Well, I just started using adwords a couple days ago. I read ALOT before starting, but I guess there is nothing like the real experience. I've got two questions. 1. Why is my daily budget being used too quickly? I just checked my account at around 9pm EST and the daily budget was all used up. This KILLS me since we all know most people surf in the evening. Is there any way around this? Can you pause the accound everyday until you want it to run? 2. I've got great CTR's and Average Postions. My CTR's are between 2 and 20% and my average positons are top 4. My question is, with numbers like these, what should my max CPC's be? Thanks for any help! Josh
You can pause your campain anytime you want. There is no answer to your CPC question because it all depends on the keyword you are targeting. The answer could be between 10 cents and $50.
Sounds like you need to either raise your daily budget or lower your cpc bid. Also, I wouldn't jump to conclusions that "most people surf during the evening." Across ther board, my peak hours are early afternoon for US based campaigns. My theory is a lot of people who still have dial up access (and it's a lot of them) surf during the day on their work connection. You can pause and unpause your campaign at will, so that's an option if you want to try it. Depends on your market and what your competition is doing.
Most of my campaigns show higher traffic during the days. For some campaigns that are interested in signups - conversion rate also seems to be higher during the day. I hire a staff to pause the campaign at about 1am for most countries with high traffic and in the long run, the 0.5% to 1% increased in conversion rate is worth it. My guess is during mignight people are not really interested to filled in a form Anyway, to asnwer your original query, spending off the budget dont sound like a bad thing. After all, you have set the budget and you wish to spend it. Unless, of course, your ad target People specifically In-the-Evening (selling dinner?), or your research shows that the CTR is lower in certain time of day.
yea, I guess I didn't think about it like that. If my budget is getting used, that means people are going to my site. Doesn't really matter when. I was also talking to somebody in my category today that said most of his sales are during business hours. So I guess I'm good. The question of the day is the following: What is your average ad position at this moment in time? In the Adwords tools, do you look at the campaign average over its entire existence("all time"), or do you look at only "today?" Yesterday most of my keywords were on googles first page. Today a lot fell to the second page. Is this because I lowered the CPC? Thanks all, josh
Ad positioning is based on your max CPC bid and your CTR. Lowering one or the other will have an impact on your ad positioning, as will raising one or the other.