Please suggest the best way to lower the bids Lets say, I want to promote watches, create a campaign and put the initial bid of 5$ to be on the first page. The next day I see nice quality score, since my landing page is relevant and my ad is on the first page. What should I do next? Should I wait a little more and then lower my bids? The second question. What amount should I lower my initial bid on? How often to do that? For example, I lower my bid to 4.5, check if my ad is still on the first page and my QS is ok, the next day I lower my bid to 4 and so on..
From Perry Marshal's book, I learned that the more relevant your keyword and your landing page is, the lower you can bid on your keywords. 5$ per click is seriously expensive. If you try Perry Marshal's trick you can lower your bid to pennies and still get the best spot.
You should never go that high unless your product is very expensive and you have a good conversion rate for your website..
Just to clear the things out, watches niche and 5$ was taken just for example. Don't consider the numbers. I just want to know the principle of lowering bids - how often to do this, what amount to lower the bid on etc. Let's assume we took the initial bid of 5$ for some niche and want to lower it to 0.50$ and still be on the first page
Yes, that's the idea... but the numbers should be calculated based on your niche, product price, competition, etc.
Here is another trick to get your bid as low as possible.... I quoted this from Perry Marshall's newsletter:
If I'm understanding what you are getting at correctly, then the other replies don't answer you. Are you asking, for the best way to lower your bid once your quality score has been built up and therefore has some history behind it? If so, I'd look to see what your average CPC is. If you are bidding, 1.00 Max CPC and after a while you see your Average CPC is say 0.73, consider dropping your bid to something like 0.75-0.80 and see what the difference makes. I'm in 2 minds as to why it should matter bidding high to start off with, if position normalisation is accurate. Your Ad Rank is calculated by QS * Max CPC ... so if you look at it like that, your QS will be at a certain level regardless of your max bid - therefore dropping your Max CPC will lower your Ad Rank, yet some go by the method of bidding high and dropping your max cpc incrementally in order to keep your position.
yes,exactly So if my Ad Rank =my QS * Max CPC, and I lower CPC, the ad rank will be lowered too. That's why I wonder how these guys contrive to lower Max CPC significally and still have their ads at first page...
If you have a top notch quality score, you might still need to have a reasonable Max CPC to be near the top - it all depends how much your competitors are bidding and what their Quality Score is. But if your Quality Score is improving, your Max CPC can be dropped, to equal a similar position. How muc you drop your Max CPC really depends on how much your QS is improving (if you are wanting to hold a similar position).
lower your bids in small increments. For example Opening bid $5 and at least 100 clicks received to establish a baseline POS 1.5 @ avg CPC of 3.75 Change bid to 3.7 and repeat the above. Get at least 100 clicks and establish your new base line. POS 2.1 @ avg CPC of 3.25 change bid to 3.2 and get another 100 clicks your new baseline is POS 2.5 @ avg CPC of 2.9 change bid to 2.8 and get another 100 clicks POS 3.2 @avg CPC of 2.4 since we want position 3 change bid to 2.5 and start creating new text ads to increase QS to decrease avg CPC even more and possible raise position after text ad optimization assume POS 2.5 @ avg CPC of 2.2 change bid to 2.1 and get clicks POS 3.3 @ avg CPC of 1.9 change bid to 2 and create a better text ad. rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat... Get it?
Robert, Don't you think it would take at least a month for the person to receive 100 clicks on the individual keyword they are lowering their bid on? This tactic could take a year to implement on lower traffic keywords. No? -Jay
It's only expensive if the initial value per visitor does not equal the cost per click, unless your back end extracts a lot more cash from those visitors, right?
Actually, that's not true. There's good reason to use a strategy to bid that high to buy position, establish great CTR, then lower bids while maintaining position.