Not sure what to do. CPC vs. Clicks vs. Budget

Discussion in 'Google AdWords' started by Louis Winthorpe III, Sep 9, 2007.

  1. #1
    Hi guys,

    I've been running a campaign now which has been reasonably successful but I'm sure there is a lot more potential to be had from it. I'm in a real catch 22 here for the following reasons:-

    I have 7 campaigns running on a sideline business with the following stats.

    Campaign #1, $6.60 / day, 768 clicks, 125,548 impressions, 0.61% CTR, $0.94 Average CPC
    Campaign #2, $6.60 / day, 467 clicks, 111,492 impressions, 0.41% CTR, $1.12 Average CPC
    Campaign #3, $6.60 / day, 453 clicks, 71,039 impressions, 0.63% CTR, $0.78 Average CPC
    Campaign #4, $6.60 / day, 397 clicks, 42,336 impressions, 0.93% CTR, $0.88 Average CPC
    Campaign #5, $6.60 / day, 240 clicks, 24,071 impressions, 0.99% CTR, $0.62 Average CPC
    Campaign #6, $6.60 / day, 75 clicks, 4,995 impressions, 1.50% CTR, $1.12 Average CPC
    Campaign #7, $6.60 / day, 57 clicks, 3,382 impressions, 1.68% CTR, $1.25 Average CPC

    As you can see, I'll get maybe 6 - 8 clicks before my daily budget is used per campaign. The problem is if I set my average CPC to $1 I will get very few impressions, therefore very few clicks although of course they will be more cost effective. If I set it to $1.50 I get more impressions and more clicks. For a test I've put up my clicks to $1.80 which gets me top 10 on a lot of adgroups but if I get more than 4-5 clicks I'm out of the game for the rest of the day.

    Each of my campaigns above has 50 different adgroups in (broad/exact/phrase) with the keyword in the title and if possible in the ad text. 85% of my keywords I'd guess are 'OK' Quality Score, 12% are 'Great' and maybe at worst 3% are 'Poor'. Can anyone suggest any way without upping the daily budget ($46.20) that I can get more impressions and clicks without spending many months trying to get each adgroup to 'Great' which I've found already is virtually impossible? What combination would you go for to get good coverage for the day?

    I really can't see any way of being able to compete in a competitive sector where for popular keywords people are spending £5+ to get on the first page.
     
    Louis Winthorpe III, Sep 9, 2007 IP
  2. CustardMite

    CustardMite Peon

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    #2
    So what you're basically asking is how to get more clicks, for the same spend, without improving your Quality Score?

    That's a tricky one.

    I would say that if you aren't getting enough traffic on each of the campaigns to tell which keywords/adgroups are performing or not, then you'll never be able to do anything to improve them.

    So my solution would be to pause all but one of the campaigns, and look at the remaining one. This should free up enough budget for you to establish which keywords and adgroups are getting the bulk of the traffic, and what sort of conversion rate they are getting.

    Optimise that one campaign quite ruthlessly, cutting away anything that's not working, or generating sufficient traffic for you to tell, then move on to each of the others in turn.

    Once you've been through each of your campaigns in turn, then you can look at the ROI that you are getting through each campaign, and adjust your bids (or kill campaigns) accordingly.

    The main objective in all of this is to streamline your account down to a size that's optimisable with your current budget. There's no point in having 300-400 adgroups, with a daily budget of less than $50, particularly if it's a very competitive area.
     
    CustardMite, Sep 10, 2007 IP
  3. Louis Winthorpe III

    Louis Winthorpe III Peon

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    #3
    Thanks CM, glad you dropped in to give your opinion. Realistically you're right - there's 300-400 adgroups each fighting for $46 per day, that's $0.11 per adgroup!

    I am following your advice and starting with the first campaign - all the others have been put on pause (it was painful doing it!) and I've set the budget for that one campaign at the moment to $30 per day to get a good idea of its potential. I'll be doing this for 2 weeks - one week to get the optimizing done (aiming for a 60% Great!) then another week to get some stats off it I think. What do you reckon?

    I'm starting with 80 adgroups on this one. 10 are rated as Poor, 10 are rated as Great and the rest are Ok.
     
    Louis Winthorpe III, Sep 10, 2007 IP