SEO / Adwords costings experience

[lavster]

Hello, I run a small online business eBay and Amazon and whilst these are going great for me and I have no complaints, I would really like to try and get my webstore working for me. It is currently built and upto date with Stock / Products but obviously there is next to no traffic. I operate on small profit margins anywhere from 10-15% per item and i'm wondering if its actually going to be worth spending money on adwords or SEO. Also product ads seem to be more specific but not sure how well they work?

Any experiences in this area would be great or simply a "no chance" is also fine

 

[Nochexman]

I operate on small profit margins anywhere from 10-15% per item

The answer is 'it depends...'.

What are you doing? Are you simply reselling goods?

 

[james_firmsites]

I would say its not about margins but minimum viability. If your 10% margin equates to 10p then probably not going to be worth adwords, but if your 10% is £100 then adwords would be, potentially, great. Obviously there is a massive range of scenarios in between.

Some tips

1. Use google shopping ads where possible, for ecommerce they seem to have better conversion rates.
2. Do not go direct with google, the price of an adwords manager, should if they know what they are doing, be less than the savings vs how they would run a campaign.
3. Always go with the same company for adwords and your website, they need to know the system and be able to quickly add tracking code, split testing, landing pages etc. If you have two different providers you will inflate costs almost every time.
4. Make sure you have ownership of your adwords account, this is vital to ensure you know how/where your money is going. Check the journal to keep an eye that they are actually doing something.
5. Make sure you consider all forms of marketing together, adwords for ecommerce is only one part of the puzzle and it will require very good after sales service to turn the more expensive adwords customers into repeat buyers which will drive a better return on investment.
6. Track everything, do not spend a penny unless you have google adwords conversion tracking correctly setup with your ecommerce so you can get proper ROI numbers.

Best of luck and if you need any specific advice feel free to PM.

 

[antropy]

"no chance" is also fine

Well you haven't really explained anything about what you do so how could anyone give you any advice either way?

 

[lavster]

I would say its not about margins but minimum viability. If your 10% margin equates to 10p then probably not going to be worth adwords, but if your 10% is £100 then adwords would be, potentially, great. Obviously there is a massive range of scenarios in between.

Some tips

1. Use google shopping ads where possible, for ecommerce they seem to have better conversion rates.
2. Do not go direct with google, the price of an adwords manager, should if they know what they are doing, be less than the savings vs how they would run a campaign.
3. Always go with the same company for adwords and your website, they need to know the system and be able to quickly add tracking code, split testing, landing pages etc. If you have two different providers you will inflate costs almost every time.
4. Make sure you have ownership of your adwords account, this is vital to ensure you know how/where your money is going. Check the journal to keep an eye that they are actually doing something.
5. Make sure you consider all forms of marketing together, adwords for ecommerce is only one part of the puzzle and it will require very good after sales service to turn the more expensive adwords customers into repeat buyers which will drive a better return on investment.
6. Track everything, do not spend a penny unless you have google adwords conversion tracking correctly setup with your ecommerce so you can get proper ROI numbers.

Best of luck and if you need any specific advice feel free to PM.

Thanks for this advice, I was thinking that shopping ads would be my best / only option. Unfortunately you are nearer with the first marging, my 10% is anywhere from 30p to £1.50

 

[lavster]

The answer is 'it depends...'.

What are you doing? Are you simply reselling goods?

Yep I am just a re-seller, selling branded pet supplies from UK Wholesale suppliers

 

[WebDesires]

One of the best things you can do is every sale on ebay and amazon send out a leaflet enticing the customer to come to your personal website, with a 10% off or something if they use your site to order next time. The great thing about pet supplies is people are more likely to be repeat buyers if they are getting a good deal and a good service.

 

[lavster]

One of the best things you can do is every sale on ebay and amazon send out a leaflet enticing the customer to come to your personal website, with a 10% off or something if they use your site to order next time. The great thing about pet supplies is people are more likely to be repeat buyers if they are getting a good deal and a good service.

This is a great idea yeah, I'll have to get some flyers printed and put them in my current orders.

Thanks

 

[Peter Bowen]

It's almost impossible to get paid advertising to work when you're making so little from each sale.

I'm going to take a guess that you make £10 gross profit per transaction - a couple of items in a basket.

Most independent web shops have very low conversion rates. Maybe 1 in every 100 people who visit the site actually end up completing a purchase. That means that you'd need to get 100 visitors to your site to make a that £10.

But, you couldn't afford to spend all of that on marketing, you need some profit, some money for the infrastructure, some to cover accounting costs, tax, returns, pencils etc - you get the picture. For the sake of the calculation lets say you can spend £2 of that £10 on marketing.

So you need to get 100 potential customers to your site for £2 - £0.02 per visitor.

I don't think it's possible with paid advertising. I'm not qualified to comment on SEO witchcraft.

I've written a guide to deciding if AdWords is a good fit for your business. It's here if you're interested: https://pete-bowen.com/will-adwords-work

 

[Web Hosting UK]

You can set your own budget in your ad words anyway regardless on how small your budget is.

Research the keywords you are wanting to use first though as that can vary it cost and depend how much traffic you get to your website.

Google also offers support if you are spending over £6 per day and you can chat to them in your ad words control panel.

 

[Chris Salmon]

I think both approaches are needed. I'd start with your SEO and invest time there. When your happy with your SEO standing and conversion rates, then I'd test the waters with PPC. Just make sure to limit your spend until you can validate your campaign performance and then throw as much at it as you can afford... Just my $0.02

 

[Chris Salmon]

One thing I just thought about for you to consider is a Google and/or Facebook re-targeting / re-marketing campaign. Both are easy to setup and should yield better and cheaper results that a general PPC campaign... Just something to think about.

 

[justinaldridge]

If you get absolutely no organic search traffic to your website then it means you are probably missing even the basics of SEO. If you can invest some time and a small amount of money you can start doing your own SEO to at least get things moving.

There is a very good SEO course by one of the moderators on this forum called "Fresh Bananas". It's a great course and you should probably check it out.

 

[Alan]

I operate on small profit margins anywhere from 10-15% per item and i'm wondering if its actually going to be worth spending money on adwords or SEO.

Well here is your problem. Margin is too small. Obviously everything is different, but as a rule of thumb, marketing & advertising cost of 20% isn't unreasonable. Obviously if you have a very niche product then the costs can be lower, I once sold a very specialist item at £6.99, cost price to me £3.50 adwords cost per sale 30p - trouble is niche is low demand so I never made enough from that product to make it worth continuing.

 

[ddmcmullan]

It's interesting reading everyone's replies here.

My answer on this would be that Adwords/Bing/Google Shopping works for any business on the basis that if someone else is competing with you/ already paying for it you can bet they are making money off it. The question is are you willing to work at it long enough and work out how.

You must play the long game to succeed at Adwords, however from my experience as times goes on and you collect more data it becomes more profitable every year. As times goes on Adwords actually becomes more of a statistical maths problem as you are dealing with millions of pieces of data.

Surely when you are selling branded pet food your focus should be on acquiring long term customers and not making a profit on the first sale? The idea would be that you may make a loss on the first sale then when they return they come to you direct or find you through organic search. I would also focus on Google shopping re-marketing, that's where you'll get the big win on returning customers.

 

[Chris Salmon]

ddmcmullan - How do you do what you suggest above but without burning through a ridiculous amount of cash? I ran a test campaign in December but needed to turn it off as I couldn't really afford to collect the required amount of data to make it profitable...

 

[ddmcmullan]

Personally I've never done any online marketing at a complete loss as the products I sell are fairly one-off sort of items not repeat items. However if I was in that industry now I would be willing to do it if I found it was profitable long-term.

I agree what I'm suggesting would likely burn through some cash, how much though you could work out roughly on a spreadsheet. If I was the OP I would first find out how many returning customers I am getting from my Marketing campaigns then I would take that into account when calculating what margins if any I am willing to accept from my first customer. You have a very valid point about cash, the point I was making is that nobody was taking into account the fact that once the OP has a customer what is their long-term value. It's not a case of just looking at what margin you make on a new customer, if that customer returns 12 times in a year then you only need enough cash to cover the first month of advertising. If they don't return you have to ask yourself why not. Newsletters, leaflets, re-marketing can all be utilised here.

You say your Adwords didn't work in December? Obviously it's not all about just Adwords, you need to get conversion rates up, prices right, social proofing right, design, call to action etc etc... too much to list. As I said it's a long game, incremental improvements on your website increase conversion rate which will eventually make Adwords profitable.