Hi there! This is my first post on this board. I just recently opened up a web site, fridaynightfashions.com, and I would like to begin an Adwords campaign in the next couple days. I am just wondering... what would be an appropriate monthly or daily budget for someone just starting out on Adwords like myself? I have been told things like $20 a day, but that seems steep! I mean, should I really expect to make up that $600 a month payment on Adwords quickly in sales? Maybe thats a dumb question but I am very new to the whole advertising thing!
Welcome to DP. You need to find a budget that works for you. Some of my sites have a $2/day budget and others have $600/day. Spend some time finding your keywords and learn how to use all of the matching options. (read the sticky's here too)
everything depends on your keywords - how competitive the are. besides, it's also about targeting, number of clicks that you want and a whole bunch of other factors. you also might want to think about bidding on niche keywords - the bids are lower for them yet the searchers are mostly more purchase-oriented. you just have to think about the keywords, that's the most important.
$ 20 is good budget to get started. its experimentation in the beginning , and when ur finalised with what is converting --then u increase the budget
Start low with very specific keywords and be sure to land clicks on a well-designed landing page with a great offer. Try to get some conversions at a lower profit margin if it allows you to generate sales directly from your Google PPC campaign...use your initial low-bidget Adwords campaign as a learning experience and slowly ramp up spending as you become more proficient in split-testing and landing page design. good luck!
The first thing you need to do is your keyword research and get every possible keyword you can figure out. Enter these keyword into a "Paused" campaign. Set every keyword CPC to $10.00 and see what the traffic will be. Then drop the CPC to $5.00 and see what the traffic will be. Then $2.50, $1.50, and finally $0.75 You will see where the drop off in traffic is and what the "real performing" keywords are. Now, out of 500 keywords, you will see that the top 20% will generate 80% of the traffic. But the top 10% you will not be able to afford. So select to second 10%. Set up the campaign budget with the exact amount you are willing to through away. ~$10 AND MOST IMPORTANT set up the Position Preference to 2-8. This will keep you out of a first place bidding war. Now run the campaign without changing it for 2 week days ~Wed, Thru and then Pause everything. Now what did you spend? How many calls? Any sales? Wait 3 days and then look at you Analytic reports for what Google states is you real traffic patterns, etc. Oops, you didn't add the Analytic's tracking code. Well you just lost your money. You will never know what happened without it. So you can see, that you need some to "baby sit" the setup for you before you should start and it should be on the same computer. Your web designer should know how to get/set up and insert the Analytics tracking code onto each of your web pages. The code will look like this: <script type="text/javascript"> var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-413178-2"); pageTracker._initData(); pageTracker._trackPageview(); </script> Where the red is my code to my site. You need your own and it is issued by Analytics. You will also need "conversion codes" but that is for another thread. If you get really confused, PM me and we can supply you with the complete setup and first week "baby sitting" for a small fee. But if you are going to be in the business of selling online, then Adword/Analytics is a mandatory tool and skill set to obtain. ***************** And how the hell can you be a "Texan by heart" and live in Philly. I love Philly but they don't have good TexMex. Go Dallas!!!!!!!!
Catanich offer some excellent advice. I would start off with a fairly low budget as others have said. What is important is to follow Catanich's advice - basically you need to find out if the ads are being effective.
I'm going to start an adword campaign, i always read that is very hard but i will put effort into it, i really think it will pay back.
Great info catanich, thanks a lot! TRULY invaluable information. I am going to try it out on my own but if I encounter any problems I will for sure contact you. I do have one question about the analytics code. I already generated one of this, my question is do I need to place this on EVERY page of my site, including product pages? Or would it be acceptable to have it only on the landing page that Adwords customers are sent to? As for my "texan" screen name, I was born 'n' raised in Texas, til age 18, but now reside in Philly =)
Hi, great piece of information there, catanich. I'm a beginner with Adwords too . Does your strategy work with affiliate pages where we do not have access to insert the Google Analytics code? I'm referring to landing pages at the end of affiliate links. I'd appreciate your response on this question. Thanks!
For the beginner (low budget), you will have to rely on the AdWords basic data gathering. Without access to the web page code, you can not even do AdWords conversion tracking correctly. If you move to a high end Analytic tracking system, they also require access to the web page code. The only way we have found to track a "3rd party" landing page is to put a web page between the AdWords "Click" and the landing page. This will require a lookup of a QueryString Variable that is mapped (redirected) to a "3rd party" landing page. Many of the PPC Agencies do this but there are many down side issues to this. You really need access to the web page code.