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AMA about PPC Advertising. Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, whatever...

Marketing, social media, advertising

Eskil

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In my continued effort to contribute value to this forum, I thought one good way would be for me to take questions on PPC advertising and marketing online, since it has been my core strength in the past few years.

Some of you have probably advertised your businesses online for years already with SEO and/or paid traffic, but I’m sure there are a lot of others here who are just starting out – or are unsure of the best way to approach paying for traffic for just their website, product, or service.

My own qualifications and background:

I first got heavily involved with PPC advertising back in 2004, at first primarily with Google Adwords (both for search, and their Content Network, as it was called then). Since then, I have spent many a large budget on Adwords and various other platforms, including Yahoo Search, MSN Adcenter (which are now merged as Bing), 7Search, Pulse360 (self-serve media buy network), Facebook Ads, MySpace Ads, and a bunch of other PPC platforms. I have ran campaigns both for my own businesses, for affiliate campaigns, and as a consultant on behalf of clients.
I feel that I have gathered some solid experience on running both small and larger PPC campaigns (especially on Google and Facebook), and I’m happy to answer any questions you guys might have here.


So…bring it on! :)
 
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Eskil

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Can you suggest me, how do I find out if there is VALUE to advertise these products on google adwords, ie how do I calculate if it's worth it for me to advertise on Adwords. I did search some keywords(they were all product titles) on Adword's keyword tool, but I was unsure whether it was telling me how many people are clicking on these ads OR just the CPC cost ...
Regarding if it's worth it for you to advertise on Adwords - the answer is most definitely yes. That's not to say that it's right for everybody. It has to make sense of course. But in your case, you already know that there is a lot of competition on there. So that right there tells you that there is lots of money to be made. Generally speaking, the more competition you see - the safer it is to assume that there is good money to be made.

Don't compare your efforts however with the largest brand name corporations like Nike or Coca Cola however. The biggest guys are sometimes in it just for branding's sake. But take a good look at other retailers who are actively running on multiple different keywords, and especially those who are targeting "buy" keywords. Which brings me to:


I would appreciate it if you can give me some suggestions on getting started with Adwords, ie how do I know which keyword to advertise, should I advertise each product on its own, or I can advertise a category (ie use the category name as a title for the ad)?
When you’re just starting out with no prior experience, I recommend you start out with a smaller set of keywords. Of course, how much you are willing to spend will determine how big you feel comfortable with as a start. But even if you have thousands of dollars to spend in clicks every day – it’s too easy to loose track of things with too much going on at once.

Many make the mistake of just grabbing a huge list of “recommended†keywords, throw it at the wall, and see what sticks. Instead, (and especially if you want to control the budget starting out), I suggest you do a little bit of research first to find a dozen or so “buy†keywords that are most likely to give you both some good volume and conversions to begin with.

What I mean by “buy†keywords is this:
When people shop online, they are usually in one of three stages:
1) Surfing Mode
2) Comparison / Review mode
3) Buying Mode

A few years ago, I wrote a more detailed thread about this in another forum. It’s a sticky thread here.

Here is an excerpt from it that I wrote, that describes these stages:
AdMatrix_Mindsets.gif


Some examples...

Surfing Mode keywords:
sore feet
foot problems
home remedies for sore feet
(users know they have a problem, but still aren’t sure what can help them fix it)

Comparison / Review Mode keywords:
best footwidget
footwidget reviews
footwidget vs shoe widgets
(they have now found out they need a foot widget, and are looking to learn about their pros, cons, and differences)

Buying Mode keywords:
cheapest foot widget deals
FootFixer3000 sale
coupon for FootFixer3000
(finally, the user has narrowed it down and decided he needs the FootFixer3000. He’s got his credit card ready in hand… Now which website should he buy it at? Will it be yours? It’s now up to YOU to convince him!)

So, take a look the keywords you have found for your products again. Weed out the Surfing and Comparison keywords for now. You can attack those later when you are ready to scale out. But if you have a limited budget - it will more often than not be best to start out with lowest hanging fruit - the Buying Mode keywords first. Unless of course, you have already laid out a solid strategy with customized landing pages for the various buyer stages – but that’s a whole different topic I can address later. ;)

Focus on the Buying Mode keywords that you see. Pick out the top 10-20 or so that has the most volume, and we can take it from there.

p.s. One more question: Do you think it's bad if I use a .CO domain instead of .COM ? Is that going to hurt my sales at all?
Hmm, no not necessarily, but a .com is always better to have since it is what a lot of people expect. In fact, a lot of people hardly know there are even other extensions out there. If you are tempted to use a .CO name that already exists as a .COM, I would be very cautious of that. At least see if the other name (let’s say FOOTWIDGETS.com is already an established brand. If it is, and you start using FOOTWIDGETS.CO, it will be
a) Confusing for people who are trying to find the right site
b) Possibly causing problems with the owners of the original site name

With PPC in mind - think about what your name might look like next to your competitors up there in the results. I always prefer finding a name that is unique. If you have a unique and quirky name like Go-Go-Co.Co (or something like that), it could also work to your benefit. Think branding – but not to the expense of messing with people’s or competitor’s minds.
 

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I'm starting to get into affiliate marketing to get a little bit of cash and I've decided to use Facebook CPA as my platform. (This is a little bit outside the scope of Fastlane forum, but you seem to be knowledgeable)

What techniques have you used to improve CTR? And how specific do you target niches when you advertise? Thanks (this will also help me with my business, as I'm going to start advertising on FB soon)

CTR on Facebook is mostly determined by your image. Your headline (and description) will affect it too, but not by far like a good image would. The trick is to think outside of the box, be creative (pun intended, lol), and be the best at capturing people's attention.

However - keep in mind that it's not ALL about the CTR. You could have a completely wild image that has people clicking like crazy, just out of curiosity - but end up giving you no conversions. Or, you could have a *tempting* image that gets the right people, targeted for your offer, to click in and actually convert.

The most important thing is to test, test, and test.
Try setting up a set of at least 10 different ads for each campaign. Start out with broad variations in the images. Try black and whites, try colored / striped frames, try arrows, try humour/funny pics, try optical illusion pictures, etc etc. You never know what will work best until you start split-testing lots of variations against each other. The more ads you can afford to test - the better.

You will lose money starting out, but eventually you can weed out the losers and see a pattern in the ads for what seems to work better for your particular affiliate offer.
 

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I seem to be having an issue with Adwords QS. When I set up a new ad group with a few targeted keywords, most of those are rated at 7 or 8 initially. Then it goes down to 4 for all keywords.

Now at this point I'm getting 2% CTR, but have to keep increasing the bid to keep them on the first page. CTR goes down as a result and QS is still stuck at 4.

Do you have any suggestions for increasing quality score and/or click through rate?

As LightHouse pointed out - it is correct that new ads are given an initial score and then given a brief "tryout" period. The most important factor for your QS however is going to be your keyword VS ad copy VS landing page relevancy. QS is essentially Google's way of grading your ad based on how relevant it is to the page you are sending clickers to. The ad CTR itself also plays a role - but if you are having QS issues, your priority should be to look for improvements to make on your site.

Other than being relevant - your site and pages must also avoid to look like a "thin" site that provides little content or trust to the visitor. One example would be affiliate sites, which Google frowns upon.

I will try to illustrate relevancy with an example:
You have a site where you're selling guitars and related gear. You have category pages for electric guitars, amplifiers, effect boxes, accessories, tabulature and songbooks, etc. etc.

You have gathered lots of keywords for these categories and grouped them nicely in their own campaigns and ad groups. Then you create some ads for your campaigns like:

Love Guitars and Amps?
Rock out with these combo deals!
yourguitarsite.com/guitar-deals

Crank it up to 11 with our
Electric guitars, effects, and more!
Free shipping of orders over $100
yourguitarsite.com/guitar-deals


The problem with this is that these ads are not specific enough to be used on any of your category type landing pages. They are more suited for pointing to your homepage, or a "deals and offers" type page where you have a little bit of everything. If you use those ads and send visitors to your page for effect boxes, or the amps page, or the page where you're selling strings and guitar picks - it is not relevant enough. At least not in Google's eyes, because from their point of view - they see 18 other advertisers who are competing with you for the same keywords, and THEIR ads are much more specific and pointing directly to very relevant pages individually.

Make more individual ads that relate only to the ad group and category page in question. Don't try to cover all your bases with just a few broad sounding ads.

How does Google determine relevancy? They do so by analyzing your on-page content. Descriptions, title, headings, keywords on page, keywords in image descriptions, image file names, etc. etc. If you have only a handful of pages, you can do it manually - but if you're dealing with a large amount of pages, some PHP can help you a long way. :) One trick I have always used for this is to use PHP to dynamically inject the destination page with the keyword that I send from the destination URL. The basics of this is explained here.

Remember also to include the keyword in the ad text, and display URL if possible. Your page for guitar effect boxes should have ads like:
Guitar Effect Boxes and Pedals
Rejuvenate Every Riff with These Effects!
Huge Selection and Great Prices
YourGuitarsite.com/Guitar-Effects

As far as avoiding a "thin site" - make sure that your page has unique content, descriptive information (and enough of it), several pages on the site that are properly linked to such as About Us, Privacy Policy, Contact Us, Return Policy, etc. Try also to add a Google+ account, link to your social media accounts, and maybe even a Google Merchant account if that works for the business you're in. The more you can look like a 'proper' site with multiple pages of interlinked solid content - the more you will be looked at seriously by Google.

I hope this helps! :)
 

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I should also add that if you've already been running on Facebook Ads for a while - you will notice that your CTR will gradually fall down over time. How quickly this happens will depend on how large your target demographic is.

Smaller demographics = better targeting, but more banner blindness and a quicker drop in CTR.

Larger demographics = more longevity of your ad, but less targeted clicks.

Split your demographics into sub-campaigns by either age, interest, gender, or whatever suits your campaign.
 
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However, I want to ask you more about your experience with PPC. How is your typical approach when starting a campaign?
Do you start with really broad keywords, let it run for x time of y click. Analyze the data and change keywords etc?
Could you please explain more in detail about your approach?
My typical approach starts (naturally) with some dilligent research on keywords. Google's own keyword tool is a no-brainer here, but I have also used various other tools over the years. Some of them are not as good as they used to because of API changes, etc. One of the lesser known tools I often used was the Microsoft Advertising Intelligence plugin for Excel.
I haven't used that in a long time though and I'm not sure if it is still operational. They still have a link up for it here:
Microsoft Advertising Intelligence

Anyway - so let's say you have identified a "bunch" of keywords you think are relevant to your business. Now comes the task of sorting them out into groups or categories. This is a mundane task, but will pay off later. People who don't do this end up spending way more time later on trying to figure out why some adgroups and campaigns are hurting their CTRs, CPCs, and ROI.

It basically comes down to finding out which keywords should go into what adgroup (or separate campaigns). See the post I made above about buying mode keywords, etc. What you want to do is create separate adgroups that have a different purpose. So, one adgroup will target all those people who are just looking for information - while another adgroup will targeted towards people who are more ready to buy.

Again - your budget kind of dictates your focus here.
Low budget = stick to focusing on the 'buyer minded' keywords only. Here you will want to go after mainly phrase and exact match keywords as well, not so much broad keyword bidding.
Higher budget = also spend time targeting keywords that may bring you leads, or send people to a special landing page that can convince them to take decisions.

NOTE: An alternative approach to this, if you really have NO idea what keywords might work - is to decide on a handful of very broad and generic keywords, and let them run with broad, phrase, and exact match. For instance, say you are starting up a business selling CB radios, and you know absolutely nothing about this market. Instead of starting out with keywords like "buy CB radios cheap", or "Panasonic CBX3000 sale", you could start out with simply "cb radios" as a test. Now if you want to find out what people searching for that term is really looking for - let them tell you. Bring them to a page with some pictures and content, with a big search button where you log every search that people make. Site searches (tracked in Google Analytics) will let you know what those people really were trying to find.

Was it information on how to become an amateur CB user? (sell them an ebook). Was it DIY builders kits on how they can build their own? (sell them DIY kits). Was it CB radios for their truck? (offer them deals on cb radios).

But also - never neglect to do competitor research as well. Look around and see what other results are coming up when people are searching for the terms you are after. Are you seeing mainly big box stores just pushing their brand? Are you seeing other small businesses specializing in the niche? Are you seeing articles and content sites? Can you spot any gaps in what is being offered (or not offered)?

Here is something that is important to remember when it comes to Adwords:
Your campaign has just as much to do with what you offer - as how you are setting up your campaign. Simply because - people like to click the back button a lot. They will click ad 1, check out their site for 10 seconds, click back, check out ad 2, browse that one for a minute, then click back, and then ad 3, and so forth.

So half the battle is keywords, grouping, and ad copy.... the other half is having an IRRESISTIBLE and UNIQUE offering that stands out from the rest. :)

Anyway - so after I have grouped everything, I make sure that the campaign is set to NOT target the display network, only search. I set day-parting within reasonable hours (usually no point running ads from 12am to 7am, depending on time zone and unless you are promoting remedies for sleeplessness, lol). Over time, your Analytics will tell you what hours of the day and days of week are peak times for conversions.

And if you don't mind, can you share any success stories you've had with Adwords?
I used Adwords very successfully when I owned my own hosting company. Since I was running a recurring revenue model, it's hard to say what the actual ROI on my ads were - but I know for sure that what I paid to aquire a customer on Adwords paid itself off in tenfolds and then some! I could afford to be in the #1 spot consistently because I had my own company, and had really high margins. Guys who were running affiliate campaigns - trying to compete with me, had a serious disadvantage since they were limited to a low, fixed amount on return.
 

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In your opinion is PPC a viable option to promote a paperback book?

What im getting at here is that over the last few years ive dabbled with adwords but have found the CPC to be too high to make it a profitable venture.

Obviously due to the relatively low margins on a paperback book it is tricky to find PPC sources at a price which makes it worthwhile (in my opinion)

What would you recommend for this type of promotion?

Yes it very well can be, although the way you promote it to people clicking on paid ads will greatly affect your success - more so than the ppc ads themselves. I have never ran campaigns for books, but regardless of product - you need to know upfront the metric(s) you need to for it to work.

Since you know how much profit you will make on each sale, do a quick calculation of the conversion rate you must have - and CPC you need to stay within to at least break even.
Your CPA must be the same or lower than your profit per sale for it to make sense. CPA in this context means, Cost Per Aquisition. In other words, how much will it cost you to "buy" one buyer of your book. The cost of bringing in 1 sale.

So, for example:
Let's say you are making a $10 profit on each (after publisher/printing costs or whatever). Your CPA cannot be greater than $10.

So let's say you have 100 clicks on your ad. You're paying $0.50 per click. ($50 total)
You have set up a nice landing page, showing perhaps some excerpts or previews of the book. Bulletpoints, etc.

You will now need $50 / $10 = 5 sales to break even. So you will need a 5% (5 / 100 clicks) conversion rate to break even.
Obviously, the less you pay CPC, and the better your landing page converts - the more you make.

Your maximum CPC must be less than or equal to your conversion rate, multiplied by your unit profit.
or....
Your conversion rate must exceed your CPC, divided by your unit profit
or...
Your unit profit must exceed your CPC, divided by your conversion rate

If you cannot make these numbers happen on one platform, look around. There are literally hundreds of paid traffic platforms out there. Some way better than others. But if Google Adwords isn't for you, look into social PPC, paid banner placements, paid Youtube placements, and more. And in many cases, a CPM model (pay for impressions, not clicks) might work better for you than CPC.
 

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Now I've got another question - hope you don't mind

I don't mind at all, no. :)

The last couple of days I've run an Adwords campaign. I managed to get a 2% CTR, however the CPC where way too high.
It was around 1$. Now I've lowered it to 0,6$ and I'm almost not seeing any impressions

I thought starting out with a rather high CPC and gradually lowering was they way to go? Perhaps I just lowered it too much?

Yes you have probably lowered it too much.
But - how many ads do you have per keyword / adgroup? I recommend to start with at least 4 different ad variations on each - because some will give you lower CPCs than others. Split-testing ads is key to bringing down the costs.
 

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from what I know you buy traffic at one level say 100 views for $5 and hoping that a % of those 100 views for $5 actually convert at a higher rate to make the spread, is that correct?

Hey Money mania,
What you're referring to is CPM traffic, where you buy impressions or views based on people seeing your banner ad, textual display ad, popup, video, etc.

This is very different than PPC (pay per click), in which you only pay for every time someone actually clicks your ad.

It is also important to know that there is a big difference between search and display traffic. Essentially, with PPC search, your ad only comes up when someone is actively searching for something (a keyword) that you decided to bid on.

With display advertising, the users aren't necessarily looking for anything at all - but you are trying to catch people's interest as they are using a site (such as when they are on Facebook or reading a news site).

Each type of traffic has its advantages and uses, but I can go into this a bit more later.
I will also attempt to address your other questions here soon, maybe in some sort of a case study with examples, but I'm a bit busy at the moment. ;)
 
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When you run a Facebook ad, and it gives you the suggested bid per click, is it necessary to stay in that range?

I posted about this in another thread, in response to Mike39 being on a budget with his PPC.

I'll copy/paste my suggestion again here: :)

- bid conservatively. Do NOT let Facebook tell you what you should bid. What are your bids like now? I hope you didn't go with their "suggested" range. Always start out with around 40% lower of what their minimum amount says. So if they suggest a range of $1.00 to $1.50 CPC, start with $0.60. If the campaign doesn't get any impressions - slowly but surely increase the bid in increments in steps of $0.05 until you are seeing impressions come in.

I hope that helps, Sal.
 
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Eskil

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I was wondering how much data do we need in order to know if the campaign is successful or not?

I'm currently running my first campaign which are product listing ads for google shopping, I've had about 350 impressions and 11 clicks in 10 days... no sales...

Should I wait longer for more data? Or are those numbers already a sign of a bad campaign?

350 imps / 11 clicks is not much at all to base any decisions off of. With roughly 1 click a day it sounds like you either are targeting a very small niche market with low search volume - or you are just not including the right keywords. Also - how many ads and keywords are those numbers spread out across? A handful of keywords and a couple of ad listings? Or hundreds of keywords and dozens of ad variations?

Either way - you are going to need more data before you can make conclusions so try to wait it out longer. :)
 

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Any ideas on how to rank better for Google Product Listing Ads besides increasing CPC?

The PLAs are still relatively new (Google shifted from the old free product ad system to PLAs last summer), so not everything about their ranking algorithm is yet fully understood. However - it is known that both CPC and product feed relevancy are definitely contributing factors.

There are only 6 ad spots for Product Listing Ads. The good news is that if Google thinks you have more than one product that should show up in PLA for a search - they will sometimes put your ads in more than one spot along with competitors. This is something you don't see with text ads, where only one advertiser can show up on a page at any time. :)

That being said - the best way to try to 'rank' your PLA ads better is to optimize your merchant center data feed. Give Google as much detail as possible in your feed. Be as descriptive as possible with titles, product descriptions, and also be sure to set the most appropriate category or 'product type' as they call it.

Google gives you 70 characters for the title. Use them well, with the best keywords suitable for that product (without looking spammy). Descriptive, relevant, and to the point.

Make sure descriptions are clean and free of odd characters and unnecessary numbering, part numbers, things like "call us to ask about our specials" etc. Basically anything that you as a customer wouldn't care to see in an ad. Think of descriptions and titles as a way for you to personally tell someone at Google what that particular product is and what it is for.

If you have a large datafeed, this can be done with a script or Excel macros. Otherwise, a VA or someone can go through it and clean them for you. Again, include keywords you want in there that would match with what you are trying to get your Adwords campaign to achieve.

Also, make sure your uploaded feed contains no warnings or errors after submitting. You can check this by going to the 'Data Quality' screen in Merchant Center.
You don't want to be seeing things like this:
product-listing-ads-ranking_profitapolis.com.jpg


Note that some recommendations are not errors. That means that they will accept those submissions - but those problems can hurt your ranking.

Set up scheduled feed updates and make occasional tweaks and changes to your titles, descriptions, or images to keep things fresh. Although there is no proof to support this - it is likely that Google will favor (rank) merchants more who are keeping things up to date vs. stagnant ads that remain unchanged for months. (It's known that Google prefers frequently updated sites over stagnant ones when they rank websites, so there's no reason to believe they wouldn't do the same with product listings).

When setting up your product targeting in Adwords - do NOT attempt to target 'All products' in more than one campaign. This will actually result in conflicting targeting, and according to Google - may result in none of your PLAs showing up at all, or not very often. Instead, target only those product id's that are relevant to that campaign or adgroup and keep them out of others.

Also, any ideas on how to get your brand listed on the side column of brands in the product listings?
I'm not sure what you mean here exactly. Care to share a screenshot?
 

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My question is, in your experience, how much have your best skills made up for your worst skills, in relation to starting and running successful businesses?

Hey there,
I would say that my experience with advertising and marketing has been a very big advantage. Knowing how to sell is one of the most important things entrepreneurs should learn. The more you know about the how's and the why's of "people buying things" - the better prepared you will be to sell your product. Heck, even when you are creating a new site or product.

Sure - you can always hire someone to do the selling for you, but with some fundamental, first-hand knowledge - you will be ahead, and can save yourself money and potential frustrations. Also because if and when you decide to outsource your marketing, you can quickly tell if they are onto something good or not. (Same reason I like knowing at least some basic php code, so when I have coders do work, I can at least roughly assess what they have done and judge their work).
 

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Thanks Eskil! That's exactly what I did. I guess I made the right choice. I ran 3 ads starting today. If you want I can show them to you (But your going to have to tell me how. lol).

Great choice then! :) Yeah I'd be happy to take a look at them. I guess you can either email me screenshots of them, or if you want me to take a closer look into the campaign, I would need access to the account (which, I would understand if you wouldn't want to give out). But screenshots can show me a lot anyway. (If so, send some screencaps of your targeting settings as well as the ads themselves).

:)
 

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If you're developing a website via wordpress and have the site access blocked off until its ready for launch by lets say http status code of 503,
does that hurt your in terms of SEO/SERP placement upon launch?

Does developing your site within a subdomain of the main domain hurt SEO/SERP? In other words, if you have the exact same content as your main domain say at www.domain.com that you're using for development on www.dev.domain.com, does google count that as duplicate content?

Hey sammich,
Since your question relates to SEO and not so much paid traffic, I think there are other guys on here that can probably help you with those questions better than I can. Check out this thread:
https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/we...-optimization-blackhat-whitehat-whatever.html
 
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Vick

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Hey Eskil, been reading through your thread here, and you seem to know a ton about PPC campaigns. Any chance you can help me out with mine? My budget is pretty tight, so I would like to optimize it the best I can, and I just don't know enough about AdWords yet. Thanks!
 

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Eskil is hosting an INSIDERS call in 2 days.

https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/fo...der-conference-calls-upcoming.html#post261716

Here is his call agenda:

- Search vs Display
- Preparation and planning (Do’s and Don’ts)
- Bids and budgeting, CPM vs CPC
- Reaching the right customers (Targeting)
- Split-testing ad copy and landing pages – best practices
- Optimizing for conversions and ROI. (Tools and processes).
- Campaign issues, Account suspensions/recovery, other.
- Questions from the thread
- Questions from the listeners
 
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Eskil

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eSkil, I have a question.

How the &*@!(# do I do this! (picture attached)

You mean the image ads showing up alongside the regular text ads? Those are Google PLA ads (Product Listing Ads). You can set that up through the Google Merchant Center, and link them to your Adwords account. In your Adwords campaigns, you can then target the product(s) in your various adgroups to trigger the images.

Not surprisingly, the CTR and conversion rate on those are often much higher than the text ads. :)
 

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Sorry should have been clearer - yeah I got the images into my products, google merchants is great (shopping or whatever they're calling it now).

How did they get a little text box there, and a "subscribe" button, inside their ad?? Is that in shopping somewhere too??

Oh that.. sorry. Yeah that is still only in beta and not available to all accounts yet. It is basically part of the Site Extensions that you can add onto existing ads (if you have the feature enabled in your account under Site Extensions).
 

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Well this can't get any better now. A thread about ecommerce, SEO , and now Adwords!

I'm starting out an ecommerce store and I'm selling items from famous apparel/shoe brands which means the competition to rank on google is very high. That's why I want to look into adwords, however I don't know how to get started, this being my first time ever to get involved with Adwords.

Can you suggest me, how do I find out if there is VALUE to advertise these products on google adwords, ie how do I calculate if it's worth it for me to advertise on Adwords. I did search some keywords(they were all product titles) on Adword's keyword tool, but I was unsure whether it was telling me how many people are clicking on these ads OR just the CPC cost ...
I would appreciate it if you can give me some suggestions on getting started with Adwords, ie how do I know which keyword to advertise, should I advertise each product on its own, or I can advertise a category(ie use the category name as a title for the ad)?

Thanks!

p.s. One more question: Do you think it's bad if I use a .CO domain instead of .COM ? Is that going to hurt my sales at all?
 

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I was wondering if you have any tips to get back on adwords after having an account suspended arbitrarally. I was suspended for some affiliate marketing I did years ago that no longer meets their TOS. I now have my own website that I want to market. They said not to open another account but I wonder if I could open one in my business name with a business credit card. Thanks.

Here's what you want to do for that, I got this from some of my sources inside Google. Before contacting Google, change every single disapproved ad and lander to something legit. It's seems retarded, but they want to see that you have made a concerted effort to change your ways. This can be a challenge especially if you have dozens of campaigns for different things.

You have to understand that Google works in silos , so even if you contact support they have to push it to quality control. So the person you speak with doesn't necessarily have the power to change it even if they wanted to.
 

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Thanks for this! I used some of your advice and my Facebook CTR has gone from less than .01% to .023% within a few minutes.

I know that's nothing to write home about but it's cool to see it improve.

Glad to hear I could be of help! :)
 

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Hi, I have recently tried to drive traffic to cpa offers and clickbank products through POF to no success.
My CTR is horrible, and a lot lower compared to some of the exact same campaigns I have tried to run on facebook. I've tested a bunch of banner type of ads but they are not doing any better.

Is there any tips you can give regarding making ads that draw attention and increase my CTR? I've tried copying some case studies from reputable PPC/CPA marketers but to no success. Could you tell me where I can be going wrong and what I can do to improve?

I'll be more then happy to email you and show you some of my creatives if you have the time to give me some feedback?

Hey there,
I'd have to see your ads to tell you how to improve them, so feel free to shoot me a pm with your email address and we can take it from there. :)
 

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Are you still helping with AdWords? I need help. Im lost. Can email the ads and site info if you have time/inclination to look at. My other issue is my landing page stinks...but i dont know what to do about that either. Never done any of this til last week.
Thanks

Hey,
Yes you can still help, and you can pm me your email address and details. I'm on vacation right now but can look at it when I come home.
 
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Eskil

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Re: Ask Me About PPC Advertising. Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, whatever...

Yes the whole thing was recorded and is available there. :)
 

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I understand that you were involved in the supplement field ? Me being on the other side of the spectrum (I sell direct ads), how much do you think is fair to charge for ads on a health/fitness site, CPM wise ?

CPM rates can vary greatly (from $0.25 to $25), but you can get some ideas here Buy Ads | BuySellAds. Since you are in the fitness/health niche and if your site has good volume, good content, and ad placements that are strategically located throughout - I don't see why should charge less than $5 CPM - and perhaps upwards to $10 or more. But these are just rough estimates, not knowing your site volume or having seen it. :)
 

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Re: Ask Me About PPC Advertising. Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, whatever...

Well basically the CPM is dictated by what advertisers are willing to pay be in the best spots. You can command say, a $15 cpm rate for a great site - but the amount of advertisers who want to throw money at you for that rate may indicate if the CPM is right or not. If no one wants to buy ads at your rate, it's probably overvalued - and vice versa.
 

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Hey Eskil,
I seem to be having an issue with Adwords QS. When I set up a new ad group with a few targeted keywords, most of those are rated at 7 or 8 initially. Then it goes down to 4 for all keywords.

Now at this point I'm getting 2% CTR, but have to keep increasing the bid to keep them on the first page. CTR goes down as a result and QS is still stuck at 4.

Do you have any suggestions for increasing quality score and/or click through rate?

Thanks for sharing your knowledge :driving:

I will let Eskil put in his own answer, but i researched this as well. Essentially like organic search, you get a boost of QS when you start or refresh keywords or ads. Then you go to a 4 which is baseline it seems. It takes about 1200 impressions before you get your real QS which is largely based on CTR in the beginning to gauge relevancy. So those first few days/weeks you really have to focus on getting your CTR up so when you get your real QS its better. You also have to watch each level of CTR from campaign to group to keyword.

Like to hear what Eskil has to say on this as well.
 
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