'Buying Profit' With Adwords. An Example.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Webtistic
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Webtistic

(Stands On Soapbox)

Now, I don't mean this to be mindless self-promotion (although it all helps of course!), but more of an attempt to get some SME's to think a little more logically about the management of their Adwords campaigns with a short example.

A small trader with a new e-commerce store came to me in February for a quote on managing his Adwords campaign. His store is a (very nicely designed) niche online gift store and he had been managing his own campaign with little success in terms of sales and he had got to that point (that I see very often) where his CTR was almost non-existent, his quality score was poor and his click prices had gone through the roof. His adgroups (and keyphrases) were illogical, his ad-copy all wrong, etc, etc...

His average cost per click was 37p and most of those were not targeted correctly. Suffice to say, he had no REAL idea as to how it was performing other than to say his sales were non-existent.

In short, it was a mess.

Anyway, when I first spoke to him on the phone, in the first minute he said the words that I never, ever, ever understand.

He said something like... 'well the problem I have now is that I can't afford to spend much on Adwords'.

Hmmm...

To that I said what I normally say...

[me] 'OK... well, if you could find a way of buying 50 pence for 40 pence would you do it'?

[him] Err... yes... obviously...

[me] 'And how much could you afford to spend on doing this?'

[him] *Laughs* - as much as i could buy...'

The Point? Well, if an Adwords campaign is correctly managed, this is possible, and in his case, is actually doing so. Less than 3 months on, his average click price is 24p, but, and here’s the killer part, we know that, on average, EVERY click is making him a profit.

How? Firstly, it's about knowing how to manage an Adwords campaign (obviously), but less obviously, it is about measuring the performance of your ads and doing so constantly. You can use Google Analytcis to tell you exactly what return in terms of revenue each click gives and so once you have done this, you can see what a click is worth, and if you see what a click is worth, you know how much you will pay. After sufficient testing, If you know that a click on a certain keyword, consistenly results in an average profit of 50p per click, then you know what to pay up to.

So, in summary, if you are inexperienced with Adwords and need a single piece of advice, make very sure that you have installed Analytics and that you KNOW how to measure your campaigns performance.

It can be just like buying profit.

(Places dusty soapbox back in it’s cupboard)
 
Lovely......I guess you don't give a free months trial by any chance?
 
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Hi PrettyPaws,

I am afraid I am unable to offer a free trial due to the time and effort involved in correctly and efficiently setting up a new campaign.

However, our rates may be reduced slightly if you were to take out a 6-month contract or more.

PM me if you would like to discuss this further.
 
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So, in summary, if you are inexperienced with Adwords and need a single piece of advice, make very sure that you have installed Analytics and that you KNOW how to measure your campaigns performance.

I agree 100%.

I was talking with a (non-adwords) client yesterday and made the comment that, for so many ecommerce sites, their understanding of their business is:

people/money -> Site -> money/# sales

i.e. they usually know how many people are visiting and how much they're paying to get these visitors ... and they know the number of sales they're making and how much money is coming back in... but that's it.

Everything inbetween is just a black box.

But, if you have tracking installed, you have access to data that can make you a lot of money.

e.g. you can join the dots between sales and visitor types. So, instead of a great mass off people coming in and an average for the whole spectrum, you can see the the real value of each traffic source (and each keyword).

And that means you can stop wasting money on traffic that just isn't converting.

Also, you can look at visitor behaviour through the site and find places where you're losing visitors. If you have a conversion rate of 3%, then that means 97 out of every 100 are walking away. Wouldn't it be good to know the main places they're quitting the site?

I could go on and on, but I'm writing an article for my newsletter next week that will show 10 ways to use analytics to increase profits, so I'll hold off until then.

Steve
 
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(Stands On Soapbox)

How? Firstly, it's about knowing how to manage an Adwords campaign (obviously), but less obviously, it is about measuring the performance of your ads and doing so constantly. You can use Google Analytcis to tell you exactly what return in terms of revenue each click gives and so once you have done this, you can see what a click is worth, and if you see what a click is worth, you know how much you will pay. After sufficient testing, If you know that a click on a certain keyword, consistenly results in an average profit of 50p per click, then you know what to pay up to.

So, in summary, if you are inexperienced with Adwords and need a single piece of advice, make very sure that you have installed Analytics and that you KNOW how to measure your campaigns performance.

It can be just like buying profit.

(Places dusty soapbox back in it’s cupboard)


Google analytics is a very effective tool to use because it gives you xray vision into what customers are really doing on your website, i.e what those clicks are really buying you and what clicks turn into cash.

Correct use of google analytics can easily slash your click costs and reveal low hanging fruit your currently missing on your website.

Wishing you all the success in the world,
 
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