ppc nightmare

[G. Lasagne]

I recently had a campaign set up, which in the last 2 months (ish) has cost me around £800, the calls received were no where near as high a volume as id expect, i also didnt notice much of decrease in calls, when i turned it off either.

It seems looking at the campaign that i am bidding super high for everything and some jobs only yield maybe £50 profit. also a lot of the keywords are not relevant, or are they thats what im confused about? I mean would somebody looking for a boiler installation just type in the make of the boiler they fancied? i.e baxi duo-tec?

But then what i dont get is why would they click on the add, i mean surely they can see from the add that im a heating company.

what i plan on doing is just using adwords for installation work only, that way the conversions will be easier to achieve as i can afford to spend 20 quid on clicks if i get a job from it, but not on a £45-60 job i cant.

Any advice on how to better maximise this campaign, do you agree going after the higher profit jobs is a good idea?

Dave

[Bri]

Knowing nothing about ppc myself, you seem to have answered your own question Dave. Logic dictates that it would be more viable for the higher value jobs.

[admagic]

I recently had a campaign set up, which in the last 2 months (ish) has cost me around £800, the calls received were no where near as high a volume as id expect, i also didnt notice much of decrease in calls, when i turned it off either.

It seems looking at the campaign that i am bidding super high for everything and some jobs only yield maybe £50 profit. also a lot of the keywords are not relevant, or are they thats what im confused about? I mean would somebody looking for a boiler installation just type in the make of the boiler they fancied? i.e baxi duo-tec?

But then what i dont get is why would they click on the add, i mean surely they can see from the add that im a heating company.

what i plan on doing is just using adwords for installation work only, that way the conversions will be easier to achieve as i can afford to spend 20 quid on clicks if i get a job from it, but not on a £45-60 job i cant.

Any advice on how to better maximise this campaign, do you agree going after the higher profit jobs is a good idea?

Dave

Mindset is absolutely critical in adwords.

Do people buy a boiler from the first ad they see, and is that their intent?
Answer no.
For MOST people it is a serious bit of capital expenditure, they research for a period. They want to know the issues, which boilers work best? is that make of boiler ok for them? is additional spend worthwhile? what are the best deals? they will browse for even months, before make uyp their mind. So you have to find a way tograb them, because the chances of them remembering your site isslim...

So - in your business - I would be promoting a free downloadable report - or autoresponder series, "Value for money!! - the five keys to choosing a boiler - and the worst mistake you can make... is spending more worhtwhile?" "

And for people who arent necessarily in boiler mode offer, say, adownload - How to keep your gas bill down....maybe offer a product like a gas/home energy audit/check up/service or something.

YOu need a variety of landing pages targetted to the very different mindset of the keywords.

That way when they come, they download and you build a list, to which you can start promoting your best deals for everything else.

Also - start placement advertising on advice sites.

Get the concept that adwords is an auction in which only the best make money. Click prices increase until the number leaving in disgust, match the number of new would be advertisers. So you have to do it better than the rest.

[saxondale]

I mean would somebody looking for a boiler installation just type in the make of the boiler they fancied? i.e baxi duo-tec?

But then what i dont get is why would they click on the add, i mean surely they can see from the add that im a heating company.




manual hunters ................

[Matt1959]

Dave, I cannot get PPC to work for me at all. Probrably because there is such low demand for my services. One thing I have noticed is first time I tried it 12 months ago, it was very easy for me to get a first page ad for under 10p per click and the ad had about a 8 or 9/10 quality score. Now a first page ad costs me 30p and I cannot get the quality score above 5 or 6/10. So it seems to me that Google have tightened up hugely on PPC and I'm not surprised therefore that you've needed to spend so much money to get results (such that they have been)

PPC seems to have worked for Estwig and others on here in trades, I cannot scratch the surface with it though and will watch this thread with interest...

I only use exact match and turn off the content network thing btw (rightly or wrongly!!)

another thing I would say to the OP is that as you are prob becoming quite high profile in your area for your work it wont have gone unnoticed by your competitors. Nothing to stop a savvy competitor to cost you with PPC. This is one of the reasons personally, I wouldnt look to swamp the internet with my business, just IMO

[G. Lasagne]

Dave, I cannot get PPC to work for me at all. Probrably because there is such low demand for my services. One thing I have noticed is first time I tried it 12 months ago, it was very easy for me to get a first page ad for under 10p per click and the ad had about a 8 or 9/10 quality score. Now a first page ad costs me 30p and I cannot get the quality score above 5 or 6/10. So it seems to me that Google have tightened up hugely on PPC and I'm not surprised therefore that you've needed to spend so much money to get results (such that they have been)

PPC seems to have worked for Estwig and others on here in trades, I cannot scratch the surface with it though and will watch this thread with interest...

I only use exact match and turn off the content network thing btw (rightly or wrongly!!)

My problem is my lack of understanding, if i understood how things worked then i could alter the campaign set-up for me and maybe have some success.

How do you do broad match is it {} ? and does that mean that ads only appear when the exact word is typed in?

And what other ways can you do it?

Dave

[G. Lasagne]

Mindset is absolutely critical in adwords.

Do people buy a boiler from the first ad they see, and is that their intent?
Answer no.
For MOST people it is a serious bit of capital expenditure, they research for a period. They want to know the issues, which boilers work best? is that make of boiler ok for them? is additional spend worthwhile? what are the best deals? they will browse for even months, before make uyp their mind. So you have to find a way tograb them, because the chances of them remembering your site isslim...

So - in your business - I would be promoting a free downloadable report - or autoresponder series, "Value for money!! - the five keys to choosing a boiler - and the worst mistake you can make... is spending more worhtwhile?" "

And for people who arent necessarily in boiler mode offer, say, adownload - How to keep your gas bill down....maybe offer a product like a gas/home energy audit/check up/service or something.

YOu need a variety of landing pages targetted to the very different mindset of the keywords.

That way when they come, they download and you build a list, to which you can start promoting your best deals for everything else.

Also - start placement advertising on advice sites.

Get the concept that adwords is an auction in which only the best make money. Click prices increase until the number leaving in disgust, match the number of new would be advertisers. So you have to do it better than the rest.

Great post admagic, its exactly ehat im gonna do, cheers great advice:D

[admagic]

Oh - and whilst I think of it....

1/ Use a screen capture programme to capture the advertisers on your keywords, over a period of 3 months. Any SMALL COMPANY advertisers still there after that period, who are visibly still testing ads (ie the text is changing) are probably making money. Work out how....by looking hard at their sites.

2/ Learn how to use keywordspy to look at competitors - seriously valuable information on what keywords they use. ads and so on.

[estwig]

My problem is my lack of understanding, if i understood how things worked then i could alter the campaign set-up for me and maybe have some success.

How do you do broad match is it {} ? and does that mean that ads only appear when the exact word is typed in?

And what other ways can you do it?

Dave

I've always had great success with Adwords, think it is brilliant. Having read a couple of books, various websites and blogs, I do understand a fair bit about it, it is a lot more complicated than people imagine. On the surface adowrds looks easy, pick some keywords, stick up an ad and hay presto, all you gotta do is sit by the phone and wait for it to ring. It is a lot more complicated than that.

Dave I don't understand why you don't ask Steve Gibson to do it for you?? In terms of ROI the fella is worth every penny. I learn't about adowrds just so I could work with Steve on setting up a campaign. It needs a profesional to do it properly and that profesional needs input as to what your pitch is, where your market is and what you want to achieve, amoung other things.

[fiona davies]

Dave I don't understand why you don't ask Steve Gibson to do it for you?? In terms of ROI the fella is worth every penny. I learn't about adowrds just so I could work with Steve on setting up a campaign. It needs a profesional to do it properly and that profesional needs input as to what your pitch is, where your market is and what you want to achieve, amoung other things.

And if you can't afford Steve, you're going to have to set aside a good two days at least to sit through the many online videos and tutorials. There are LOADS but It's worth it as whilst it won't make you an expert you'll perhpas be able to apply some of the tips learnt to your campaign, tweek it a bit, and see a better ROI. Look on amazon as there are some good book there on adwords if you are serious about doing it yourself. If you are asking questions like 'how do you do broad match' you really don't understand adwords and may well be waisting alot of money. Good luck with it:)

[Scott-CopyandDesign]

You do have that option when you use Adwords. You can either go full-on and grab every relevant click you can, or you can scale back and target the most highly relevant visitors. You might not end up with as many sales overall, but the ROI will be better.

£800 is a BIG though for a localised campaign. Personally if I spent that much on Adwords I'd have to turn away a huge amount of work because I'd simply be too busy. That's a huge international campaign, nevermind a local one in tyneside.

Oh and do eventually get some proper sales copy for your site ;). If you're getting £800 worth of highly targeted visitors (many of them actively looking for installation) and not getting many calls, then that means a huge percentage of those targeted prospects are not being hooked by your site and are looking elsewhere.

[neild]

A very good way to find out which company is using what keywords for each link & adwords from Googles search results (.com & .co.uk only) is using PPC Web Spy (link (http://ppcwebspy.com)). It's free to download and use, I think it's for Firefox as an addon. An IE version maybe available but check first.

[admagic]

My problem is my lack of understanding, if i understood how things worked then i could alter the campaign set-up for me and maybe have some success.

How do you do broad match is it {} ? and does that mean that ads only appear when the exact word is typed in?

And what other ways can you do it?

Dave

Broad - by default that is what you get.
install boiler - matches anything - install steam engine boiler piping
Phrase - the words must appear together before or after anything
"install boiler" - install boiler flu system
Exact is what it says only....
[install boiler]- install boiler

Be very very very very careful with broad.
And check every search made - and be ready with negative keywords...eg steam.
Not for the inexperienced, but that is what you get if you dont know any better

It is one of google most devious tricks, to make the toughest to use that makes them most money the default to trap newcomers

[Matt1959]

if theres been £800 been spent in 8 weeks then that means people have clicked the ad so the ads have been working. So it should be quite simple to analyse whats going wrong and can only be the following? 1) too many people click the ad and go no further with the enquiry (fault with landing page ie doesnt match customers expectation 2) people click the ad and do follow up with an enquiry but the work that results is too low value to justify the PPC cost. Dave, it could be that you have already answered your own question ie change the type of work you are after to more profitable. Arguably your campaign is actually working its just the resulting work is the wrong type of work....

[admagic]

if theres been £800 been spent in 8 weeks then that means people have clicked the ad so the ads have been working. So it should be quite simple to analyse whats going wrong and can only be the following? 1) too many people click the ad and go no further with the enquiry (fault with landing page ie doesnt match customers expectation 2) people click the ad and do follow up with an enquiry but the work that results is too low value to justify the PPC cost. Dave, it could be that you have already answered your own question ie change the type of work you are after to more profitable. Arguably your campaign is actually working its just the resulting work is the wrong type of work....

Matt - If he is using broad match - I would make number 1 - most of the things people are actually typing are completely inappropriate for his business It is neither mindset, nor product nor copy. Broad match unconstrained is incredibly broad.

GL - export a list of the history, and steve , me or one of the other ppc bods can take a look. I suspect most of the clicks will be dross.

[An Oasis]

Be very very very very careful with broad.

Not for the inexperienced, but that is what you get if you dont know any better

It is one of google most devious tricks, to make the toughest to use that makes them most money the default to trap newcomers

It stuns me how many companies not only use Broad Match but stay with it. Do these companies not monitor where their ads are being displayed in the results?

[admagic]

It stuns me how many companies not only use Broad Match but stay with it. Do these companies not monitor where their ads are being displayed in the results?

The sad fact is there are a lot of GLs who dont know any better, who do not know how to analyse - so spend ££££ hundreds or thousands before giving up in disgust, to be replaced by the next bunch of would be advertisers. I think the lack of warnings on broad is borderline dishonest on googles part. Only for experienced pros who have already cut their teeth on phrase/exact is my opinion.

And sure - broad can work - but certainly not everywhere - and it has become very hard work with some of the dross that google now lets through, and it takes a lot more time to make it work profitably than phrase or exact. Thing is - you need to monitor conversion to do it, not just clickthru which tends to be something that only people in the game like steve, me know how to do.

[fisicx]

Dave,

Check your analytics to see what searches they made before clicking.

If it is a good search then the problem may not be the adverts but the landing page. PPC landing pages often need to be different to those in the organic listings. The visitor often has a very specific requirment and if they land on something that looks like a promotional page (which most of yours are) then they will often bounce straight off.

[tomsk]

You may also be showing up on google content networks which in my experience can soon eat into your budget.

[Sure]

I’m not surprised it’s costing you a fortune the price of your / my keywords has quadrupled in the last week.

I started an adword campaign a few weeks ago, I have had very few clicks but I can match the clicks/site visits to phone calls I’ve had, and they’ve been like gold dust.

I must admit I knew nothing about key words a few weeks ago, probably still don’t, but I spent longer trying to word the ad than the key words, after all its the ad that’s going to cost the money.

I’ve tried to introduce “filters” into my ads text, I don’t want people browsing for boiler specs they can go to the manufacturers for that and I don’t want people from timbuctoo clicking on my ads, I’ve tried to target my ads to people who know exactly what they want, and crucially where they want it from (local to them).

As far as adwords goes I’m not offering people the opportunity to window shop and research about what boiler might suit them, if you like I’m trying to choose the people that click.

People will probably say that if people don’t click on you they’ll buy elsewhere, but they won’t because 99% of heating sites are crap and they’ll be back looking.

I could be wrong, hope this makes sense, it does to me.

[admagic]

I’m not surprised it’s costing you a fortune the price of your / my keywords has quadrupled in the last week.

I started an adword campaign a few weeks ago, I have had very few clicks but I can match the clicks/site visits to phone calls I’ve had, and they’ve been like gold dust.

I must admit I knew nothing about key words a few weeks ago, probably still don’t, but I spent longer trying to word the ad than the key words, after all its the ad that’s going to cost the money.

I’ve tried to introduce “filters” into my ads text, I don’t want people browsing for boiler specs they can go to the manufacturers for that and I don’t want people from timbuctoo clicking on my ads, I’ve tried to target my ads to people who know exactly what they want, and crucially where they want it from (local to them).

As far as adwords goes I’m not offering people the opportunity to window shop and research about what boiler might suit them, if you like I’m trying to choose the people that click.

People will probably say that if people don’t click on you they’ll buy elsewhere, but they won’t because 99% of heating sites are crap and they’ll be back looking.

I could be wrong, hope this makes sense, it does to me.

That may not be the keywords - that could be google taking a dislike to you, because your landing page is wrong for the keywords, or does not include them / your ctr has not been good enough - so your quality is dropping. Check your ctr and quality scores - keyword prices are specific to you, your site/ads/ ctr record -

[Matt1959]

Check your ctr and quality scores - keyword prices are specific to you, your site/ads/ ctr record -

Admagic, would a very low clickthrough on an ad affect a quality score? If so by how much?? would it say bring the QS down from a 7/10 to a 5/10 for example?

[Sure]

That may not be the keywords - that could be google taking a dislike to you, because your landing page is wrong for the keywords, or does not include them / your ctr has not been good enough - so your quality is dropping. Check your ctr and quality scores - keyword prices are specific to you, your site/ads/ ctr record -

I think its more to do with the popularity of "boiler scrappage" and like terms.

landing pages are correct, quality scores are all a 7 or 10, some of the ctr's are about 1%, - what is considered a good %

[greatwestern]

I recently had a campaign set up, which in the last 2 months (ish) has cost me around £800, the calls received were no where near as high a volume as id expect, i also didnt notice much of decrease in calls, when i turned it off either.

It seems looking at the campaign that i am bidding super high for everything and some jobs only yield maybe £50 profit. also a lot of the keywords are not relevant, or are they thats what im confused about? I mean would somebody looking for a boiler installation just type in the make of the boiler they fancied? i.e baxi duo-tec?

But then what i dont get is why would they click on the add, i mean surely they can see from the add that im a heating company.

what i plan on doing is just using adwords for installation work only, that way the conversions will be easier to achieve as i can afford to spend 20 quid on clicks if i get a job from it, but not on a £45-60 job i cant.

Any advice on how to better maximise this campaign, do you agree going after the higher profit jobs is a good idea?

Dave


As a pay per click agency owner: it makes me ashamed the way other PPC companies plan, report and organise their services.

[kateriyan]

HI!!
I don't have any idea regarding PPC.
I want full detail regarding PPC. Is there any e-book or any guide available online.
I need help.

Please help me guys.

[Scott-CopyandDesign]

HI!!
I don't have any idea regarding PPC.
I want full detail regarding PPC. Is there any e-book or any guide available online.
I need help.

Please help me guys.

http://www.adwordstrainingdvd.co.uk/