Off Topic: Pay Per Click Best Practices???

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Hi there, fellow MM users:

I was just wondering if anybody has any unique advice / ideas for their Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns.

We have used google adsense in the past but only had minimal success. We have used the Miva PPC system as well, but that had minimal results as well.

Does anybody use any special tools to help them boost their PPC campaigns?

Are you using alternate PPC services besides google adsense that work well?

Or, do you know a really good web site / forum with helpful PPC advice?

Thanks in advance,

Mark

[Gamelord]

Re: Off Topic: Pay Per Click Best Practices???

We use google Adwords along with Google Analytics. Our PPC campaign is rather small and very conservative (budget wise) but because we have a very small nitch market it has been somewhat effective for us. Even so, our conversion rate from the PPC ads seems to be only slightly more than the cost of the PPC campaign.

Personally (and I may conflict with others) I think your best money spend would be to make sure your site is exceptionally SEO friendly and optimized to the max. To have this done on a professional level it may cost you a thousand dollars or so (depending on the size of your site it may be quite less than that) but the end result will probably be a much better ROI than what you will eventually spend over the course of a year with an aggressive PPC campaign. The nice thing about this other way is that optimizing your site is usually a one time expense, with PPC it is continual. Once your site is optimized you should also see a much improved conversion rate from visitor to customer.

Optimizing your site will get you the top place listings on all search engines without having to pay for it every month.

My opinion - first optimize, then look into PPC to supplement.

Hope this helps.

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Off Topic: Pay Per Click Best Practices???

Hi there, Gamelord:

thanks for the input!

can I ask if you hired someone to optimize your site(s) then? If so, whom?

(I am assuming they are Miva merchant site(s), right)

Thanks in advance,

mark

[Gamelord]

Re: Off Topic: Pay Per Click Best Practices???

Actually we have done our site optimization in house over the last few years as we discover new things and learn. I have been seriously considering shipping this to a company that knows everything about it as I have discovered that each time we implement a new thing that we have discovered we increase our visibility and our traffic. The trial and error has worked well for us in the past but as our business is growing (and as our competition gets better and better in the e-commerce market) I feel that mistakes in SEO could be much more damaging than they were before when we had less of a threat from most other sites that were very poorly done.

There are quite a few companies on this forum that seem to have a lot of experience in SEO and I would probably recommend one of them because of their extensive knowledge in the MIVA cart and it's SEO options.

We have decided to try and contact a couple outside firms for our store to at least have them take a look at it to see if there is something that they can improve on. The more we deal with the internet, the more convinced I am about SEO being the true secret to success. I would go on a limb to say it is the single most important thing of any internet based business and its success, site design and layout being second. With those two things being at their very best, one could compete toe to toe with any business, regardless of their size or financial ability (on the internet at least).

[Biffy]

Re: Off Topic: Pay Per Click Best Practices???

Bid low, not high.

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Off Topic: Pay Per Click Best Practices???

Hi there, Steve:

Bid low, not high.

Would you care to elaborate?

are you saying that it is NOT important to be listed FIRST in PPC ads?

Are you saying that the ROI is better at lower bids?

If so, what position should someone aim for?

Thanks in advance,

Mark

[Biffy]

Re: Off Topic: Pay Per Click Best Practices???

ROI is absolutely better at lower bids. Bid the level that makes money. Not every exposure has a bid, so you can get exposure for smaller bids. Also, do some temporal targeting and don't run ads when people are asleep.

Dump the keywords that don't convert.

Geotargeting can be wonderful. I've seen some where $5 keywords have no bids at all.

PPC is inside-out advertising. Instead of the vendors bidding it down to get your business, PPC has clients bidding against each other to drive costs up.

If all you want is traffic and are not interested in profit, then by all means bid it up.

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Off Topic: Pay Per Click Best Practices???

Hi again, Steve:

Thanks for the suggestions!!!

I have one more question, though. You said;

Geotargeting can be wonderful. I've seen some where $5 keywords have no bids at all.

I wonder if you could elaborate a little bit. Do you mean that you saw some keywords that would normally be $5 per click in a global campaign, but that by geotargeting to a specific area, the cost per click was significantly reduced?

Or do you mean that one should geotarget close to one's physical business location?

Thanks in advance.

Mark

[JFancett]

Re: Off Topic: Pay Per Click Best Practices???

I think it depends on how you envision making money in your business. We target positions 4-7 because we think that in our main revenue producer product a lot of customers shop around and research. We are still in the mix with a lot of customers and don't pay what my competitors pay for the top 3 slots.

Since we pay less per conversion, we make more money per unit. However, our competitors in the top 3 slots move more product. They make less per unit, but move more. The key is to know how much money you are making per conversion and then decide how much you want to devote to advertising.

As with most things there's no silver bullet strategy as in addition to product markets being different, companies' idea of advertising budgets vary. Just make sure you aren't spending more than your are making.

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Off Topic: Pay Per Click Best Practices???

Thank You, JFancett:

Can I ask if you only use google adsense, or if you have found any other pay per click systems that also work well?

and aside from the google built in google tools, do you use any other tools to come up with keyword suggestions?

Thanks in advance,

Mark

[JFancett]

Re: Off Topic: Pay Per Click Best Practices???

We use Google Analytics and link it to our Adwords account. Our host also gives us access to Urchin and has it to receive the Miva information through its logs.

Google is by far our largest PPC vendor because of the traffic. But we also have accounts with MSN and Yahoo. I will say that we had to commit to the budgets that the traffic wants to drive before we really saw acceptable ROIs. At first we were dabbling with budget and our ads weren't showing some of the time. The problem is that if you are using PPC as your only exposure (you're not in the top 10 organic), customers may rely on being able to click on you again after they are done comparing and select you to purchase from. If your ad is "off" because the budget was reached or not showing because you have told Google to "spread out" your campaign dollars you will lose that potential conversion. The thing is a lot of these PPC engines have a lock-out for multiple clicks from a source anyway so you won't always be charged more than the first time as long as the customer comes back in the window.

In our case, ideally we would like to be at 5% for overall advertising. Depending on weekly competition, we may end up at 8%. Over 12% is unacceptable to us based on our margins. You just have to know your numbers and what you can afford.

I can tell you though, it's important to have great SEO. (Something we are working on) Once in place and done right by the right professions, SEO dollars will yield much better results and ROI. We are currently shopping for a firm for this reason.

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Off Topic: Pay Per Click Best Practices???

Thanks Again for the advice!

Can I ask how the Urchin logs are useful to you? Meaning, exactly what are you looking for in the Urchin logs.

And let us all know if you find a great SEO firm.

Thanks,

Mark

[Biffy]

Re: Off Topic: Pay Per Click Best Practices???

I wonder if you could elaborate a little bit. Do you mean that you saw some keywords that would normally be $5 per click in a global campaign, but that by geotargeting to a specific area, the cost per click was significantly reduced?

I did a store that sold tactical equipment. When we set up AdWords we noticed in our research that there were geo hotspots, including Iraq. We decided to geo-target Iraq and found that there were no bids at all on any of our 10,000+ keywords. We got these for the minimum 5 cents each.

We found geo-temporal hotspots, too. Some additional digging showed me that these were large military bases around payday.

We tailored our AdWords campaigns accordingly. Just like the movie theaters, we didn't advertise during the off days and didn't advertise where there aren't any theater patrons.

In our global campaigns we never placed high bid because the ROI sucked when we did. We only bid what makes money.

This was with a $10,000 per month AdWords budget. I'm not sure how you'd gather the necessary data to analyze with a micro-budget.

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Off Topic: Pay Per Click Best Practices???

Thank you, Steve!

Mark