Which of my products should I advertise for first using Adwords?
-
Serious Adwords noob here. I have been reading a great deal in preparation for my first Adwords campaign. Strangely enough, I have not been able to find information that might help me determine which of my 180+ products I should begin with and use in my first campaign. I imagine that there is some sort of general criterion like the highest selling item, lowest, one meeting certain criterion in the popularity of it's keywords/difficulty, one with least competition or, most likely, something that I haven't even thought of. Does anyone have any suggestions or a link to something I might be able to read to solve this? Thanks for your help!
-
I tend to agree with everyone's thoughts here. The idea of "starting generic and cheap" is a great thing to do. It's often best if you start off bidding on a "broad" perspective compared to a phrase match or exact match bidding philosophy, to get a better idea of how people search for you.
Be of the understanding that you will lose money the first 3 months, but just like anything this will allow you to research and better fine-tune your strategy.
Also PPCHero.com is a great blog to read for PPC tips, tricks, and overall advice.
-
Hi Gregory. Great advice, and more along the lines of what I was looking for, thanks so much! I will indeed contact you through one of your stores.
-
Hi Chris,
If your product is in a market that is saturated, high volume, and highly competitive (like iPods or hiking boots) then stick with Egol's advice.
But from your profile it appears you sell specialty table legs, and I think that may be in a different realm of Adwords where the volume and competition are both low. The products my two stores sell are specialty items that are low volume and low competition, so I can share my experience.
The executive summary is "Start generic and start cheap". Doing that will give you an education focused on your niche at a reasonable cost.
My specialty items do not have a high search volume, so starting with broad keywords allowed Adwords to give me data on the full range of keyword searches it was actually displaying for. Depending on the search volume, it can take a week or three for Adwords to create a good list of actual keyword searches. As this list develops, use negative keywords to prune out phrases that are just wrong. Also start to add phrase and exact match for the phrases that appear often.
And I mentioned "start cheap" because Adwords has this weird habit of over-valuing itself. If I start with a bid of $0.15 it will immediately tell me that I need to bid $1.80 to be on the first page. If I ignore that expensive suggestion, I appear anyways. It may take a couple of days, but I will appear on page 1 or 2. Then I can start upping my bid a nickel at a time until I appear in the upper slots.
So budget $100 to do live research on Adwords, and consider it a market research expense. During that time, also go to the library and use their public computer to make a test purchase after clicking one of your ads - to be sure the tracking is correct. Also never delete a campaign, instead pause it so that the old data is always there to refer back to.
So much more could be said, but I need to go eat breakfast. You are welcome to contact me through one of my stores. Just google my name without the "ory". Good luck!
-
Glad you are looking to prioritize.
My first priority would be to get an education. The more education I have obtained the better my results. However, I only use adwords for a very small percentage of the items that I sell.
If you want to compete in adwords you should pick a product that you can purchase in volume at a fantastic price, pack and ship efficiently and at very low cost.
Why? Because for most products you are competing against a person who is able to purchase at 60% below MSRP instead of the 40% below MSRP that most people receive. He also has a website that is finely researched and tested to obtain an extremely high conversion rate. And, he has high volume purchasing that gets him rock bottom prices on shipping, shipping supplies... along with an extremely efficient warehouse that gets orders out at lowest possible employee cost.
Adwords is a mathematical game of profit margins, bid amounts and conversion rates. You need to become a mathematics expert to find the sweet spot among bidding levels, conversion rates and profit margins.
I have posted information about getting an adwords education here... http://moz.com/community/q/adwords-training-resources
Some information about an adwords alternative here... http://moz.com/community/q/seo-is-dead-long-live-adwords
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
-
Do IP and/or DNS changes impact Paid search (Adwords, Bing, etc.)
What impact (if any) does IP or DNS changes, have on paid search campaigns? We recently performed an upgrade to our sites that required a datacenter change (but within the same region East US) and DNS change. We believe there may have been an impact to our ad campaigns in the form of suppression of our ads following the change, specifically - Google Adwords. Is there any information regarding this issue or has anyone experienced this before? Thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | MWM37721 -
How To Assign Pricing Based On User Location (Traffic Coming From Adwords)
Hi Mozzers, this may be more of a web development/analytics question than SEO, but hopefully someone has the experience to help me out. My company is currently conducting an Adwords campaign targeting B2B clients for products and services across Canada. Ideally each customer is registered as a client in our system when they make purchases, but this limits our customer base to those willing to create an account with us and wastes our Adwords budget. Now we are moving towards a "walk-up" e-commerce platform which would allow non-members to make purchases without setting up an account first. However, pricing for our products and services differs based on province (different taxes, transportation costs, etc.) and the system currently requires a user to login in using their postal code (zip code) to help the platform generate products, services and pricing specific to their area. This has caused an enormous bounce rate and I am looking for a way to generate said product/service/pricing lists based on some form of automated system which identifies their location and reacts accordingly. In other words, I want our system to recognize where a user is searching from and provide them with the relevant information without them having to input any data (in this case, their postal code). I had thought that using a Google Geolocator API might do the trick, but I'm unsure as to whether it is useful for what I have in mind. Has anyone had this experience before and if so, what solutions did you come up with? Looking forward to any insights and suggestions! Rob
Paid Search Marketing | | RobCairns0 -
Advice On The Best Facebook Advertising Guide
Hey Everyone, I am looking for some recommendations on the best Facebook Advertising guides that are available. I have been advertising on facebook for some time but want to hone my skills to get better value and I am looking for the best guide. Hope some of you can throw me some recommendations. Thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | TTGDavid0 -
How do YOU do an AdWords Audit?
Audits Audits Audits! I am overhauling my AdWords Audit Process and the Documentation and I was wondering if any generous souls our there mind sharing a few ideas or learnings that they have had along the way? I aim to make it as thorough but as quick and automated (think scripts) as possible. I'm also 14 pages into the documentation that I will use for some audits that include explanations, recommendations & definitions. I'd love to hear your opinions on what to Audit, how to audit and how to report on it 🙂
Paid Search Marketing | | Singularitie0 -
Looking for an intensive Adwords training classes in San Francisco or a good online resource!
Hi everyone, It may not be the right forum to post such a request but I am looking for an intensive advanced adwords training program within the next 2 weeks in the San Francisco area. I am adwords certified since last week but I have never really managed multiple accounts before and I am looking for something that would get me up to speed. I have already researched online and found that Cardinal Path, Luna Metrics and Academy X are offering such classes but nothing this month. Do you guys have any suggestions for a good intensive training program around the San Francisco Area that offers classes this month? Online resources are welcomed as well. Thanks for letting me know!
Paid Search Marketing | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
To use new domain name or not?
I've had a web site since before most people knew what a web site was, aeroconsult.com. It has a page authority of 30, domain authority of 21, and 21 root domains that link to path. The problem is, I am not getting many organic hits, and I am wasting a lot of non-productive money on ad words. Because this site is over 20 years old, with a few rudimentary modifications, I decided to create a totally new web site that is modern and that has a regular menu, pictures, etc. It also has a domain name that more accurately reflects what I do. I am an engineering consultant working in the area of RF and microwave design and development. I design rf and microwave circuits and systems for clients. Those clients range from individual inventors to start-up companies, to large (and, yes, sometimes) corporations, including some aerospace companies. But, I do not design rockets, space ships, airplanes, or other things that an aerospace company does. I get a lot of organic hits on "aerospace consultant", "aerospace consulting", "aerospace design", etc. But, those are useless to me, since that is not what I do. So, I designed a new website. It is still under development, but it is out there at rfandmicrowavedesign.com. Clearly, the URL is appropriate to what I do. And, all pages have my company name, Aerospace Consulting LLC. But, even with Google adwords, which I just activated for this site yesterday, I am not getting good results, especially when you look at the cost of the CPC. I plan to keep my e-mail address, that is tied to aeroconsult.com since it has been out there for over 2 decades and that is what my old clients know. But, I am wondering if I should move the new web site contents to my old domain, aeroconsult.com because of the domain authority, page authority, and links? Or, am I better just leaving the old aeroconsult.com web site out there and concentrate on the new web site with the new domain name? Both web sites have 1 or 2 organic search results in the top 10, although the only organic search result that really relates to my business is "wireless design consulting" which is #8 for rfandmicrowavedesign.com, although I think it is something like #10 for aeroconsult.com. All other organic search results are less than 50, which is, of course, useless. (Although, #8 for rfandmicrowavedesign.com is pretty impressive since it has only been live for a couple of weeks, vs over 20 years for aeroconsult.com. Anyway, I am looking for advice. Should I scrap the old aeroconsult.com web site and replace its contents with the contents of rfandmicrowavedesign.com, or should I leave them both active for at least a while? I plan to continue to use the aeroconsult.com domain for e-mail since it has been out there for so long. I guess the real question is whether I would gain lot by putting the clearly better content and structure of rfandmicrowavedesign.com on my old, established, aeroconsult.com, or whether I should concentrate in building up organic and paid search for rfandmicrowavedsign.com.
Paid Search Marketing | | Nanook10 -
Has anyone used Adroll (Facebook retargeting)with any success?
Hello! I am wondering if anyone out there has had a good experience with Adroll. I set up a campaign a couple months ago, but have yet to see any return on my investment. I'm now considering stopping this service because it seems to not be living up to its hype. What has your experience in using this service?
Paid Search Marketing | | Gordian0 -
Adwords enhanced campaigns - Specify alternate destination URLs
Morning Mozzers, I am setting up a new campaign for a client, they would like to target mobile devices which evidently i can no longer do with enhanced campaigns; however i have increased the Mobile bid as much as possible and set the default CPC low to try and minimise appearance in desktop search. The client has a desktop and a mobile version of the destination page but the site will not direct users to the correct page based on their device as they are two separate domains. As such i want to know if i can specify an alternate destination URL for an ad in Adwords based on if the click comes from a mobile or desktop device? The other option is to set all my Ads within the Adgroup to have mobile as the device preference and just use the mobile landing page, but not sure if there is a neater solution here? Thanks, Tom.
Paid Search Marketing | | Sarbs0