Now that a day has pass my MSN data is up to date so I can post the final conclusions.
- Spend $397.23
- Sales $0
- Clicks 320
- Impressions 11,939
- CTR % 2.68
- Avg Position 3.83
- Avg CPC $1.24
- Highest Keyword CTR 23.08% (9 out of 39..I ignored 1 and 2 hit wonders)
- Highest Ad Copy CTR 3.23%
- Offer hits: 109...probably 15 of them are my tests so 94
- Ad Copy to Offer CTR (through my LP) 29.375%
Unfortunately prosper was fubared so I cannot tell which keywords actually pushed people to the offer or my CTR for my two LPs, its like I am missing the middle.
So obviously my campaign failed. One of the things I have realized, and I need to practice more is learning from my mistakes. It seems that most successful people do this, reading "How We Decide" also confirmed my idea, that experts become experts by analyzing their mistakes.
Mistake analysis:
- Test and ensure prosper202 is tracking right BEFORE I go public (aka start sending traffic)
- Split testing Ad Copies works well, I raised my CTR by 1.3% in a couple of days. It would have worked on the LP level as well, if I prosper was tracking it...
- Spending $100 a day on a campaign is too high, I did not need to spend $400, I knew it was not working at $200. Instead I am going to spend less money per day, and still try to test something out for five days. I think my new limit is going to be the offer money per day (except if its an email submit or something) that way I am testing $offer x 5
- Get a second opinion on LPs and Ad Copies..what I think is cool might actually be silly
- Split test, split test, split test
- Keyword bidding...CPR increases for higher positions, its obvious but now its verified
- Max CPC can drain the hell out of you quick
- Avoid keyword free when you are asking people to pay, most of my clicks where long tail keywords with the word free...yeah its cool that I got volume but if it did not convert its useless or I do not know how to monetize it
- Be more creative with keywords, hitting obvious keywords ends up costing too much money due to competition
- Do more research for how others are advertising similar offers
- Talk to my AM more, he is there to help
- Having someone you trust to bounce ideas with is tremendous help, not to mention it inspires you to work harder...so thanks Val
- Keep track of my own test hits, it makes data tracking harder when I have to estimate how many of those hits are mine
- Think about what time to display my ads. I noticed that everyday I would run out on my budget by around 5ish...maybe next time I need to test during prime time hours....perhaps this is the wrong approach...who knows
- I need to work on my sales technique. It appears I have kind of the right idea on the Ad Copy level, but obviously my LP even though it pushed traffic it did not monetize it. So I need to sell it better. I should do more research on this.
- Its better to start my campaign on a Friday or Thursday, that way I have the weekend to work on things if need be instead of trying to make big changes during the week
That is all I can think of for now.
Time to work on my new LP idea. I will split test between my idea and what emp suggested, making an LP similar to the offer page. I will use the same ad copies, well actually my top performing ad copy and a variation of it.
Keyword wise I am taking a totally different approach so I will pretty much have to start from scratch. Hopefully I will get done by Sunday...then do I apply lessons learned and launch my campaign this Thursday or start immediately?
Well time will tell, since I might or might not be ready with my two LPs anyway.
Back to work for me!