the list.
Something else to consider, is that visibility via adwords WILL also help your visibility organically. We were doing quite well organically, but also had an adwords spend. When we cut the adwords spend (as we were finding TV to be more effective) our organic rating dropped as well. It's not (at least not officially) linked, but your 'relevance' based on CTR from keyword searches is still affected by clicks on paid-for links, so reduced visibilty with awords has a knock on effect.
Bottomed it....
Looked on the change history.... 142 broad match key words added mid March!!!
Seems google rang up and went through adding a load of key words with someone so they just agreed and went ahead.
Crap quality key words and because they are broad match we just basically spent a grand for no reason in the space of 3 weeks.
Thanks google!
Looked on the change history.... 142 broad match key words added mid March!!!
Seems google rang up and went through adding a load of key words with someone so they just agreed and went ahead.
Crap quality key words and because they are broad match we just basically spent a grand for no reason in the space of 3 weeks.
Thanks google!
jonamv8 said:
Red slr - id want to have a chat with that ‘someone’ and complain to Google too. Not forst time I’ve seen this happen.
Yell just did 50k on Adwords for a friend of mine on a terrible campaign
This is the problem with Adwords. Been there, also spent too much and much more than was needed. Yell just did 50k on Adwords for a friend of mine on a terrible campaign
Some of Google's "experts" either
a) Don't understand how their own platform works
or
b) Deliberately attempt to introduce these kind of vague matching strings to bump up the revenue.
You decide.
Taking advice from a "Googlebot" who has no idea about your business and zero understanding of what is and isn't relevant for you to target may be free at the point of use but can turn out to be incredibly expensive. As above, some of them seem to have questionable levels of knowledge of the platform anyway.
FWIW I found that reducing the maximum bid made no difference to the ability to spend the daily/weekly budget, we just got more traffic for the same money.
Latterly we just turned it off. Happily we are not plumbers in London & so there are not that many companies that do what we do.
We don't need it & thank heavens for that. I would consider it a major weakness/Achilles heel in my business model if we did & knowing what I know now I would not want to be involved in a business which depended on it. Its parasitic and incredibly expensive. It is tantamount to a tax - especially on new businesses IMO.
jonamv8 said:
Red slr - id want to have a chat with that ‘someone’ and complain to Google too. Not forst time I’ve seen this happen.
Yell just did 50k on Adwords for a friend of mine on a terrible campaign
Yep already sent an email. I have also removed access to the account so only I can make changes.Yell just did 50k on Adwords for a friend of mine on a terrible campaign
Looking back they basically called my guy about half a dozen times and kept bombarding him with emails so in the end he just said ok I can do it and 5 mins later they added a load of broad match keywords that we already have as exact match!
Wombat3 said:
Some of Google's "experts" either
a) Don't understand how their own platform works
or
b) Deliberately attempt to introduce these kind of vague matching strings to bump up the revenue.
You decide.
Both IME. a) Don't understand how their own platform works
or
b) Deliberately attempt to introduce these kind of vague matching strings to bump up the revenue.
You decide.
Wombat3 said:
FWIW I found that reducing the maximum bid made no difference to the ability to spend the daily/weekly budget, we just got more traffic for the same money.
Yes, this is a great point. I've done that for a long time.Wombat3 said:
We don't need it & thank heavens for that. I would consider it a major weakness/Achilles heel in my business model if we did & knowing what I know now I would not want to be involved in a business which depended on it. Its parasitic and incredibly expensive. It is tantamount to a tax - especially on new businesses IMO.
I'm not sure I'd agree. I have seen business grow massively on the back of PPC but mostly where an expert is managing this. And I mean a proper expert. I can run PPC but I never would as I have seen the complexities behind it. My 'expert' of 10 years now knows it inside out and describes it as a 'monster'. He runs PPC budgets of hundreds of thousands of pounds for some big companies and they have used him for years. I've never seen anyone else display the same level of knowledge on PPC but I have seen plenty of experts with little more experience than me!The point I am making is that it can work brilliantly but it can also drain your budget without any results very quickly.
Frimley111R said:
I'm not sure I'd agree. I have seen business grow massively on the back of PPC but mostly where an expert is managing this. And I mean a proper expert. I can run PPC but I never would as I have seen the complexities behind it. My 'expert' of 10 years now knows it inside out and describes it as a 'monster'. He runs PPC budgets of hundreds of thousands of pounds for some big companies and they have used him for years. I've never seen anyone else display the same level of knowledge on PPC but I have seen plenty of experts with little more experience than me!
The point I am making is that it can work brilliantly but it can also drain your budget without any results very quickly.
Agreed but the services of such experts are beyond the budgets of many small businesses who are then stuck between a rock & a hard place. They can't afford/justify the expense of an expert & yet without one they will inevitably just feed the Google monster without necessarily seeing much for their money. The point I am making is that it can work brilliantly but it can also drain your budget without any results very quickly.
As we have established, Google's people are either not experts or cant be trusted, or maybe both
As a new business you do not appear in the search listings unless you pay for Adwords - hence my comment that its tantamount to a "tax" on new businesses. Starting a business is hard enough without having to feed a huge parasite like Google just to become "visible".
At one level its a bit wrong headed that new businesses should need to budget for this from the get-go. Of course businesses need to advertise but at least with print or poster advertising anyone can understand and control it. Not so with Google, unless you know what you are doing you can get burned very badly, very quickly & basically throw away cash.
TBH I think this applies to anyone supplying marketing related services. I've seen new businesses blow thousands on radio advertising, newspaper advertising, shows/events etc. A business always has to pay someone for new customers and 99% of new businesses know just as little about adverts, events etc. as they do about PPC.
What they mostly do is fail to factor in any budget for marketing and then, if they do, they try to DIY it to save costs. Websites being the most common area I have seen for this. Too many are focused on what they can do for customers without thinking about where they will even find customers.
A new business MUST do it properly otherwise it will be money down the drain. A decent PPC expert isn't a lot of money, £2-300 a month. If you work out the likely ROI on that and the PPC budget it's simply a bit of maths to work out what you will get from what you spend.
What they mostly do is fail to factor in any budget for marketing and then, if they do, they try to DIY it to save costs. Websites being the most common area I have seen for this. Too many are focused on what they can do for customers without thinking about where they will even find customers.
A new business MUST do it properly otherwise it will be money down the drain. A decent PPC expert isn't a lot of money, £2-300 a month. If you work out the likely ROI on that and the PPC budget it's simply a bit of maths to work out what you will get from what you spend.
Frimley111R said:
TBH I think this applies to anyone supplying marketing related services. I've seen new businesses blow thousands on radio advertising, newspaper advertising, shows/events etc. A business always has to pay someone for new customers and 99% of new businesses know just as little about adverts, events etc. as they do about PPC.
What they mostly do is fail to factor in any budget for marketing and then, if they do, they try to DIY it to save costs. Websites being the most common area I have seen for this. Too many are focused on what they can do for customers without thinking about where they will even find customers.
A new business MUST do it properly otherwise it will be money down the drain. A decent PPC expert isn't a lot of money, £2-300 a month. If you work out the likely ROI on that and the PPC budget it's simply a bit of maths to work out what you will get from what you spend.
Depending on the market, on top of the PPC costs it will add up quite quickly. For start up businesses cash is very precious & hard to come by.What they mostly do is fail to factor in any budget for marketing and then, if they do, they try to DIY it to save costs. Websites being the most common area I have seen for this. Too many are focused on what they can do for customers without thinking about where they will even find customers.
A new business MUST do it properly otherwise it will be money down the drain. A decent PPC expert isn't a lot of money, £2-300 a month. If you work out the likely ROI on that and the PPC budget it's simply a bit of maths to work out what you will get from what you spend.
You are correct that businesses can blow money away on all sorts of advertising very easily but PPC seems to be an area in which its almost mandatory to employ someone to help and yet it can be expensive advertising.
You can create a bad press ad but you do at least know pretty much where its going & the rough circulation that will see it.
With PPC, unless you know what you are doing, you can create a bad ad but then also find it gets shown to completely the wrong set of people who were looking for something completely different or barely related. Been there, done that (with the aid of a Google "account manager").
Ean218 said:
Wombat3 said:
Latterly we just turned it off. Happily we are not plumbers in London & so there are not that many companies that do what we do.
Ditto, we turned it off 3 years ago and haven't missed it at all.What other strategies have worked for everyone? We concentrate on social media. particularly Facebook and Instagram to reach consumers.
I spend >£200k p/m on Adwords.
Assuming you're looking for new clients, Adwords should be part of your marketing mix. How much or little depends on your own circumstances.
Ask yourself this- when someone searches for your business type or, even more importantly, your business itself, are you happy to let your competitors sit in the top 3 or 4 results above you? If you had a physical showroom, would you want the sales teams from rivals outside, shouting with placards as customers approach?
As with any marketing, you need to line up Adwords properly to get a return. Understand who your customers are and what they will be looking for. Make sure the keywords you use (and those you 'negative') are used by those people. Your ads needn't (and ought not) trick people into clicks. They should offer what you offer in a concise way.
When you get a click, the prospect should be taken to a page dedicated to that ad (a 'landing page'), that allows them to see a bit more detail and act upon the enquiry without having to navigate downwards or away from that page.
It's also really important to have the correct setup to understand which clicks on adwords turn to actual paying business and allowing Adwords to see your conversions. You need to know which keyword, ad and landing page combinations get the right kind of enquiries through the door. It's easy to get drunk on high volumes of low cost enquiries through Adwords, however if they don't turn to business they're just expensive wastes of effort. Better to get 5 leads a week at £20 that convert at 1:5 than 100 at £1 that convert at 1:200.
Finally, as Adwords rankings are based on what you're prepared to pay for a click and how well prospects react to your ads ('quality score'), you ought to consider how you can use one to improve the other. Using the price to achieve position 1 might seem expensive at first, however it should improve the clickthough rate and attract prospects with strong intent, improving on-page conversions. This in turn will improve your quality score, meaning your P1 goes down in price. Like anything, you sometimes need to invest to get a return.
Assuming you're looking for new clients, Adwords should be part of your marketing mix. How much or little depends on your own circumstances.
Ask yourself this- when someone searches for your business type or, even more importantly, your business itself, are you happy to let your competitors sit in the top 3 or 4 results above you? If you had a physical showroom, would you want the sales teams from rivals outside, shouting with placards as customers approach?
As with any marketing, you need to line up Adwords properly to get a return. Understand who your customers are and what they will be looking for. Make sure the keywords you use (and those you 'negative') are used by those people. Your ads needn't (and ought not) trick people into clicks. They should offer what you offer in a concise way.
When you get a click, the prospect should be taken to a page dedicated to that ad (a 'landing page'), that allows them to see a bit more detail and act upon the enquiry without having to navigate downwards or away from that page.
It's also really important to have the correct setup to understand which clicks on adwords turn to actual paying business and allowing Adwords to see your conversions. You need to know which keyword, ad and landing page combinations get the right kind of enquiries through the door. It's easy to get drunk on high volumes of low cost enquiries through Adwords, however if they don't turn to business they're just expensive wastes of effort. Better to get 5 leads a week at £20 that convert at 1:5 than 100 at £1 that convert at 1:200.
Finally, as Adwords rankings are based on what you're prepared to pay for a click and how well prospects react to your ads ('quality score'), you ought to consider how you can use one to improve the other. Using the price to achieve position 1 might seem expensive at first, however it should improve the clickthough rate and attract prospects with strong intent, improving on-page conversions. This in turn will improve your quality score, meaning your P1 goes down in price. Like anything, you sometimes need to invest to get a return.
janesmith1950 said:
I spend >£200k p/m on Adwords.
Assuming you're looking for new clients, Adwords should be part of your marketing mix. How much or little depends on your own circumstances.
Ask yourself this- when someone searches for your business type or, even more importantly, your business itself, are you happy to let your competitors sit in the top 3 or 4 results above you? If you had a physical showroom, would you want the sales teams from rivals outside, shouting with placards as customers approach?
As with any marketing, you need to line up Adwords properly to get a return. Understand who your customers are and what they will be looking for. Make sure the keywords you use (and those you 'negative') are used by those people. Your ads needn't (and ought not) trick people into clicks. They should offer what you offer in a concise way.
When you get a click, the prospect should be taken to a page dedicated to that ad (a 'landing page'), that allows them to see a bit more detail and act upon the enquiry without having to navigate downwards or away from that page.
It's also really important to have the correct setup to understand which clicks on adwords turn to actual paying business and allowing Adwords to see your conversions. You need to know which keyword, ad and landing page combinations get the right kind of enquiries through the door. It's easy to get drunk on high volumes of low cost enquiries through Adwords, however if they don't turn to business they're just expensive wastes of effort. Better to get 5 leads a week at £20 that convert at 1:5 than 100 at £1 that convert at 1:200.
Finally, as Adwords rankings are based on what you're prepared to pay for a click and how well prospects react to your ads ('quality score'), you ought to consider how you can use one to improve the other. Using the price to achieve position 1 might seem expensive at first, however it should improve the clickthough rate and attract prospects with strong intent, improving on-page conversions. This in turn will improve your quality score, meaning your P1 goes down in price. Like anything, you sometimes need to invest to get a return.
You are operating a completely different scale of business (from me at least). The relevancy of PPC depends on the business & also the scale of it. Indeed in some markets & for some small businesses it can almost be self defeating. When we stopped using it, basically so did our competitors & I don't think anyone has much appetite to go back to it either (happily!)Assuming you're looking for new clients, Adwords should be part of your marketing mix. How much or little depends on your own circumstances.
Ask yourself this- when someone searches for your business type or, even more importantly, your business itself, are you happy to let your competitors sit in the top 3 or 4 results above you? If you had a physical showroom, would you want the sales teams from rivals outside, shouting with placards as customers approach?
As with any marketing, you need to line up Adwords properly to get a return. Understand who your customers are and what they will be looking for. Make sure the keywords you use (and those you 'negative') are used by those people. Your ads needn't (and ought not) trick people into clicks. They should offer what you offer in a concise way.
When you get a click, the prospect should be taken to a page dedicated to that ad (a 'landing page'), that allows them to see a bit more detail and act upon the enquiry without having to navigate downwards or away from that page.
It's also really important to have the correct setup to understand which clicks on adwords turn to actual paying business and allowing Adwords to see your conversions. You need to know which keyword, ad and landing page combinations get the right kind of enquiries through the door. It's easy to get drunk on high volumes of low cost enquiries through Adwords, however if they don't turn to business they're just expensive wastes of effort. Better to get 5 leads a week at £20 that convert at 1:5 than 100 at £1 that convert at 1:200.
Finally, as Adwords rankings are based on what you're prepared to pay for a click and how well prospects react to your ads ('quality score'), you ought to consider how you can use one to improve the other. Using the price to achieve position 1 might seem expensive at first, however it should improve the clickthough rate and attract prospects with strong intent, improving on-page conversions. This in turn will improve your quality score, meaning your P1 goes down in price. Like anything, you sometimes need to invest to get a return.
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