Does PPC work?

[Ivel]

I spent a good amount on PPC /google adwords and LinkedIn/ several months ago and I only got calls from sales people trying to sell me products I don't need. They have just googled the services I provide, clicked on all the ads and called me. As a result I was spending money just to get the calls I would normally avoid. What is your experience?

 

[AllUpHere]

As with all marketing, it's not what you do, but how you do it. Without an underlying strategy any tactic can fail to deliver a decent return.

What industry are you in?

 

[Ivel]

.

What industry are you in?

Accounting

 

[makeusvisible]

There really is no simple answer to this question. We run Adwords campaigns for lots of different types of business, all with different goals and competition. We have...on occasion.....told customers that Adwords isn't going to be the right platform for them.

That said, Accountancy is what we would call a lead generation project. If you don't mind a few public questions, it might be interesting to see why Adwords isn't working for you.

1. What do you consider to be an acceptable 'cost per conversion'. In your case, I guess a 'conversion' is going to be a firm customer enquiry?

2. At what rate does your website currently convert? i.e for ever 1,000 genuine visitors how many solid enquiries do you generally get?

The above two questions will be a good starting point to establish is Adwords is a good fit at this moment in time.

Just as a side note.... if your paying for traffic that isnt converting, your onto a loser from day 1. I just went on your 'management accounts' page of your site, clicked the "request a quote" button, and it didnt work. Your onsite optimisation will really need to be top-notch in order to be able to compete with others in a competitive sector.

Anyway, hope that helps.

 

[smo]

Its something I am very skeptical of, of course those who sell PPC campaign management say yes but strangely none of them work on performance related pay.

They all want hundreds or thousands up front, that way it doesn't matter if their campaign works, if they are any good or you are just pissing money away....i'd rather work with a company who is genuinely good at what they do and will put their money where their mouth is and work on a "if it works you get paid handsomely" basis......I've not found any who are confident enough in their skills to do so.

 

[Steve Alphabet]

Where are/were you sending people after they clicked your ad?

It needs to be a landing page, specific to the ad. Time and time again I see companies sending visitors to their homepage, which is crazy. Too many distractions,, trying to be all things to all audiences, too many irrelevant links etc.

 

[makeusvisible]

Its something I am very skeptical of, of course those who sell PPC campaign management say yes but strangely none of them work on performance related pay.

They all want hundreds or thousands up front, that way it doesn't matter if their campaign works, if they are any good or you are just pissing money away....i'd rather work with a company who is genuinely good at what they do and will put their money where their mouth is and work on a "if it works you get paid handsomely" basis......I've not found any who are confident enough in their skills to do so.

The reason you wont find a PPC company who works on commission is the same reason you wont find an accountant who works on commission, or a landlord who works on commission. There are so many factors which are out of the control of the PPC campaign, which determine if you are profitable. For example;

How good are your margins compared to your competitors
How fast are you shipping your items and retaining repeat business
How good is your product
etc.

If you have a solid handle on your business, and you have a realistic expectation as to what you expect to pay for a conversion, then any PPC agency worth their salt should be able to give you some realistic figures.....and defiantly shouldn't be charging you "thousands" up-front for doing so.

That said...setting up a PPC campaign can be a massively time consuming and intensive task. It's not beyond reasonable to expect to pay that professional time.

 

[Marek Skoczylas]

The reason you wont find a PPC company who works on commission is the same reason you wont find an accountant who works on commission, or a landlord who works on commission. There are so many factors which are out of the control of the PPC campaign, which determine if you are profitable. For example;

How good are your margins compared to your competitors
How fast are you shipping your items and retaining repeat business
How good is your product
etc.

If you have a solid handle on your business, and you have a realistic expectation as to what you expect to pay for a conversion, then any PPC agency worth their salt should be able to give you some realistic figures.....and defiantly shouldn't be charging you "thousands" up-front for doing so.

That said...setting up a PPC campaign can be a massively time consuming and intensive task. It's not beyond reasonable to expect to pay that professional time.

Correct! The best shortcut about efficiency and profitability of PPC and SEO on this forum.

Most of the company owners forget about basics. You can easily grab potential customer via PPC, but there is a long way between first contact with the product or service and sale.

If you want to be successful at any market, you will need to defeat your competitors at least on one plane - it can be price, service or product quality, delivery time, customer services etc..delivery time, etc..

 

[Skylark SEO]

Hello,

Like anything, things can have positive and negative effects. A client of mine with his previous SEO company was in a similar position as you were. As was mentioned above, the landing page is the key here, how are users going to respond once they click on your ad?

Does the Title & Description of your ad make sense to what your website is about?

Google have a bit of information regarding Adwords Advice. I can't post the link as I haven't had 30 or more posts lol.

Hope you get something sorted

 

[Alan]

I spent a good amount on PPC /google adwords and LinkedIn/ several months ago and I only got calls from sales people trying to sell me products I don't need.

Running and adwords campaign takes skill and experience. What you should have been doing is analysing the keywords that attracted these sales calls and negativing them out. The skill is getting the key words that buyers use which will be subtly different to the keywords that the sales people are using.

I'm assuming you ran the campaigns yourself or someone not skilled in adwords ( as if you were using an experienced professional you wouldn't be asking this question )

So your question is a bit like 'Can Formula One Cars go fast? I bought one a few months ago and I just couldn't get it going round the track at great speeds without crashing.'

 

[Ivel]

The skill is getting the key words that buyers use which will be subtly different to the keywords that the sales people are using.
'

But how are these keywords different? the keywords are related to the service and the benefit it brings to the clients, they don't depend on how you will use it. The campaign was for R&D tax credits, it was leading to a page from my website designed for that, providing a bit more information and asking the client to contact via email or phone call. All I received were sales called from people trying to sell me their software that makes the R&D so easy to calculate or even solicitors who wanted to help my clients register a patent for what they developed.

 

[makeusvisible]

But how are these keywords different? the keywords are related to the service and the benefit it brings to the clients, they don't depend on how you will use it. The campaign was for R&D tax credits, it was leading to a page from my website designed for that, providing a bit more information and asking the client to contact via email or phone call. All I received were sales called from people trying to sell me their software that makes the R&D so easy to calculate or even solicitors who wanted to help my clients register a patent for what they developed.

From what you are saying, the conversion rate of the campaign was 0% ?

That would indicate the keywords you were using were not specific to the target audience. How did you originally generate the keywords?

We you using exact match, broad match modified, broad match keywords?

When you look at the keywords which generated clicks, do they look relevant? How many keywords in total were used by users clicking the Ads?

Were you using any site-link extensions, and if so what % of people were clicking on the site-links (i.e not landing on your target landing page).

Hopefully if you can provide some more info we can help to establish why it didn't work for you.

 

[Alan]

All I received were sales called from people trying to sell me their software that makes the R&D so easy to calculate or even solicitors who wanted to help my clients register a patent for what they developed.

For each of these calls, what keywords did they come in on?

 

[Elliottc26]

There's also the issue of market trends. This can be your best indicator as to your keywords needed to generate conversions (i.e. form fills, calls, emails, etc.,.).

So, let's say you run a sailing training company. Your "trending" may be for a few particular courses, a couple of search terms, an event, and a couple of interests for articles/landing page ideas.

Just 5 keywords could be generating most of the conversions and sales, at this moment in time, instead of the 200 other ones related to your courses; using a list of negatives to get rid of unwanted traffic like job seekers, etc.,.

I did this for one of these companies to start their account from scratch and pulled in £3,500 the first month in transactions plus they got calls and form fills, etc.,. It's not the entirety, but you need a good starting point.

 

[Glenn Martin]

I am an Accountant and PPC can and should produce leads for you. I had a go myself and although got some leads from it felt I probably wasted a lot of money from duff clicks. I then got a local guy to set it up and make it less wasteful than I was doing. He has managed to half my cost per click and I am probably get 2/3 contacts per week from this from a modest spend.

The quality of the leads can often be poor or those just looking for free advice so I vet them a lot at that stage to avoid meetings with people who have no intention of signing up or those who expect a set of accounts to cost £50

 

[InternetMarketingPlatinum]

Of course PPC works but it's like baking a cake - if you put in the wrong ingredients in the incorrect amounts then you shouldn't expect the results to be great.

 

[StevePoster]

PPC is not just placing an ad. You need to understand the process on how to lessen your CPC by understanding the quality score.

 

[Scott Heron]

It works.

You need to have a decent looking website that is built with the aim of converting your visitor though. If you dont have that then it will be harder for you to find success with PPC.