Lets talk about PPC

Sundancekid · Joined: 27 Feb 2006 Posts: 15

What have been your experiences using PPC? I've been reading about Adwords at webmasterworld.com and the nuances of developing a successful campaign seem daunting. People discuss testing thousands of key words and thousands of negative key words just for one campaign. And it seems that google now requires approval to any changes you make to your campaign which can take days or even up to a week. So to get a successful campaign, you have to make sure you:

1) Select the right product

2) Have just the right copy or website

3) Get a high CTR (click through rate) and pick the perfect set of short statements that appear in your Ad.

4) Select the perfect key words that must be very targeted -- and were not just taking about a few key words.

5) And various other black box nuances such as the "relevance" of your site and random Google weirdness.

And the only way to get this combination right would be to test, test, test. Is seems like one could easily burn through thousands of dollars before one does find that winning combination. Not to mention a ton of time waiting for Google to approve each campaign.

Sundancekid · Joined: 27 Feb 2006 Posts: 15

Has anyone tried PPC? What have been your experiences? I figured a lot of you would have feedback as Ros recommends PPC traffic over depending on SEO.

boysbach · Joined: 27 Dec 2005 Posts: 195

I have only been using PPC with google for a short time. Yes they have to approve changes but mine were done instantly. I decided to keep the campaign running for a short time (1 month) to see how it performed etc.
Yesterday the campaign ended and I didn't check so no PPC yesterday (March 1st) and less people surfed the site which was just as well as we were making some major changes.
I find that our traffic is increase with a good number of people signing up for the ezine etc

Sundancekid · Joined: 27 Feb 2006 Posts: 15

boysbach · Joined: 27 Dec 2005 Posts: 195

Yes and about average from what I understand

callie47 · Joined: 20 Jan 2006 Posts: 54 Location: NB, Canada

Hi sundance

I've used PPC in two campaigns... the first I nearly lost my shirt because I didn't know enough about choosing my keywords/phrases both for the campaigne and the Ad itself... I got a lot of clickthroughs but no sales. Learning from my mistakes I went back to Ros's handbook and did some fine tuning... I chose a bunch of keywords that weren't as popular, cost a lot less, got less traffic (clickthroughs) but had a lot more sales. Oh yes, and the changes I made were approved instantaneously.

elizabeth · Joined: 15 Jan 2006 Posts: 21 Location: Sunny San Diego

I've used pay per click for over a year now and have learned a few basic things:

1. Choose less popular keywords, you don't get as many hits but you tend to get more sales.

2. Create compelling ads that emphasize benefits for the buyer.

3. Create a seperate ad for each keyword. If your keyword is 'yellow coffee mugs', use 'yellow coffee mugs' in your ad title. If the ad title simply says 'coffee mugs' it is less likely to get the click.

4. Direct your ads to specific pages of your site. For example if you have a site that sells lamps and someone is looking for a "tiffany lamp", send them to a page on your site for Tiffany lamps. If you send them to your home page and they don't see a Tiffany lamp, they're apt to click off your site. Give them precisely what they're looking for.

Hope that helps Very Happy