First of all, thank you to everybody who offered advice and help.
Here are the stats from my campaign from 9/12/08 through 9/30/08:
9/22 Figures // 9/30 Figures (NOTE: Improvements, Declines):
PPC Clicks: 937 // 1534
PPC CTR: 5.72% // 6.37%
Offer Clicks: 331 // 553
LP to Offer CTR: 32.78% // 36.05%
ROI: -30.57% // -27.13%
LP CR: 7.77% // 6.87%
MY ANALYSIS
Why Those Numbers Changed
I have learned a lot with this campaign, and most notably is the fact that broad/generic short tail keywords are VERY hard to be profitable on. I saw the same big players in position 1-3 for such KWs and figured if they can do it, I can. I was wrong. Thanks to everybody who offers suggestions about the "buyer mindset" - It is a lot harder to capture than it sounds, at least for me.
PPC CTR Increase: I used the old betty A/B split testing for a bit (which can be hard to figure out when to changes ads at times) and that seemed to work pretty well. I found the "type" of ad that was doing well and branched off of that. Near the end I settled with an ad that was consistently getting 8%+ and was too caught up in the fact that my LPCTR blows.
LP to Offer CTR Increase: Well, even though sub 40% is far from ideal, I tried and tried but still couldn't manage to keep it consistently 50%+. I used an assortment of different styles, colors, LP copy, call to action buttons/pictures/links, and offers. Even with my short tail campaign AdCTR of 10% I still couldn't get this consistently profitable. My best day on this campaign came on a Saturday and the LPCTR was just shy of 60%. Ironically enough ROI was 108% - I didn't change a thing and the next day was -20%.
ROI: The biggest help to my ROI was consistently testing different LPs and then the 108% day. Only 4 of my 19 days were profitable: 108%, 81%, 18%, 3% - These were random days and nothing was changed the following day but ROI never ceased to drop at least 40%.
LP CR: It didn't help that yesterday I got pillaged in terms of conversions/profit: -100%. Ironically enough, yet again, the best conversion days were the best ROI days: 108%: 11.5%, 81%: 20%, 18%: 8.11%, 3%: 14.29% - This day would have dominated, but LPCTR was a dismal 28%.
There are the stats. Like I said, it is VERY hard to get broad short tail words profitable (at least from the 3 weeks I tried next to nothing else but to get that profitable).
POSITIVES:
- Learned a ton
- Decent sized check from network
- AMEX points
NEGATIVES:
- Lost cash
- Decent(er) sized payment to CC
What's next?
I'm essentially "re-building" this campaign. I'm not going to bid on the short-tail anymore, which will cause a huge hit to volume, but I decided who cares about volume if it keeps you in the red? I'd rather have this campaign returning 50%+ consistently on a $30 spend than losing me $50/day on a $200 spend. Especially after 3 weeks of that, it gets old.
If anybody has any additional help about finding LT keywords or just want to further analyze my stats, feel free.
As I said, I learned A LOT from this campaign, which was really my first full blown campaign that I tested, tested, tested and spent a decent amount of money on.
