How to set an appropriate Adwords max CPC?
-
How do you gauge setting your initial max cost-per-click for specific keywords?
For example, you have a keyword that has an estimated "first page bid" at $6.25. If you are wanted your ad to show competitively with your competition, how much should you start at? Two times the "first page bid?" Three times?
I'm working on revamping some ad campaigns to help with our paid marketing expenses. I do have quite a budget to work at, but we are hoping to cut down some of this cost. We just spent the past few months trying to spend our way out of some poor quality scores and CTR's. Our metrics have improved drastically, now I want try and cut down our CPC, which is over $19! Our ROI is hard to calculate due to the fact that it can take a few years to obtain profit from the market we are in. Our conversion rates are over 9% from paid advertisement to leads (which is pretty decent for our market).
I am all eyes and ears on this subject... I am ready to start playing around with prices tomorrow to see how we fare, in hopes I get some solid responses before then.
Thanks in advance!
-
This is another great suggestion and YES I do this on a weekly basis. IMO, your answer fits right in with the discussion.
I usually like to pull my full reports from AWStats from within the server. I then "weed" out certain words that should be within my negative campaigns and find others that may be worth running.
-
It's one step away from your question, but have you looked at your search query report recently, to see the actual keywords people are using? If you can raise your CTR by getting rid of irrelevant impressions, you can hopefully lower your CPC, and also avoid paying for some off-target clicks.
-
Lol. No worries! Always reply with great responses. Never know who may be looking for that answer as well.
Right now, we are not running location specific campaigns. Only nationwide 24/7. Haven't had the time to really "fine tune" this account due to the massive amount of keywords, landing pages and ads running already.
Job security maybe?
-
Totally. Sorry if I sounded too generic but it's always difficult to figure out the back story on someone's question. It sounds like you're doing all the right things. You're likely doing location specific and day parting as well where applicable.
-
Excellent information and well put together answer!
I don't want to take away from it, but I have already done all of my homework (as you have already suggested above). I was merely searching for a modest starting point at cutting down our CPC to a certain extent.
I would have to imagine I have answered my own question while asking it. I need to simply adjust my pricing (decrease max CPC) till I feel satisfied with our positioning and our conversion rates.
-
First, I'd spend a little extra time on getting at the value of your leads, if at all possible as this is a key component of answering your own question. Perhaps you can find that number in generalized industry data, or you can extrapolate from what you currently have.
Next I'd begin breaking the high cost CPC keywords into their own very specific ad groups and/or campaigns so that you have maximum control over the ads running, split testing, and placement.
After that I'd begin lowering bids until I'm in the 2nd or 3rd place slot and then split test ad titles and descriptions to find my sweet spot, as well as continuing to run conversion tests on the landing pages. At the same time I'd be looking for content placements on highly applicable sites and see if I could find some markets where I'm plugging in to my target demographic but at a lower cost than search.
Finally, lather, rinse, repeat. Keep working the system to increase current lead/sales volumes while decreasing costs.
But to answer your first question, typically I aim high at the beginning in cost and then work my way down with the price as the data comes in.
-
use http://www.semrush.com/ to get ideas of cpc prices - but i normally just start first page page bid or low then watch positioning
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
-
New Adwords Account To Replace Old Low Account Quality Score
I'm dealing with an old adwords account that has been managed by a wide variety of people over many years. From what I can tell, the account has always struggled with low kw quality scores. In addition to other quality score improvements (SKAGs, better landing pages, more ad testing for CTR), what do you think of throwing in the towel on this account and starting a new adwords account... importing the better part of the old account? Any hidden pitfalls I should be aware of and precautions to take or is it all opportunity to start fresh? Thanks!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | 945010 -
Help: Trouble converting customers with new adwords campaign for a new site
I have just launched my brand new e-commerce site www.zenory.co.nz We are wanting to expand global as you can see we have com.au and also .com but due to our min budget we had to start with NZ first for organic search and a min monthly budget on adwords which doesn't come close to what our competitors are paying. Really is it worth paying out our limited budget with adwords? Or should be put that into ranking organic search. While we have only just started our adwords PPC campaign and I think it has only been roughly two weeks - We have had around 18 people sign up, to which we have a 3 step process, however, we are struggling to convert and complete a transaction which customer places credit card details in step 3. Does anyone have any ideas around how we could better optimize or perhaps make any suggestions? Our competitors spend rather large amounts of up to 3000k - 300k per month on adwords, and there is just no competing with that. Any suggestions I would definitely be open to... Thanks alot
Conversion Rate Optimization | | edward-may0 -
Adwords Remarketing Advice - Low Traffic Pages
Moz, I am just looking for a little advice if anyone has any experience with Google Adwords and remarketing in particular, I am currently looking through the Adwords help pages to gain a better understanding of how Adwords remarketing works, from what i gather this can be a really useful resource to use in certain industries and i have a lot of ideas and scenarios where i think this could work really well, I am just trying to get a good understanding of the how remarketing lists are built up, Using Rule based targeting for visitors that have visited a specific page that gains roughly 1200 unique visits every 60 days, so i have set the membership duration to 60 days, So if i use the visit of this page as a rule for my list, then in a little less than 60 days time then my custom ads should start appearing to these previous visitors ? My Question Am a right in thinking the remarketing list is like a funnel, once 1000 visitors are added to this list/funnel then my ads will start showing, but then as those visitors in the funnel have reached the 61st Day they will be removed, and replaced with the new visitors being added to the list for that day ? Aslong as my list remains above 1000 visitors it will continue to show, but if i were to drop below 1000 visits within that 60 days my ads would not be visible ? so i would need to potentially extend the membership period if this happens ? Apologies as i really struggled to explain this question as best as i can 🙂 Hope someone can drop me a quick comment and straighten this out to ensure that i am on the right track and i am understanding this correctly 🙂 Thanks a lot James
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Antony_Towle0 -
Is it possible to set a Goal conversion tracking from a subdomain to a root domain?
Hi Mozzers, Here is an issue I am going through: I have a root domain(www.example.com) that is the core website where you are able to schedule a service I have a subdomain (sub.example.om) that is part of content strategy offering free tips and follows a different branding strategy. There are internal links from sub to root domain I have a GA subdomain tracking code installed on every page for both domains I would love to set goal tracking on GA for visitors coming to my subdomain, then going to root domain and then schedule a sevices? Is this possible? If it is, can someone show me a How To because I tried it anddidn't work? Thanks mozzers!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Adwords and Seller Ratings
We are in the process of having an agency take over an adwords account. Will we lose our seller ratings? The website we are advertising will not change, just the adwords account. Based on what I've read google pulls data from display URL. We were concerned with losing them as we've had a CTR% since they started showing up in our search ads. They will NOT be using our account, but they will be adding us to their MCC & granting us access. Thank You!!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | TP_Marketing0 -
Adwords Tracking
Hi, With Adwords conversion tracking is it worth allow Analytics data in as well? Does that confuse the adwords tracking data? Does it only include Analytics data that has been set up for conversion tracking? I hope i am asking the right questions 🙂
Conversion Rate Optimization | | wood1e19680 -
Adwords Conversion Optimiser
OK Mozers! Here's the situation (my parents went away on a weeks vacation...) • I am managing an online furniture retail website Infurn .com • Our budget is 500 euro per day and we need basically 20% cost per sale and im hovering at 30 - 35% • I recently was given the opportunity to participate in The Conversion Optimiser which allows you to set a desired CPA and Google works its magic geting you that target by adjusting your bids accordingly using historical campaign data. • Is this something I should use? Or should I continue to hone my ad groups, bids, products, landing pages, and ad copy until I reach my 15 - 20% CPA goal? Thanks!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | TheGrid0 -
Reviewing my Adwords Strategy
Before I started working on Organic SEO, I did Adwords. Being that I am entirely self-taught with adwords, I am concerned that about what I might not know. From time to time I have looked for outside advice, but I never got very far. It seemed that I would be talking to a salesman, someone who knew less than me, or someone who was horrified that I had 7,500 tracked words. So I am presenting my methods here for comment. Each keyword I have used is placed into an exact match campaign, phrase match campaign, and broad match campaign. Exact match gets the highest bid, broad match the lowest. Every week, I cull new keywords from phrase and broad results. I also create negative keywords each week based on searches that are obviously not looking for my products. Over time, I get very few searches triggered from broad matches. Keywords are kept in ad groups that generally have less than 6 keywords. Acceptable conversion costs are decided based on product category. I have made an assumption that first position adwords results are too expensive (idiots overpay for them). I automatically reduce my bid 10% on any ad that has an average position of greater than 1.5. I automatically reduce my bid 10% on any ad that has a conversion cost greater than my target. I delete keyword that have a CTR below 1%. I generally require 300 clicks to make a determination. All ads have been endlessly split tested to the point I don’t split test them much now. I judged ads for both click through rate and conversion rate. End result: After 4 years of doing this, conversion costs are below target costs. Not sure what else I could do to improve it, but looking for ideas. Management of the system is pretty easy now, as well. Anything I am missing?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | EugeneF0