PPC Bid Question

Status
Not open for further replies.
P

phil9922

Banned
Jun 5, 2007
378
4
0
I am pretty new to PPC marketing and I have only broken even on my campaigns for the most part. I'm not a broke affiliate marketer and I have some $ to spend, I just dont want to risk lots of it because I still don't really know what I'm doing.

That's the background, here's my question: When you are researching keywords for a semi-competitive niche (About $3-4 max CPC for the shortest keywords on the adwords traffic estimator) do you go guns up and bid the max $3-4 for those keywords?

With my campaigns I've broken even with I usually bid about half what the suggested max is ($2 CPC in this case), and I'm starting to wonder if the lower ad positions caused by the lower bids is the reason why I am only breaking even.

Basically here's what I'm thinking my problem is:
Lower bids -> lower ad position -> lower ctr -> lower traffic -> less conversions

Before I up my bids (doubling my ppc cost), I was hoping someone could tell me if this logic is correct.
 


I would be hesitant to focus on the "shorter" keywords. I don't know what your keywords are, but often times those keywords have folks browsing just to seek information not to act & generate a lead. That factor combined with the high CPC can hurt. Depends on the niche though - if you think you'll be able to convert at a relatively high CPC, I would not hesitate to bid high and test it out to see what converts and what doesn't. Gonna lose some money at $3-4 CPC doing that, though and you may end up back at square one.
 
If you are new you would probably be better off sticking with long tail keywords because they are less competitive and the cpc is lower.

If you've got campaigns that are breaking even with short keywords you should try to generate some long tail keywords based on the short keywords you are using and find phrases that are cheaper, have a better conversion, etc.. and eliminate the shitty ones.
 
Like NonProphet said, especially when you are beginning you should stick to long tail keywords. Pay less on a bunch more less competition keywords instead of paying a ton on not very many high competition keywords.
 
What kind of keywords are you buying for 4dollars a pop?!!? How do you make money buying keywords? My only guess is that (a) Your conversion rate is like 3/4 off the landing page or (b) the Payout is like $200+ a conversion. Maybe i'm going about it all the wrong way though :)

There are ways to get much cheaper bites at that kind of traffic.
 
deStone said:
What kind of keywords are you buying for 4dollars a pop?!!? How do you make money buying keywords? My only guess is that (a) Your conversion rate is like 3/4 off the landing page or (b) the Payout is like $200+ a conversion. Maybe i'm going about it all the wrong way though :)

There are ways to get much cheaper bites at that kind of traffic.
Click to expand...

With one of my existing campaigns (one of the ones I mentioned just breaking even) I'm paying about 2.50 per click and converting around 1:10. Thats $25 spent on clicks, with a $30 payout per conversion. I have been getting about 3 leads per day with this campaign. Although it is making some profit, I don't really consider a profitable campaign it since I am not getting much return on my time invested.
 
Are you getting only 3 leads per day because of your budget or because the trafic isn't there ?
2.5$ is really huge for a click, I could imagine paying that on adwords during the first days/weeks but the ctr should lower your cpc pretty fast.
I launched a campaign on adwords on a competitive niche in french language one month ago. CPC to get on first page was 1.5 € (~2.2$) the first day but it dropped automatically to 0.6 € (~1$) after a week and around 150 clicks since my ctr was > 5%.
To answer your initial question, I'd bid 3-4$ on clicks only if a) I'm sure my ROI would be good at $2.5 / click on first page and b) my CTR is huge and will quickly lower my cpc.
 
Dawmz said:
Are you getting only 3 leads per day because of your budget or because the trafic isn't there ?
2.5$ is really huge for a click, I could imagine paying that on adwords during the first days/weeks but the ctr should lower your cpc pretty fast.
I launched a campaign on adwords on a competitive niche in french language one month ago. CPC to get on first page was 1.5 € (~2.2$) the first day but it dropped automatically to 0.6 € (~1$) after a week and around 150 clicks since my ctr was > 5%.
To answer your initial question, I'd bid 3-4$ on clicks only if a) I'm sure my ROI would be good at $2.5 / click on first page and b) my CTR is huge and will quickly lower my cpc.
Click to expand...


The traffic is definitely there for more leads, but my ad position for a lot of adgroups is 6-8. My CTR is about 3.5% for the past 7 days. My internet is sucking right now and I cant login to adwords, but I think my #s for the last 7 days were something like 200 clicks : 6000 impressions (estimate). I haven't even hit a third of my max daily budget in a single day yet. I'm starting to assume my CTR and clicks would increase if I raised my bids, since it would raise my ad position.
 
If you are making a profit, you are making a profit. Take those keywords that are converting for you and put them in their own separate group (if they already arent). Start using some long tails based around those converting keywords.
 
Well, in this situation I would try to raise my bids yeah. 200 clicks / 7 days is ~30 clicks per day @ 2.5$. Try to bid 4$ for 3-4 days and see what happen. Worst case, you loose 200$ which is not that much, but maybe you will get a much higher ctr. And with a higher ctr, your cpc will decrease over time.

It's hard to predict exactly what will happen without knowing the market, the competition and so on so just try it and see, you might be surprised by the results.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom