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
-
Adwords & Bingads? How to link?
Hi all! I am new to MOZ and i am trying ot set up my first client: bingadsm, adwords, social and google analytics. Only problem i am having is to link bingads and Adwords, anyone has an idea on how to solve this? Thanks in advance! Sandra
Paid Search Marketing | | EyeonResponse0 -
Adwords coupons
I have a bunch of $300 free adwords spend coupons (must spend $100 & only new accounts) . If any body wants to become more of a t-marketer and play with ppc , Just comment in the post. I would also love to hear how people are using t-marketing to enhance seo.
Paid Search Marketing | | DavidKonigsberg0 -
How can i track keywords of Google Product Listing Ads in Google Analytics
I have thousands of products in my feed to Google Shopping (Google Merchant Center). I have also set utm source, medium and campaign in URL. I have integrated my Google Adwords(With Auto Tagging) with my Google Merchant Center. My Question is, I can see campaign in google analytics but inside campaign i am not able to see keywords (From which those click are being received) I wonder to know that does anyone can help me to track Product Listing Ads keywords in Google Analytics. Thanks,
Paid Search Marketing | | CommercePundit0 -
Adwords campaign and adgroup ideas
When it comes to SEO, I can do that. When it comes to adwords I tend to scratch my head. No idea why, I just do. Anyways I want to get some ideas of how I can setup a killer campaign and structure it and target relevant keywords. Here is my description of my business We are a private christian school providing preschool, elementary and highschool. We are located in Henderson, NV but service Las Vegas, NV as well. We have some of the highest scores and accolades in Nevada so we pride ourselves with those and feel we should target that. So far when it comes to structure I have come up with this setup Campaigns Henderson adgroups Preschool Top Keywords preschool Example Keywords preschools in henderson, nv preschools in henderson nevada preschool henderson nv preschool henderson nevada top rated Example Keywords top rated preschools in henderson nv top rates preschools in henderson nevada best Example Keywords best preschool in henderson nv best preschool in henderson nevada Elementary Top Keywords private school Example Keywords Elementary private schools in henderson nv Elementary private schools in henderson nevada Elementary private school in henderson nv Elementary private school in henderson nevada top rated Example Keywords top rated elementary private school in henderson nv top rated elementary private school in henderson nevada best Example Keywords best elementary private school in henderson nv High School Top Keywords private school top rated best Las Vegas adgroups Preschool Elementary High School I didn't finish the rest because you should get the point. I don't know if these are exact keywords, I just know that private school, top rated and best tend to be what people type. Then each adgroup will get a relevant ad pertaining to those keywords. Am I going overbaord? or is this a good start?
Paid Search Marketing | | cbielich0 -
Bing advertising guide
Hello seomoz-community, could anybody recommand a good advertising "guide" for bing - we do lots of adwords on google but bing advertising is new to me. i'm looking for a kind of tutorial which gives me an overview so that at least i get a bit of an idea. thanks to you, barbara
Paid Search Marketing | | barbara-f0 -
Bad Adwords Leads and B2B Placement Ideas
Hello, I have two PPC related questions that hopefully someone could help with. My client complains that the majority of leads he is getting are disqualified - mainly due to fake contact info left on the landing page. This happens both in the Display and Search campaigns. We are getting a good number of leads and we checked with Google that there is no fraud involved. What can be done about this? Has anyone encountered that kind of complaint and how did you deal with it? Can you recommend any tools, other than Google's Ad Planner to find good placements for a display campaign? Another client of mine is selling B2B services such as document destruction etc. Where can I find, for example, a list of placements frequented by people from the insurance business? I never had a problem finding placements for B2C but B2B seems to be a lot different. Any insight will be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Michal
Paid Search Marketing | | michalseo0 -
Adwords how to's and tools
Hi mozzers. I have questions. 1. Can you Share tools for google and msn adwords,example templates,etc.. 2. Any project Management Software or Template for ppc 3. The Best Book from A to Z about ppc advertisement 4. Share your MOS Importanz Stepps to Build really competitive campaign and to Be Number 1 on pair Search results. Thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | leadsprofi0 -
AdWords question on text ads
Hey all, I have a certain format I want to follow on my text ads across several ad groups. I deleted all the past ads and only three ad groups remain with ads that follow this format. When I hit add new ad group, the ad come pre-populated with the text of a now deleted ad and I cannot for the life of me change it. I would love for one of my active ads to come up as I only have to change one name and one number in each ad. How do I control what that default ad is? How can I make it stop being an ad I have deleted. Please help!
Paid Search Marketing | | DanDeceuster0