Adwords Situation

This is my first AdWords campaign, and just need a bit of advice.

When I first started, I bidded the recommended cpc for each adgroup (around $2-3 for each keyword). My quality score has been 'Great' since day 1, so I've been slowly reducing my bid prices. I've been in the first ad position for al adgroups, so I'm hoping to lower this to around 4.

The problem is - I'm only getting 200 impressions a day (on a $10/day budget). Is raising my budget the only thing I can do to increase impressions? Also, I'm using just longtails with phrase&exact matching. Will changing this to broad make it more effective at this stage?

Will rep for someone who can help me out!

 

Changing it to broad will definitely get you more impressions. If you change it to broad, though, I would make sure you're utilizing negative keywords so you don't show up for anything too irrelevant.

 

Hmm...seems like something that would be possible to do for my campaign. I may try it tomorrow and see how it pans out.

 

So you're willing to spend $10 at $3 per click and you're wondering why nothing is happening? You're telling adwords, that you want 3 clicks per day MAXIMUM. Google is doing it's job perfectly. They gave you 200 impressions and they assumed your ctr would be 1.5% on those 200 impressions. Apparently it's less, but they just guessed. So each day they'll give you 200 impressions and assume your ctr is 1.5% until you get some actual clicks and get some real data. In short, your budget is way too low to handle those kind of bids. Increase your budget dramatically or reduce your bids dramatically. Overall, you want to compete, but dont' want to pay for it.

 

I read that it's best to bid high to get a good CTR, and so a great quality score.

But then I thought, I had a great quality score to start off with, so why bother - but heard that they review the quality score a week or so in - which led me to assue I should continue to bid high until then to make sure the QS didn't drop.

Well, as for know I've dropped all my bid prices to around 20c and so I'll see how that affects the campaign. As you can see I've been a bit confused by the whole thing.

 

Google takes into account your position when it evaluates how good your clickthrough rate, so it shouldn't make any difference (though I've noticed that once your advert drops onto page 2, it seems more difficult to get a Great QS).

You want your budget to last all day, whatever it is, so you should adjust your bids accordingly. If you pay $0.30 per click, your advert will drop down the results, but since your advert lasts all day, you'll get more impressions, and hence more clicks (for the same money).

Example:

Suppose that your keywords generate 100 impressions per hour. Your advert appears first, for a bid of $2.50, and your clickthrough rate is 2%, so you get 4 clicks per day, and run out of budget after 2 hours.

You reduce your bids to $1. Your advert now appears third, and your clickthrough rate drops to 1%. So you get 1 click per hour, and get 8 clicks per day. Your budget runs out after 8 hours.

Your reduce your bids to $0.50. Your advert now appears fifth, and your clickthrough rate drops to 0.5%. Now you are getting one click every 2 hours, so you get 12 clicks per day. You only spend $6 of your budget.

Since your budget wasn't completely spent, you can get more clicks by increasing your bids. So you bid $0.7, appear fourth, with a 0.75% CTR, and get 14 clicks per day. Your budget runs out after 19 hours each day.

To get the most clicks you can from a budget, adjust your bids to make it (just) last all day.

Write new adverts, and test them against the old ones to improve your clickthrough rate. If your clickthrough rate is better, you'll get more clicks for the same bid, and so you can reduce your bids and still spend your budget (and hence get more clicks for the same money).

Bidding on more terms will also allow you to get more clicks for the same bid, and hence allow you to bid less and get more clicks for your money. But this is only a good idea if the traffic is still relevant, and the clicks aren't more expensive (as they might be from a more competitive term).

I'd steer clear of Broad Match until you've optimised the campaign some more, unless you don't really know what people are likely to be searching for.

 

Thanks for the help guys. Made adjustments to the bids and I'm now getting a lot more clicks for the same budget.

 

Well put CustardMite