How much time is Adwords consuming

Forum,

I would like to know how much adwords is consuming for your business. I seem to be battling with adwords often. I keep getting re-evaluated and prices increase. Had lots of keyword that were $0.10-$0.30 and now all are listed at $1. I didn't make changes to my site.

Adwords is like having an extremely high maintainence girlfriend!!!!

Do any of you have your campaigns to the point you can check it and then let it run for a while before you make any major changes.

I am wondering if google has decided my landing pages are better but not good enough for OK's and slap me with the POORs again.

Are others finding that this is a constant battle or do you get to the point that you flucuate between GREATs and OKs?

Thanks
Russell

 

From my side:

Some campaigns need to pay attention at them almost all day, means checking clicks, conversions, stopping other keywords etc.

But some are like - create it and forget about it.

 

Hey there's no perfect no. of time, it's up to the person which doing the work.

 

True.
Campaigns need contant attention.
Not only because of Google, but due to competitors entering the market and exiting ones changing things.

If you get slapped, just have a look for the top organic results for that keyword and see what they do. If Google love a site in the organic resuts then it would love it in the paid results too.

 

In the beginning it takes a lot of time....but after that it just takes..some maintenance

 

No. I usually let my campaign run on autopilot. I just have to make sure I get high conversion rates for the keywords I bid. Always make sure that your ads is relevant to the keywords you bid, and your landing page contain a disclaimer and a privacy policy. This will tell Google that your page is not just a one page website and contains no useful information at all.

Lester

 

I have to disagree...AdWords is not a "set it and forget it" type of marketing and those who think it is are usually the ones who start posts like...

"WTF, I haven;t touched my AdWords campaign in months and now my minimum bids are triple what they were last week! Google sucks!"

If you want to compete in the AdWords space and remian profitable over the long haul you need a dedicated person (or team depending on volume) to keep you at the top of your game.

 

I agree. Obviously, it'll take more of your time initially, as the results of tests are more dramatic early on, and so you can make changes more often (daily, in many cases) whereas after a while, you're chasing smaller and smaller improvements.

That said, I manage quite a few campaigns at any given time (as, I assume most PPC account managers do), so it could be argued that an hour or two per week should allow you to get good results, as long as you know what you're doing.

I'd say that learning the 'cause-and-effects' in Adwords in practise is what takes the most time - as you get a better feel for what you can do and what the results are likely to be, you can spend less time 'pressing that button to see what happens'...

 

I spend most of my time researching the market, keywords, and ad copy before setting up a campaign. then after it starts running, some time testing and tweaking, and if all goes well, then it's just maintenance from there.

 

But you never stop trying new adverts, though?

 

I guess I'm over simplifying a bit. It's like you said earlier

You never really stop working on adwords, maintenance includes moderate testing and tweaking, trying new ad copy, and modifying landing pages and keywords. It just doesn't take anywhere near as long as the initial setup for me.

By the "maintenance" stage, I've already eliminated most unprofitable keywords, have a good idea of my average click costs and position.

 

I'd agree with that...

Unless your Quality Score changes a lot, there's not much need to change your bids (unless the volume of traffic changes and you've got a limited budget), but there's endless scope for fiddling with the advert text and landing page...

 

You can do ok on Adwords and forget about it on some campaigns.
But if you do that you will never maximize your profits. The real profits come from all the twisting and tweaking that you do to improve a campaign that is already profitable.

Many people underestimate the work you have to put into Adwords to make it really profitable. Sometines these are the same people that say article marketing is too much work, to much writing and so on. Just think of it that way: If you have an Adwords campaign that you had to chnage 5 or 6 times always rewriting the adcopy you could have written a decent article instead. And that one you could really leave and forget about it.....

 

I would re-emphasize the point that the more time you spend on Adwords the more profitable it will be for you. We look at any spectrum of keywords and formulate a strategy of which ones are generating the highest ROI, based on CTR, and then we dedicate our time and resources appropriatly. That being said, much more time is needed during the start of any campaign.

 

I have been letting ours run on auto but on finding this place and realising what you can actually do, I plan on spending ages sorting the campaigns out. I've only twigged on today that I should have different ad groups belive it or not. I'm just getting the busy period out of the way at work then I plan on spending a lot of time sorting things out.

Then I can let it run on auto(ish) again, but in the mean time I have loads to be learning.

 

I spend all my working day on adwords! and trut me everytime i find something different that needs to change etc! I am also spending a lot of time trying to find out more about the market like trends, new products etc! Its an ongoing battle! hehe