cpm vs cpc

[bigvictu]

I want to start an adword campaign for my new website. (Just got a $100.00 coupon from google to boot). I wanted to know which way you guys went about implementing your adwords campaign to maximize returns. Did you go cpm or cpc? Any keywords do better for you than others? If you want to pm anything because you don't want it to be public knowledge that would be fine. Any help would be appreciated.

[CaptainsLS]

Vic, I'm slowly learning to hate googles adwords. Mine is currently set to CPC, but the bigger problem is that my 'ad' is pending review. I hear this can take anywhere from a couple days to months! I cant really explore the best setup without having my ad running. Is yours visible yet?

[bigvictu]

No I haven't even started yet. Just set up my google account and started looking at anyalitics. I'm gonna set mine up per click like you and I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I know when i signed up for googlemaps it said it will take six weeks.

[bigvictu]

Just a quick follow up. i registered with yahoo and bing as well for their maps/searches. in yahoo i come up first if you type my name area in and brick pavers so it seems like yahoo responded very quickly to my registration. Not sure what the difference is but I'd suggest registering your site with all of three search engines.

[CaptainsLS]

Ok, let me know when you get going; ill be curious to see how this works out. I just changed my bidding option to ‘manual maximum CPC bidding’. I changed my max CPC bid to .75 cents.
Once I changed it to manual, all me keywords will give me more information. For example, in my advertising area the keyword ‘Landscape Architect’ gives me the message ‘Below fist page bid – First page bid estimate: $1.25’.

On a side note, perhaps my area is oversaturated with competition but I cant make sense of spending 1.25 just for a click!?! Does this sound reasonable?

[Harmony Design Group]

Think about it this way Captain. If you sent out direct mailings they would cost almost $1 per flyer and you might not even send it to someone who wants landscaping or Landscape Architecture. If you do google add word your add will only come up if someone wants that service. Its a much better way to reach people.

[CaptainsLS]

Marc- Valid point, and that’s why I’m giving it a try. It’s just hard to guesstimate how many people will only venture as far as your homepage and then exit. Or even worse just be browsing for DIY ideas. I’m sure once I start to have statistics to analyze I will be able to make more sense of it.
I do like how adwords works in conjunction with analytics so I can actually keep track of where people that cost me money end up.

[Harmony Design Group]

I think the direct marketing to a specific user is the future. You will see in the future that advertisers will even be able to target the commercials you see based on your profile. Your likes and hobbies. If advertisers know I like gardening, sports. If I am watching a program on TV I will be seeing adds for products directed to my likes and hobbies. If my wife is watching a show she might see other adds directed at her profile.

[stoneguy]

My direct mail does not provide a better rate of return than my adwords. Not sure why your ads are up for revue. Mine are update within minutes. I have never had such delays the most was about 30 minutes. I always check. Sometimes using certain words like "free" raise red flags and calls for a review.

Yes, there are a lot of DIYers out there so be such not to use phrases that might pull them in. Don't get discouraged after 2-4 months you will get a good feel. (2-4 months for me is equivalent to $1200):scared: That's only Google!

[Rex Mann]

we started using adwords in 2003. We were the only paver installation in Phoenix using it at that time. Minimum bid was .05 cents per click. It was a goldmine when I started it. But, at the end, Spring 2009, I was spending 500 month. And, the bids were around 1.50 for the premier key words. Plus, everyone was using it now.

Some markets are saturated with the use of adwords. In small markets they may be useful and cost effective.

I do not use it any longer. We are using other methods to get the word out about our company. We just added social media icons and a share button to our website. We have a blog, you tube channel, couple twitter accounts, linkedin and photobucket. Time will tell how successful these will be.

One tip on adwords: I put all our rivals names in as keywords. We came up right next to them. Some of the owners actually got ticked off because we did this.

Peace,

Rex

http://PaversInstalled.Com

[bigvictu]

Trying to figure out if you can see where on the map your pay-per-clicks came from using analytics or adwords. Just started getting clicks yesterday. Today I had 8 clicks for landscape designers but on the map in analytics I didn't have anyone in NJ going to my site. This slightly vexes me since I am only supposed to have a 50 mile radius on my ppc campaign. Also I noticed that some of my keywords wouldn't come up on first page, lets say for example EP HENRY but I did come up on EP HENRY Installer so I am gonna try to vary my keywords before I raise my bid price.

[CaptainsLS]

Vic, go your analytics dashboard. Click on ‘traffic sources’ , under the heading ‘Top Traffic Sources’ it lists the sources in order. At the bottom, Click on ‘view full report’. In the second column you the heading will be NONE, change that to ‘city’ and it will refresh. Last, at the bottom there is a filter option asking for ‘Source/Medium’ type in “google / cpc” and click GO.

You now have all visits from CPC and where the came from as well as what pages they visited on your site. There is probably a better way to filter this, but I haven’t got many clicks yet, so I’m using this way for now.

[bigvictu]

Thanks captain I played around with it and figured out the problem. There are two ways for people to find your site, (search)click on it after entering a key word search and by clicking on it when they are on a site that google finds relative(content). I turned that option off because I'm not sure if that follows the radius of your campaign like the keywords do. By the way, I must have never saved my 50 mile radius so I fixed that. Have you manually entered and bid on any specific web sites for your add to appear on?

[CaptainsLS]

I haven’t bid any specific sites yet. I’m not sure where to put the ads. I’m starting to look at how to do that now. Have you?

[CaptainsLS]

Also wanted to ask you about how many key words you have per campaign? I cant decide if its best to go crazy and have every possible word, or try to be selective to have a better CTR?

If you havent read about the CTR (click-through-rate) I guess they take a ratio of your impressions/clicks and give you a percentage. The stronger the percentage the more likely your ad will appear regardless of cost.

I've only had 2 clicks from 200 impressions today:noidea:

[bigvictu]

Captain- Learned something over at lawnsite wanted to share with you if you didn't know. Say your ad is for techo-bloc. I was sending the clicks to my home page but what I should have been doing was sending them to the page on brick pavers where it mentions techo-bloc. It helps two ways. One it gives the people the info they are looking for right away without having to navigate around your web page. And two it improves your campaign ranking(how I have no idea). I have yet to get any calls from the internet. I've been averaging about 4-5 clicks a day. It is neat to see where people are from and how log they are staying your site.

[CaptainsLS]

Vic- I read about that on the Google adwords help section. How many ads do you run? I only have two running; one general one and another one for masonry. They are both linked to my home page though. I think ill try adding some ads and give that a try.

I’m getting around 5,000 impressions and 10 clicks per day. Landed one large job from it so far. I need to work on my words I think… my CTR sucks. It should be over 2% and mine is at .50%.

[bigvictu]

Mines at .75% 2500 impressions and 20 clicks. I have three ads going all in one campaign. never really sat down and read the help section but by breaking my general one into three i definately get more clicks. i don't have one for landscaping or landscapers because i figured that would be expensive and too general. i did do ads for certain paver brands and tailored my ad to each one.