Adwords
- Thread starter gmozzer
- Start date
It very much depends on the value you expect to get per order of the tools.
They may be small value but multiple purchases over time, or could be higher cost tools that are worth spending ads budget on.
Also, the website needs to be good enough to convert clicks to enquiries/sales.
You could test it by throwing, say, £100 of clicks budget at a very small range of keyword phrases/ads and see what you get out of that.
However, I can't really judge what you'll get out of Google Ads - it very much depends on the tools themselves, competition in the market, and how strong your website is.
They may be small value but multiple purchases over time, or could be higher cost tools that are worth spending ads budget on.
Also, the website needs to be good enough to convert clicks to enquiries/sales.
You could test it by throwing, say, £100 of clicks budget at a very small range of keyword phrases/ads and see what you get out of that.
However, I can't really judge what you'll get out of Google Ads - it very much depends on the tools themselves, competition in the market, and how strong your website is.
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You need to look at setting up a merchant account and building up your products. Search ads won't sell products like these. Merchant ads are the ones that appear under the shopping tab and are not easy to get right. They are more stringently checked and vetted for classification and to keep the quality of shopping results high. I have done this a few times and have used product feeds and manual product setup the latter is better if you have fewer products.
You can't generally say how much it's going to cost and like SEO there is PLO Product Listing Optimisation! So you can get some help or start the process yourself. Expect stiff competition and no easy sales. Selling online is nothing new now.
You can't generally say how much it's going to cost and like SEO there is PLO Product Listing Optimisation! So you can get some help or start the process yourself. Expect stiff competition and no easy sales. Selling online is nothing new now.
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- Original Poster
- #8
I havent finished yet so cant show but will do when finished, the prices will be competitive probably not the cheapest for everything but some things. Returns will be accepted with warranty also, standard delivery will be 1-2 days but will be doing next day when possible, not a lot of reputation yet but what I have got is good.
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If you plan to use adwords you need an adwords optimised website. There are a number of subtle differences to a normal ecommerce store, if you don’t get this right you will waste your money on adwords.
It’s not difficult to do, just time consuming. The skill comes in crafting the adverts and landing pages, setting up campaigns for loads of keywords and monitoring daily to filter out those that don’t convert. And then filtering out the products that do t sell until you end up with a high converting and profit driven campaign.
It’s not difficult to do, just time consuming. The skill comes in crafting the adverts and landing pages, setting up campaigns for loads of keywords and monitoring daily to filter out those that don’t convert. And then filtering out the products that do t sell until you end up with a high converting and profit driven campaign.
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- Original Poster
- #10
Thanks again for the reply, by the looks of things it sounds probably better to go down the shopping feed route rather than adwords itself, then maybe look at adwords again further down the line. I havent got a huge budget so I cant throw money at it hence wanting the advice because I will need a certain amount of return on investment. Not ideal but it is like that for the time being until I build it up.
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I have no experience of shops as we are a hotel selling B&B breaks, dog friendly market focused on for this, romantic weddings and, completely at odds with the first two - ghost hunts. We are toying with the idea of a shop for people to buy gift vouchers for stays at our Castle and for events such as ghost hunts, sunday lunches etc. We have used Adwords for years, probably not as wisely as we should, and budget about £50 a day across the various niche areas - weddings, ghosts, dogs etc. I notice Adwords visitors to the site spend a little less time on the sites than organic and direct traffic.
One useful thing I have worked out is that Adwords is best used 'seasonally' according to what is in demand when. The same goes for posts on facebook, worth boosting at a seasonally correct time with much lower Cost per click than Adwords and measurable sales results due to the specific promotion of a service for a given date. Could your business have seasonal sales of certain tools that would lend itself to seasonal promotions of tools to solve a need that arises at a particular time of year? Is there a time of year when you have more buyers for certain of your products, and why? Could more sales be achieved by making yourself more visible (by paying to be seen via Adwords etc) to buyers at a time they are most likely to buy.
You may be aware of the idea of a 'buying window' when people are likely to buy. This relates to people who enquire and the length of time from enquiry to sale - the buying window.
We've found in our service sector, weddings sell most in Jan and Feb as once people get Xmas over, they are ready to decide in the New Year to choose a venue for their wedding. New Year, New Start, I suppose and a lot of people seem to get engaged - or become more committed to each other - over Xmas. They settle on getting married, firm up their plans, and go out viewing venues in Jan and Feb.
We are reasonably easy to find organically for weddings in South Wales but I am aware a lot of the competition are more visible for certain keywords. I do not want to be 'insufficiently visible' in this peak buying period of Jan and Feb each year. I now triple the Adwords spend for weddings in this period but drop it back down again in March, when viewings and sales reduce. I have not found increasing adwords for weddings the rest of the year makes any difference to sales but if I do not boost Adwords in Jan and Feb I know I will book maybe 5-10 fewer weddings. For an extra £1000 each month for two months on weddings Adwords, to secure an extra 5-10 wedding bookings, makes sense.
There are other key calendar events that can be promoted with an Adwords campaign at the right time - e.g. Valentines B&B breaks at Valentines, however the return for these lesser services is much lower and the cost of Adwords is too high relative to Facebook, for a low return calendar event. A few extra B&B stayers for Valentines or some other specific period does not merit a huge spend. I prefer the much lower cost per click and far better targeting achieved with a well time Facebook campaign. Facebook does appear more effective. I recently paid just £80 for a boosted campaign on our Facebook ghost hunting page in April this year to promote Halloween and our 31st Oct Halloween night sold out in 6 days - 6 months in advance. But I would not use Adwords for Halloween, the economics do not work. That £80 facebook boost secured 30 bookings worth £3,000 (plus another £1k or so wet sales from the ghost hunters - so £4k worth of business) for Halloween. This shows how targeted promotions for specific items at specific times can be cost effective.
A hotel has seasonal trade and seasonal advertising can be necessary and effective, with maybe a specific landing page to a specific offer only seen by responders sourced to the advert, enabling you to see easily how many sales / clicks etc you get from the Advert. I have a couple of hidden pages I use for the occasional advertised promotion which only get seen by people clicking on the advert. As you run a tool shop, the obvious question is which of your tools has a seasonal buying element.
Is there any element of your sales cycle (maybe gardening tools?) that occurs seasonally, where it may may you to promote a specific product at a specific time either on facebook (if enough reach and followers) or on Adwords. Link the advert to a hidden page specific to the seasonal promotion, so you can track actual buyers back to the advertising source used. I promote ghost hunts in winter, dog friendly breaks in Summer, seasonal events such as Mothers Day, Fathers Day, Valentines, New Years Eve, etc etc at the relevant times, specific ads for specific services at optimum times. Can you package up an offer for sets of tools for a reduced price, that might be needed together to perform a particular function at a particular season? I do think Adwords and Facebook advertising needs to be for something specific at the correct time when people want to buy, rather than be used for general PR where you never quite know what element of your advertising spend works.
Once you start using Adwords just to keep your site visible for search terms generally, you can never really tell what your return is. Another problem I found is if you are doing OK organically, a lot of people would find you anyway, but inadvertently click on the Adword listing instead of your organic listing. So you can end up paying for clicks you would have had anyway.
One useful thing I have worked out is that Adwords is best used 'seasonally' according to what is in demand when. The same goes for posts on facebook, worth boosting at a seasonally correct time with much lower Cost per click than Adwords and measurable sales results due to the specific promotion of a service for a given date. Could your business have seasonal sales of certain tools that would lend itself to seasonal promotions of tools to solve a need that arises at a particular time of year? Is there a time of year when you have more buyers for certain of your products, and why? Could more sales be achieved by making yourself more visible (by paying to be seen via Adwords etc) to buyers at a time they are most likely to buy.
You may be aware of the idea of a 'buying window' when people are likely to buy. This relates to people who enquire and the length of time from enquiry to sale - the buying window.
We've found in our service sector, weddings sell most in Jan and Feb as once people get Xmas over, they are ready to decide in the New Year to choose a venue for their wedding. New Year, New Start, I suppose and a lot of people seem to get engaged - or become more committed to each other - over Xmas. They settle on getting married, firm up their plans, and go out viewing venues in Jan and Feb.
We are reasonably easy to find organically for weddings in South Wales but I am aware a lot of the competition are more visible for certain keywords. I do not want to be 'insufficiently visible' in this peak buying period of Jan and Feb each year. I now triple the Adwords spend for weddings in this period but drop it back down again in March, when viewings and sales reduce. I have not found increasing adwords for weddings the rest of the year makes any difference to sales but if I do not boost Adwords in Jan and Feb I know I will book maybe 5-10 fewer weddings. For an extra £1000 each month for two months on weddings Adwords, to secure an extra 5-10 wedding bookings, makes sense.
There are other key calendar events that can be promoted with an Adwords campaign at the right time - e.g. Valentines B&B breaks at Valentines, however the return for these lesser services is much lower and the cost of Adwords is too high relative to Facebook, for a low return calendar event. A few extra B&B stayers for Valentines or some other specific period does not merit a huge spend. I prefer the much lower cost per click and far better targeting achieved with a well time Facebook campaign. Facebook does appear more effective. I recently paid just £80 for a boosted campaign on our Facebook ghost hunting page in April this year to promote Halloween and our 31st Oct Halloween night sold out in 6 days - 6 months in advance. But I would not use Adwords for Halloween, the economics do not work. That £80 facebook boost secured 30 bookings worth £3,000 (plus another £1k or so wet sales from the ghost hunters - so £4k worth of business) for Halloween. This shows how targeted promotions for specific items at specific times can be cost effective.
A hotel has seasonal trade and seasonal advertising can be necessary and effective, with maybe a specific landing page to a specific offer only seen by responders sourced to the advert, enabling you to see easily how many sales / clicks etc you get from the Advert. I have a couple of hidden pages I use for the occasional advertised promotion which only get seen by people clicking on the advert. As you run a tool shop, the obvious question is which of your tools has a seasonal buying element.
Is there any element of your sales cycle (maybe gardening tools?) that occurs seasonally, where it may may you to promote a specific product at a specific time either on facebook (if enough reach and followers) or on Adwords. Link the advert to a hidden page specific to the seasonal promotion, so you can track actual buyers back to the advertising source used. I promote ghost hunts in winter, dog friendly breaks in Summer, seasonal events such as Mothers Day, Fathers Day, Valentines, New Years Eve, etc etc at the relevant times, specific ads for specific services at optimum times. Can you package up an offer for sets of tools for a reduced price, that might be needed together to perform a particular function at a particular season? I do think Adwords and Facebook advertising needs to be for something specific at the correct time when people want to buy, rather than be used for general PR where you never quite know what element of your advertising spend works.
Once you start using Adwords just to keep your site visible for search terms generally, you can never really tell what your return is. Another problem I found is if you are doing OK organically, a lot of people would find you anyway, but inadvertently click on the Adword listing instead of your organic listing. So you can end up paying for clicks you would have had anyway.
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Start small and then expand on what works. If you are going to run your own campaign then expect to make lots of mistakes and go through a learning curve.
If you are already making money from other channels then my advice would be to find a Google Ads company to help you. Yes it costs more than if you do it yourself but there shouldn't be the learning curve.
Whatever you do make sure you have conversions setup so you can track what works and what doesn't.
If you are already making money from other channels then my advice would be to find a Google Ads company to help you. Yes it costs more than if you do it yourself but there shouldn't be the learning curve.
Whatever you do make sure you have conversions setup so you can track what works and what doesn't.
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In what context you have replied? Seriously, I am not able to relate it with Adwords. Can You explain it a little bit broader? Please.
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If you are not the cheapest - you have lost money on the clicks from people looking for the cheapest
If you don't deliver next day (when ordering in evening) - you have lost money on the clicks from people looking for next day delivery
If you don't have a returns policy as good as Amazon - you have lost money on the clicks from people who feel that is important
If you are selling something other well known stores sell but you aren't well known - you have lost money on the clicks from people who like to buy from trusted names.
That is at least 4 ways of losing money from clicks.
The people who don't think about these types of things are generally the ones who say AdWords is a rip off and too expensive.
What do you actually have that makes a click lead to a sale?
This is even more important if using a merchant account and Google shopping as it is effectively a comparison tool.
If you don't deliver next day (when ordering in evening) - you have lost money on the clicks from people looking for next day delivery
If you don't have a returns policy as good as Amazon - you have lost money on the clicks from people who feel that is important
If you are selling something other well known stores sell but you aren't well known - you have lost money on the clicks from people who like to buy from trusted names.
That is at least 4 ways of losing money from clicks.
The people who don't think about these types of things are generally the ones who say AdWords is a rip off and too expensive.
What do you actually have that makes a click lead to a sale?
This is even more important if using a merchant account and Google shopping as it is effectively a comparison tool.
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You're going to need to run test campaigns to figure out how many clicks are required to make a sale. Maybe you convert at a 1%, 2%, 4% or other rate (search network). On the display network it's going to be much lower (generally).
You won't know until you've tried what it will cost to generate 5 sales.
Then, as you continue running, you'll find that some months 5 sales costs X and some months it costs double, or half. Seasonality has a lot to do with it. Also, when you're dealing with such small datasets, there's a lot of variability - you might get lucky one month and unlucky another.
You won't know until you've tried what it will cost to generate 5 sales.
Then, as you continue running, you'll find that some months 5 sales costs X and some months it costs double, or half. Seasonality has a lot to do with it. Also, when you're dealing with such small datasets, there's a lot of variability - you might get lucky one month and unlucky another.
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