How long does it ramp up a PPC campaign?
-
I was speaking to a SEO the other day. He is going to be working on an ecommerce site soon. I was suggesting that he might want to augment his SEO efforts with PPC in order to be able to show some results in the near term, as it would most likely take some time for his SEO work to be showing results.
His response was that while he hasn't utilized them as much, he's found that it can take 3-6 months to get a PPC campaign to really make money. I'm just curious if you guys feel that this is an accurate statement?
-
If your website has no issues and your product is good. You should start making money after 1 month. The biggest problem is not to waste money. Learning curve costs money. plan it carefully arithmetic is your best friend.
Regards Igor
-
Hi Brett,
EGOL is correct...PPC is really competitive, especially for high volume / expensive products. John is correct that Re-marketing, PLA and branded keywords are the most profitable. I also recommend going after competitors names / product name. PPC is the only way to rank for competitors terms, and since competitors keywords are targeting people looking to buy your type of product, they will convert well.
PPC takes time and money to determine the best keywords for you...it will also take some time/money to establish high Quality Scores, which are essential to the long term success of a PPC campaign. However I always recommend my clients start with PPC because you can rank at the top of page 1 today; and SEO can take months to get to the top of page 1. Even when you rank on page 1 organically, having multiple ads in the SERP will increase your overall clicks (1+1=2.25) i.e. 1 PPC ad + 1 SEO ad = more clicks than you would achieve with just 1 organic ad.
I also recommend using a high quality PPC manager who has the knowledge, experience and ppc tools to make your ppc campaigns profitable quickly. There is a learning curve with PPC, as with SEO, or any other marketing niche. Its better to use a ppc manager who is already over the learning curve. You should also look for a manager that uses Marin Software to manage their campaigns...Marin's bidding algorithm optimizes keyword bids better than any person can. A person can't optimize millions of keyword bids daily...that's what computers / PPC software is for.
If you would consider working with a PPC manager, please private message me. I offer a free AdWords review, no strings attached. To demonstrate my PPC skills, I will give you a handful of actionable ideas that will improve your ppc campaigns. If you think I am worthy of managing your PPC campaigns, we can start a marketing relationship. If not, you will have a handful of PPC strategies that will improve your campaigns.
Have a great day
Branden
-
Hi Brett,
I would suggest starting off with a very focused PPC campaign aimed at a few products and review the performance. As EGOL has mentioned, you will have to watch your competitors very closely to ensure that they are not offering better deals than you for the same keywords. This should help bring in funds as the SEO campaign is ramping up. We have also seen a correlation with PPC traffic improving organic traffic for our clients.
Cheers,
SEO5
-
EGOL as usual is spot on. If you're interested in going forward, here are a few good types of campaigns to get started with that are generally high ROI:
- Remarketing (generally for display advertising, and now for search!). This will allow you to show ads to people who visit your site, or add things to their shopping cart and don't check out. You can link your Adwords account to Google Analytics to use your goals and events from there to make this even easier (see here). Since they've been on your site before, you know there's some extra interest in your products.
- Product Listing Ads. Many merchants see a good return on these if you can optimize your merchant feeds properly. These are the ads that appear when you search for a specific product, with the tiny pictures on the search results page.
- Brand advertising. For example, if your company Acme sells trail running shoes, if someone searches for "Acme trail running shoes", they're going to see ads above your organic listings, and you'll lose some clicks to them. You can pretty easily get your ad to the top of the pile because your quality score will usually be a perfect 10 for these keywords.
-
When I start a PPC campaign I include keywords that I hope will target the right people, I write multiple ads that I hope will attract clicks, and I make landing pages that I hope will convert.
As the campaign runs I am able to eliminate keywords that do not convert, eliminate ads that don't attract clicks and eliminate or modify landing pages that do not convert. Every time you eliminate something the performance of your campaign should improve - if you made a wise decision. Your profit should improve and your quality score should improve and that can bring your bid prices down - if you know what you are doing.
It is something like sighting-in a gun. You shoot, see where you hit, adjust the sights, shoot again, and keep at it until the gun is zeroed in.
If your campaign is targeting a niche with vigorous activity you will get lots of data quickly. But if your campaign targets a sleepy little niche with very few searchers, it can take weeks or months to accumulate enough data to eliminate poorly performing keywords, ads, landing pages, etc.
Making money on PPC can be very difficult. You can be competing with people who can obtain product at cut rate prices, ship their packages at a discount and have highly efficient fulfillment teams and very smart ad managers. If you are not tracking your conversion rate and keeping a close eye on your profits and costs you can loose more money than you make at PPC. I am willing to bet that a lot of my competitors are loosing money at PPC and don't know it.
It is really hard for a small business to make money at PPC. You have to be super smart and super efficent and get all of your expenses down to rock bottom. Try it and find out. I bet you are surprised at how easy it is to blow a lot of money.
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
-
Are there any recent studies of organic CTR vs. PPC CTR?
Pretty much the title. I am putting together a "game plan" for my CEO, where I would like to touch on the difference in CTR between SERP organic results and SERP PPC results. I've found a few blog posts that talks about PPC being responsible for 15% of all clicks, where 1-5 organic results are responsible for 68ish % and the rest being on 6-10 and page 2/3. However, I do not see any sources in these articles, which begs the question, where are these numbers taken from? Any suggestions? My own gut feeling (and SERP behaviour) tells me that these numbers might actually be super accurate, but since my business plan will most likely end up in the hands of our board of directors, I would very much like to back up my action points for growth, with actual sources. Thanks in advance.
Paid Search Marketing | | Nikolaj-Landrock1 -
Adroll for Retargeting Campaign
Hi guys, Wondering if anyone can comment on their experience using Adroll, especially in terms of it's performance in comparison to Google Adwords retargeting campaigns. Thx!
Paid Search Marketing | | David_ODonnell1 -
Can I dynamically add city name to my PPC ad text and URL based on the user's search?
I have looked into DKI (Dynamic Keyword Insertion), but have not found a solution and thought that some excellent Mozzer might be able to help. Here is the idea: We have landing pages for hundreds of cities. The local content on each of these cities changes page to page, however the keywords that we are going after are the same. So, I am trying to create a dynamic ad group that looks something like this: Headline: {City Name} {Keyword} Description: We cover {City Name} {Keyword}, get more info now! URL: http://www.website.com/{City Name} Please let me know if you can assist with this, B
Paid Search Marketing | | Reis_Inc.0 -
What audience size do you need for a successful retargeting campaign?
I recently launched a trial of a retargeting campaign but after a month I have only 100 impressions and 0 clickthroughs. I am working in a competitive space but I placed a relatively low bid because I read that retargeting campaign banner ads should cost less. The number of people who have been added to the retargeting list by visiting the site is under 10,000. What do you think is most likely to be the problem causing a low number of impressions and clickthroughs? Can a retargeting campaign be successful with a small audience size?
Paid Search Marketing | | ProjectLabs0 -
Launching a PPC Campaign during the Holidays
Hi Mozzers- I have a client who is interested in running a PPC campaign. We are all setup to go...Here's my dilemma. The client provides moving services - household and commercial. I'm torn whether or not to launch the campaign during the holidays. Pros: We're not paying for impressions so it won't cost us any more $$. Cons: It probably won't show the best outcome over December - clicks/conversion. Thoughts? Pull the trigger and launch or wait until January? Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | lhc67
LHC0 -
Facebook PPC - Number of Clicks According to FB Different Than Visits in Analytics?
Hi There So I was trying out my first FB ads with a client. I see according to FB there were 105 clicks. But according to google analytics there were only 69 visits. I am counting visits from facebook.com and apps.facebook.com Any reason for this discrepancy, or any tips? Am I missing something? Thanks! 687sfgMVaE 1j56Pm7nD
Paid Search Marketing | | evolvingSEO0 -
Is PPC worthwhile for a product with no search volume?
I'm working on a PPC campaign for a client who provides a luxury service. He has very little search volume in general, and there's one product that has no volume at all. I'm wondering if it's worthwhile to run a campaign for this product using the general keywords. I estimate that 95% of the population has no intention of using our service and can't afford it even if they did. For example, say we're a concierge doctor service. When people search for 'medical doctor' or 'medical treatment' they are looking for doctors, and we probably could help them, but they won't want us when they could go to the doctor's office down the street and pay a fraction of the price. Obviously I'd tailor the keywords so it would be as relevant as possible. Yay: If my ads are clear, then whoever clicks them is interested in my product, so my money is being well spent. I'll just have a very low CTR. Nay: Spend the money on advertisement tailored to the target market, both people with existing interest, and those who would want it if they knew we existed. Yay or nay?
Paid Search Marketing | | 5225Marketing0 -
Does anyone have a good resource for learning PPC?
Hi guys I'm looking for a good resource to brush up on PPC. Any help would be great. Thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | flemingsteele0