Starting Out With PPC, Need Some Advice
-
We are starting out with PPC for our site. I wanted to know what the best starting point is for our site. First, some basic info:
-
We sell thousands of products from a large number of manufacturers
-
We can offer the same prices as competitors, but we can't beat their prices
Here are my questions:
-
What would be my USP if my prices are the same, and we have the same store policies as competitors?
-
Is it best to start with product pages (as opposed to keywords)? Meaning, setting up a feed via MC and connecting to our adwords account.
Any advice is appreciated
-
-
I agree with David, find a reputable and experienced PPC company that is experienced with your situation, and pay for their expertise. Even if you are spending $1,500 per month on their services. Chances are they will also do MUCH MUCH better than you would in terms of your bottom line.
Let's just ignore the time savings from hiring out a good PPC company and focus on your return. Then it just comes down to a number game, and that should help you decide on how much you can invest on hiring a PPC company. Here's an example:
Let's say your budget is $4K a month on non-brand campaigns, and you're averaging 40 conversions, so your CPA is $100. If the PPC company does 100% better, you're getting 80 conversions for $5.5K a month ($4K + 1.5K service), and now your CPA is about $67. So what's better? You managing $4K and getting 40 conversions, or spending $5.5K and getting 80? And we haven't even factored in the possibility of an increase in average revenue per conversion yet! If the company can increase that too, well then... you get the picture.
Now, let's just focus on just the TIME savings, and let's say you can't go above $4K in total. So the PPC company eats $1.5K, and the rest goes towards your spend. Then the PPC company would only need to do 38% better to achieve the same results and number of conversions.
Hope all that made sense.
-
We do ppc and Let me just warn you if you are a drop shipper and can't do better pricing then your competitors and have no real advantage over the competitors it is very hard to make alot of money with ppc especially if you have small margins. I would try to find a ppc company that has experience with your situation and it would be worth every penny.
-
Generally in the UK the industry average is 12% of monthly Adwords spend.
-
No, I haven't heard of reputable PPC companies accepting of percentage of sales in lieu of a flat fee or percentage of the spend.
Why would they?
Because they're nice guys who want to mitigate their clients' risk? Um...no.
-
BTW, have you ever heard of PPC companies managing campaigns in return for a percentage of sales generated via PPC?
-
I have talked to a few reputable PPC companies. Many of them want what amounts to 30% of your PPC spend if you are on a small budget (around $1,500/mo), PLUS a setup fee of a few hundred dollars.
I talked to one that suggested starting with products and moving to other categories/section - a narrow to broad approach. This seems like the best way to go if you are starting.
The others want similar startup/monthly fees, but they will do the keyword research, ad group creation, etc.
It seems to me the best way to go is either create my own feed via MC and connect to my adwords account, or pay an exorbitant amount to a very reputable PPC company and hope their expertise will bring in revenue. I am leaning towards the product feed.
-
The problem with agencies -- at least the good ones -- is that they have little interest in small accounts. Commissions of $1,000 to $1,500 per month are often required to attract their attention. That implies an ad spend of $100,000 to $150,000 per annum.
You might try to educate yourself by joining the Google Engage program and taking other education steps. But this will most likely take weeks or months and you will waste hundreds or thousands of dollars along the way. And beware: the advice you get from Google is not only self-serving, but surprisingly ignorant about PPC basics.
I describe myself as a "web strategist" and PPC is only about 10% of what I do. I use PPC for only a few of my clients; a purely organic approach works best for most.
It's impossible to say more without knowing more about your client's competitive position. But I agree with emphasizing the USP, if prices are the same as competitors.
I've had success with ad copy that talked about:
- family-run business
- guaranteed
- personal service
- made in USA by licensed ________
- Save 12% in big summer sale
These lead directly to landing pages that repeat the keywords and and ad text phrases.
Too many people confuse PPC with a roulette wheel: if only you get lucky on a magic phrase you will win big. Unfortunately, it's a lot more complicated.
PPC is hard.
You have to come up with ad groups containing tightly related groups of keywords. You have to test ad copy over time. You have to refine keyword, dropping some and breaking others into new ad groups. And you have to develop the capacity to easily create new landing pages.
-
Based on what you are saying, I'd suggest getting an Agency to set this campaign up for you, as it will take a lot of time. Getting the feed in of your products will help a lot, but there will be a large number of ads you'd want to run alongside your individual products to your category pages etc.
SEOMoz probably isn't the best place to ask about PPC, so I'd recommend asking some more questions on a PPC forum.
You'd be best to lead with a USP - perhaps free delivery, next day delivery, local call centers, live chat, freephone numbers, etc.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is this PPC claim true?
I want to optimise our marketing spend and was concerned about the high conversion rate of one of our products. When I suggested stopping PPC I was offered this advice: 'It is vital to keep spending on brand terms to prevent competitors bidding on your brand terms and taking the top positions' This this true and if so why would anyone want to bid on our brand terms?
Paid Search Marketing | | FBS1 -
PPC software.. which one do you think is better? why?
hey guys... I am trying to figure out the best way of doing PPC. I dont want waste money doing it the less effective way. So far I have been looking at Acquisio and wordstream.. I am not sure which would be best for me or if there is other options that would be even better. I am in house in charge of 2 ecommerce websites.
Paid Search Marketing | | Felip30 -
Canonical or noindex for PPC landing pages?
I have two pages for this example. http://www.designquotes.com.au/web-design-quotes/ http://www.designquotes.com.au/web-design-quotes-melbourne/ The first URL is an SEO optimised page. The second URL is 99% the same, except that it specifies a city. It's intended use of for a PPC campaign. The first page has major cities mentioned on the page so I don't have to build a separate page for every city variation. The second URL is designed to be city specific for a geographically targeted PPC campaign. The more specific, the higher the conversion rate. Should the second page (the PPC landing page) use a canonical URL (since it's 99% the same) or should it be noindex?
Paid Search Marketing | | designquotes0 -
Wordwatch Software: PPC Adwords campaign managers heard of, tried, or actively using this?
I've been trialing WordWatch for about a month. I'll admit I've been skeptical from the start. I don't quite understand the results they're delivering or how it works. So I did a search for "Wordwatch review" hoping someone out there could shed some light or help me decide whether this software was worth keeping. But all I can find are two suspicious and badly written posts, immediately raising red flags. (Penuguin should have eliminated crap sites using the Flesch-Kincaid reading level, but I digress.) **Wordwatch premise: **They take over keyword bidding to maximize budgets and clicks. They monitor the Adwords campaign to find an "optimal" bid price. Two questions about this premise: How is it different than using the Google settings for optimize for clicks or conversions? Since Google Adwords is based on a Vickery auction, wouldn't lowering my bid only lower my position? Bearing everyone has the same QS, then lowering my bids to the range between 2 positions does not increase my actual cost. I have Wordwatch enabled for a few of my campaigns. Their interface leaves a lot to be desired. They don't report the activity or the changes they make to the campaigns from the dashboard. I had to go into my Adwords Change History to track what they were doing. And lo and behold they're also adding long tail keywords to my ad groups. Bottom line I didn't notice any huge impact, and I don't see how it's better than Google's own version of campaign settings. I don't know that they're really legit. But their marketing was so convincing, and they raised $1.4M that I need other opinions. Any one with some pro/cons, or yay/nays?
Paid Search Marketing | | flowsimple0 -
Keyword Domains for PPC
I have a client who wants to buy a lot of long domains with keywords in them, for example, thesandiegopetstore.com (this is fictional) and then set up a PPC landing page for each. They think that when someone types in "san diego pet store" that their domain will be listed high and then they will get a lot of traffic. My concern is that they will own a lot of domains for their company and I thought Google is getting pretty adamant about companies not having a lot of domains, and I thought that keyword domains are not as effective as they used to be -- that branding is more important now. Also, I think the domains they've picked target very competitive keywords and that perhaps they will get a lot unqualified traffic and will still have to pay for the clicks. What do you think? What is the best way to set up PPC landing pages?
Paid Search Marketing | | klkirby0 -
Do you take Seo and ppc management on competitor sites?
I would love to hear what everyone thinks : I wanted to know what people do about seo and ppc when the keywords and industries overlap.
Paid Search Marketing | | DavidKonigsberg0 -
Tagging Bing PPC
I am trying to tag my bing cpc in GA using the URL builder tool: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55578 It is incredibly tedious, and in order to get to the level of adwords, I have to create a unique URL for each keyword! Ahh, please tell me there is a better way!
Paid Search Marketing | | QuickLearnTraining0 -
PPC - Is this Budget suitable for me?
Hello, I have a question about a PPC(adwords) budget. If I want to invest 500$ / month , per year. Is that enough to reach more than 5.000 users(month) in my website? Keyword: TANGO Country: Br ( www.google.com.br ). I know I'm not giving a huge information about this question, but I just want to hear some toughts for a guy who has more experience in PPC than me. Any suggestion will be very appreciated, thanks.
Paid Search Marketing | | augustos0