maitre
Joined: Mar 21, 2006
# Posts: 1
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Posted: 03/21/2006 07:34 am
Hi,
You can calculate Adword ROI with this tool:
Adwords ROI Tool
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flyingrose
Moderator
Joined: Oct 30, 2003
# Posts: 3361
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Posted: 08/05/2006 02:32 am
One thing about bidding at Google that may be confusing. Let's say you're bidding $0.73 and your average click cost is $0.48 so you're considering lowering your bid.
Logically you may think you could drop your bid to $0.53 and still have the same position; however, because your maximum bid is part of the algorithm that positions your ad lowering your bid by that much could dramatically lower your position.
If you want to drop your ad only a position or two make a more modest change in your bid of perhaps ten cents instead of twenty.
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cbirdsong22
Joined: Feb 27, 2006
# Posts: 82
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Posted: 08/09/2006 10:33 am
Hi Flying Rose,
You said:
"TIP: End your bids consistently in an unusual amount, i.e., not 0 or 5. Since most people do end bids in 0 or 5 you'll have an advantage over those bidders."
Can you expound on this? I'm a rookie, and not sure that I understand.
Thanks
Corey
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flyingrose
Moderator
Joined: Oct 30, 2003
# Posts: 3361
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Posted: 08/09/2006 05:46 pm
Hi Corey. I'd be happy to clarify what I mean. When I evaluate existing PPC accounts I see that almost every advertiser bids the same amounts. Common bids are 5 cents, 10, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 75, $1.00, $2.00, etc. See what I mean?
Let's say there are twenty advertisers bidding on a keywords (or getting broad matched to it - and there can be more than a hundred on any given phrase). And half of them are bidding fifty cents.
If you bid fifty-one cents you are now in front of half of all bidders.
Or say you want cheap traffic and so do a lot of other advertisers so you all bid five cents. Anyone bidding six or seven cents is automatically in front of you. Why be 20th or 50th for five cents when you can be 18th for six or 7th for seven? (Note: bids that low aren't nearly as common as they used to be.)
Every once in a while I try to help someone with a home based business. While looking for inexpensive keywords in the Overture bid tool I saw dozens of advertisers all bidding fifty cents on every keyword - and there you can SEE that they are and outbid them. Bid fifty-one and move ahead of them all.
I used to see this same phenomenon at auctions. Everyone set their own limit to an even amount and stopped at $100 or $400 or $1000. If you're willing to pay $100 why not go to $110? Most people don't so you have the advantage.
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cbirdsong22
Joined: Feb 27, 2006
# Posts: 82
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Posted: 08/09/2006 11:23 pm
Hi FlyingRose,
Thanks for the succinct response. I'll have to go back and take a closer look at my bids.
Corey
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evolutionyz
Joined: Jun 27, 2006
# Posts: 47
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Posted: 08/25/2006 09:16 am
"Check any really competitive keywords in the Overture Bid Tool and you'll often see dozens of identical bids. One penny higher and they'd move up all those positions."
Is there a tool like this for Google???
(BTW: This info is great!!!)
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flyingrose
Moderator
Joined: Oct 30, 2003
# Posts: 3361
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Posted: 08/25/2006 09:44 am
No, you cannot see all bids at Google. There are a couple programs you can buy that show only the highest bid and I've heard of one that shows three bids but don't know what it is.
Later this year we may not be able to tell at Yahoo either so if you want to do some research on bids you may want to do it before fourth quarter when Yahoo starts implementing major changes that will make their system more like Google's.
Thank you for appreciating the information. Nice to know someone is using it.
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animated3d
Joined: Dec 22, 2005
# Posts: 359
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Posted: 08/25/2006 04:07 pm
flyingrose i might not reply to all your posts but seriously most of the PPC tips you have given i have saved it, and read it when i have to think of a PPC campaign to make ,so thanks for all your advice 
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flyingrose
Moderator
Joined: Oct 30, 2003
# Posts: 3361
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Posted: 08/25/2006 05:57 pm
Thank you for letting me know you're out there and the tips are of value to you. Although I can see the number of views any particular thread gets and know they're being read and most won't post it is good to hear from people who actually use them.
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flyingrose
Moderator
Joined: Oct 30, 2003
# Posts: 3361
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Posted: 08/28/2006 08:58 pm
If you have Google Analytics running there is a way to look at the actual positions by keyword. What you see may surprise you.
Randomly looking at keywords that have been adjusted to hopefully show up on the first page I see the majority of impressions are for positions 3-6 but some are in 1st or 2nd, 10th or show T1, T2 or T3 which indicates they were moved to the top left of the page even though I'm bidding to stay out of the top positions intentionally.
All of those positions are for the exact same keyword with the same bid. And although positions 3-6 are fine we are actually bidding for the bottom of the first page to lower spending at this time.
One fairly high traffic keyword I checked appears everywhere from 1st to 16th. That pretty much says there is no way to adjust that keyword to where I'd like it to be. While that could be due to competitors pausing ads or limiting their impressions with a low daily budget, there aren't 16 major competitors in this niche market so that isn't the most likely explanation.
To see this data go to All Reports, Search Engine Marketing, Adwords Keywords Positions. Click on the + in front of the keyword you wish to view.
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ultra2004
Joined: Jun 15, 2004
# Posts: 96
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Posted: 09/07/2006 06:42 am
Have just finished a rather large project involving evaluating the Adwords campaigns for our USA website.
We have had a couple of real eye openers.
Keywords we thought we were doing well with (Good conversions and low cost) we are actually way off the mark.
We have had to do a full exercise that takes into account ALL overheads involved in selling our products. This has meant a radical re-structure of our adwords account with some rather surprising results.
Looking at some of the posts in this thread I have taken the brave or foolhardy decision to cull a lot of our broad terms (these were expensive and conversions were okay but not sparkling). In a lot of cases we have just been left with Exact Matches.
Obviously traffic has dropped quite markedly but conversions are up by a third (approaching Half in real terms).
This has allowed us to bid on keywords that we could not normally compete with and at much lower cost.
The three and 4 words terms are very low traffic but I tell you they convert much better that a single or two word keywords all ends up.
I can't recommend strongly enough that you really do the research on your respective business models and ask the question "what do we really want to achieve out of this".
As a company we had lost sight of this goal and it has been an expensive oversight. trying to compete with the Big Boys is all well and good but just take a moment to step back and look at the big picture, it really is an eye opener.
We are busy implementing a rigorous reporting regime that will give us a very granular look at Profit Per Click, this is what we have boiled it down to.
Thanks for all the valuable information that each poster has brought, we learn by the wisdom and mistakes of others. The next big task we have on is to adjust our ads and landing pages to get better results. I'll post in a couple of weeks time when I have more data to give out.
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flyingrose
Moderator
Joined: Oct 30, 2003
# Posts: 3361
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Posted: 09/07/2006 09:39 am
Thank you for the update. You are correct that three and four word and/or vrry specific keyword phrases convert much better. This is due to buyers being further along in the process of deciding what to buy.
In many cases it is not profitable to bid high on the more general, high traffic keywords. Where there is enough traffic I do reduce spending or even pause some of those in favor of the far better ROIs to be achieved with specific keyword phrases.
I do want to point out some holes in using statistics to make decisions. For example:
EXAMPLE ONE:
Early in the buying process someone searches for general keywords, finds a site, looks around and sees what they want and then when they're ready to buy that is where they go if they bookmarked or wrote it down or remember the url or company name.
If you don't advertise on the general keywords at all you will not know how many buyers never consider you. If you used to advertise on them and then stopped, you may not know how many are not coming directly to your site by typing in the url or finding your company name in a search engine any more.
Some indicators to monitor when making that change are traffic from people typing in your url and from searching on your company name in a search engine.
EXAMPLE TWO:
Potential buyer searches on general keyword, looks around, gets an idea what they want and then later they search on a more specific keyword phrase to come back. If they have cleared cookies*, use a different computer, or it has been long enough that sale will be attributed to the new search.
The above scenario means the keywords that are actually bringing the buyer to your site are not being credited with the sale. Different analytics programs work differently. Some attribute sales to the first search and others to the last one.
*A note about cookies. Many anti-virus programs routinely have computer users delete them. What percentage of your returning visitors have deleting cookies and therefore look like new visitors cannot be determined.
EXAMPLE THREE:
Buyers of high dollar or complex products are more likely to order over the phone, so keywords associated with those products may appear to be unprofitable because the sales are not being attributed to them.
My point is that statistics measure what they measure. They must be used in the context of the big picture and with the knowledge that there is a lot of gray area. The decisions to be made are not as black and white as many believe.
Be sure you are considering as many variables as possible and monitor changes for unexpected affects on sales and profits.
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ultra2004
Joined: Jun 15, 2004
# Posts: 96
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Posted: 09/08/2006 02:40 am
Hi Rose.
Good point well made.
Our Brand is fairly new to the USA market so there is a Brand Equity issue here as well. As you mentioned above our products are high ticket items and the buying process can in some instances be many months (we know this as we have 180 day cookies on our Affiliate program and many sales still fall outside of this).
We are still bidding on 1 and 2 term words but we have trimmed them to exact match, this has resulted in less traffic but the keyword cost is minimal compared to the broad term and the conversions are much better as well.
We realise we still have a long way to go but we have taken the first steps in realising that we have made errors in our strategy and we are learning how to put them right.
Affiliate campaigns convert our products at a phenomenal rate, a lot of our affiliates I know are bidding on the same keywords as we do (especially 1 and 2 word high traffic terms) so there is no point competing in that arena.
As you mentioned above, we also track sales from Organic sales, 75% of these sales come from terms with the domain name in the URL, these are usually gained from previously viewed Adword campaigns and people remember the URL or the name of the product that caught there eye, we usually apportion these sales to CPC campaigns.
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flyingrose
Moderator
Joined: Oct 30, 2003
# Posts: 3361
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Posted: 09/08/2006 04:59 pm
I want to encourage advertisers to view what they've done so far as important research and learning curves rather than as errors or mistakes.
We build on what works and change what isn't effective. There has to be a starting point and learning points along the continuum toward constant improvement.
In PPC what didn't work often leads to insight into what will work better. Without the "mistakes" we wouldn't get the gifts.
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flyingrose
Moderator
Joined: Oct 30, 2003
# Posts: 3361
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Posted: 11/02/2006 06:12 pm
The use of Google Analytics to manage Adwords bids has led to a lot of new insights regarding bid management. See the thread Making Decisions Based on Conversion Data for additional details.
A new feature that Google is beta-testing in some accounts that lets you check the status of keywords from the keyword and bid adjustment pages brings another wrinkle into the bid adjusting process.
Using this tool identifies many keywords that appear to be active that are not actually displaying ads. Raising bids on those keyword phrases can activate them. Note that you have to come back later to see if the bid change has had any effect as the results aren't instant.
The message I see most often is "This keyword isn't showing ads. We're unable to show your ad because your Quality Score and CPC were too low for this keyword auction."
Sometimes a modest increase will resolve that message. Other times even huge bid increases haven't helped. I'm bringing that issue up in this thread because it can indicate that lowering bids using the method I've detailed could result in ads not being displayed due to your "Quality Score".
With this added challenge I recommend lowering bids in smaller increments of perhaps ten cents especially on any high traffic keyword phrases rather than making any sudden jumps. That will reduce the risk of having those keywords become invisibly inactive.
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flyingrose
Moderator
Joined: Oct 30, 2003
# Posts: 3361
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Posted: 11/16/2006 06:03 pm
When deciding what to bid and especially if you're thinking about culling general high traffic keywords be sure to watch the effect on your sales both online and off.
Even though conversions appear to be very low or even non-existent on those keywords they may have been how an eventual buyer originally became aware of your site. Their later purchase may be credited to another traffic source.
Culling or reducing spending on those keywords will reduce your new visitors and may have a negative effect on sales. Large advertisers may notice an immediate drop in online sales and possibly a more dramatic drop in phone orders.
Lower volume businesses may not realize the effects right away. Just as there latency between first visits and generating regular sales there are still future sales in your pipeline that will come in.
In other words, the effects of changes made today may not be apparent for days, weeks or for very high dollar purchases, even months. Even inexpensive impulse purchases have about a 7-10 latency period.
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flyingrose
Moderator
Joined: Oct 30, 2003
# Posts: 3361
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Posted: 11/27/2006 05:20 am
The new tool Google has introduced can help you fine-tune your bids and get more impressions and clicks. Check especially any keyword phrases you use that include the words buy or online.
If what you're advertising is seasonal check your bids more often during your highest selling season. Competition will increase during that time and your ads may be dropping off the first page of results, lowering your sales opportunities.
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