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
-
About how much time should I budget for an adwords audit?
Hi, I'm considering devoting either my time to or jobbing out an adwords audit. The account has about a dozen campaigns and in total about 60 ad groups, 15 landing pages. About 6000 clicks and about 450 lead gen conversions. Conversions are phone and thank you page. The account involves search, display and retargeting. Client is looking for actionable insights about both the account and the landing pages, prioritized, in order to lower cost per lead. Here are my questions: How many hours of work? How extensive of a deliverable is the result? What might this cost if I hired a knowledgeable individual (not a big firm)? Thanks!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | 945010 -
Tracking Adwords users who sumbit a contact form after clicking through my Landing page.
I have a user, Jane, who comes to my landing page through an AdWords campaign. She click off my landing page, browses the website, then submits a contact form on one of the other pages on the site. My problem is when I receive the email from the contact form, there is no identification that this user came through adwords. If she had submitted the contact form on my landing page this wouldn't be a problem, but she submitted the form from elsewhere on the site. I know that I can see a NUMBER of how many goal conversions were achieved this way in Analytics. This is not what I want. I need something to identify it on the CONTACT FORM so that the intake staff in my office can credit that lead to the correct campaign. Any idea on how to achieve this. Technically, I am using the latest version of Wordpress and the Contact Form 7 plug-in. I can change plug-ins if needed.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | McShaneFirm0 -
Has anyone ever used Adwords' Forwarding Numbers as a Call Tracking Service?
Hi, I was taking over a client's Adwords account from a previous agency. It appears the former agency added the Google Forwarding Number (for call tracking on call extensions) and added it to the client's website. Therefore, if anyone calls that number from the website, it would register within Adwords (just not as a conversion but as a click under "call extensions") The problem: you can't filter by phone number (the same number calling +1 would indicate spam) you can filter by device (so tablet / computer) can be considered spam generally. Questions: Anyone ever used this before? Your thoughts? Does anyone know if there is spam coming from mobile devices now-a-days? Please tell me what I'm missing. Any advice / anyone else seen this / done this? Thanks Moz Community, Cole
Conversion Rate Optimization | | ColeLusby0 -
Adwords Advice
Hi. I have a few questions regarding Adwords set up. I typically follow a highly targeted model with Ad Groups consisting of a few ads and keywords. I have a client who offers multiple services across multiple towns/cities/counties but what I want to know is the best way to structure this at campaign level. Say they offer carpet cleaning, window cleaning and car cleaning. In cities London, Birmingham and Leeds. Now when setting the campaign up, would I be better served to set up a Campaign at: City Level. Eg London location settings, london keywords, london in Ad copy. Service Level. London, Leeds & Birmingham in location setting. Ad Groups for each city with Ads aimed at each city/keywords. Or City & Service level. Eg. London location settings. London Car Cleaning. The Ad Group, Ads, Keywords. What is the best structure to use? I see location as important but if I restrict settings to 1 city, am I doing myself out of some searches from regions on the border of London that might be interested in the service? I want Ads, Keywords to be highly targeted but the best way to play it. Thanks
Conversion Rate Optimization | | YNWA1 -
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 -
How can I find the redirect that removes special parameter from Adwords?
My main problem is Google Analytics doesn't show data from Google Adwords because a redirect in my site removes the special parameter(gclid) supplied by Adwords. Here's an email from one of Google Adwords representative: "When I reviewed your website, I found that a redirect set up on your site is removing auto-tagging information from your URLs. Auto-tagging automatically adds a parameter to the end of each of your AdWords destination URLs in order to identify visitors as AdWords referrals. The tag captures keyword, campaign, ad content information, and your ad's position when a user clicked it. The parameter used in auto-tagging is called "gclid." However, due to your website's redirect, the "gclid" parameter is being removed from the URL. As a result, Google Analytics is unable to properly track visitors reaching your site through AdWords. We suggest contacting your webmaster to append the "gclid" parameter to the redirected URL. If this isn't possible, you may want to consider removing the use of the redirect." Thanks in advance!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | esiow20130 -
Youtube Adwords click/visit discrepancy
We started a Youtube ad campaign. Over 2 days we got 60 clicks. However on our site we only measured 19 clicks. We used Kissmetrics to do the measurement. We're trying to figure out if the problem is on our end, or whether people are clicking but then closing the tab before the Kissmetrics JS loads. We're going to implement adwords conversion tracking to get a second measurement. But I was wondering if anyone else has experienced big gaps in how many people click a Youtube ad and how many actually visit the site. We got about 40 people who viewed the video 100%. I'm hoping bots aren't an issue with Youtube ads.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | lighttable0 -
Can Adwords campaigns affect other campaigns performance?
I understand that keywords and adgroups within a campaign can affect the performance of other keywords within that parent campaign. I was interested to understand whether campaigns in my account can affect one another. I have an adwords account with around 30 campaigns. Some are heavy hitters and others get minimal to 0 traffic. Will these low quality campaigns drive up the costs of my high end campaigns?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | peigenesis0