I've been experimenting with Google Adwords for the last few months, and I can't see where it is helping, in fact I'm losing money on it. My budget is $1,000 a month and out of that I'm getting about 30-40 calls a month. I'm a pawn shop and haven't heard of many other pawn shops using it and thought I'd come here for help. Any suggestions?
Hard to make suggestions when we don't know the specifics. Your problem may not be with Adwords, although I suspect that's part of your problem, it may be with your site. Keep in mind that people are doing a search and are looking for something. If they land on your site and don't immediately see what they are looking for, they'll leave. Let's say I'm looking to buy a tricycle for my kid. As I don't want to spend and buy a new one, I might search for "used tricycle". Your ad shows up and find it interesting enough to click it. That's the first part: you need to use the right keywords and the right ads. But if you have a one-page site that simply says to call you, it won't work very well. You need to show me when I get on your site that you have tricycles, information about them and the price. I might buy one right then without calling. That's what people are looking for otherwise you're just wasting their time and your money.
What keywords are your using in your Adwords campaign? What prices are you willing to spend for those keywords and what is your max CPC? Are you limiting your Adwords to specific geographic regions? PM me if you need any help.