Please help - badly performing ads: best to pause/delete?

Hi,

I've had a couple of campaigns running since Sept 08, and both have a couple of ads that just aren't performing well. I've checked all the keywords, pulled out any that were really poor, & the QS on all of them is 'okay'. I've used various keywords tools to identify any keywords I'd missed, and I've put in appropriate negative keywords. I've also re-written the ads to include the best keywords, plus a call to action, and enabled the 'show best performing ad' thingy.

Now, my questions are 1) have I missed anything that I should have done to optimise these ads (apart from the fact that I just might not have done it very well).

and 2) should I just accept that these ads aren't getting any interest, and pause or delete them? Or as I've had 35 clicks at a max of £0.77 per click, do I just leave them running and not worry about them? Will they have any negative effect on my campaigs overall.

Any help on this really really appreciated, as all the advice elsewhere just tells you to improve keywords/advert text if it performs badly - which I've done!

Thanks
FLM

 

It is always possible to optimise the ads and even on a daily scale. Have you tried using the keyword insertion tool in the header of your ad? If not, you can use the following coding:

{KeyWord:Example}

This will then be replaced with the keyword being searched and therefore increase your QS and potential of attracting a client. If the keyword is too long then the defualt keyword will be used, which in the above case is "example".

I think it's a good idea to create an additional two ads next to these current ones and compare stats after a few days. If the new ones perform better then pause/delete the old ones. Otherwise just leave all of them running and compare stats at a later date.

If you want me to expand on the advice then feel free to ask me.

 

0.77 euro per click ?! That`s alot tbh.
Before i give my opinion i`d like to know if you are running simple ads (marked as default) or simple ads with bid per content (marked as content).
Also what is your niche ? Because that counts alot for your money per click.

 

But you can't really say it's alot without knowing what the industry is. When running our own Adwords campaign we average a click of 1.00 euro+

Some of our clients pay the minimum bid of 0.05, while others pay up to £7-10. It all depends on the industry.

 

Thanks for the comments.

@SDunroe - no, haven't tried keyword insertion - will give that a go, but I have regularly created new ads, watched the stats, and paused the weaker ones.

@plsmommyno - I was running ads on both search and content networks, but switched content off entirely recently, to good effect.

Industry is laser safety - training, equipment, consultancy etc.

 

So you think I should keep trying to improve the ads rather than give up and pause them?

Do badly performing ads have negative impact on the campaigns overall, do you know?

 

I quickly scanned the above, so apologies if I've missed anything ..

You talk about using negative keywords, which means you must be using either "phrase" or broad match. What about [exact] match are you using these in their own campaign?

 

@muchacho79 - yes, a variety of broad, phrase and exact. The full story is I inherited this campaign and that's how it was set up. Might have been better to start over from scratch, but still.

 

@muchacho79 - oh, but not [exact] in its own separate campaign, if that's what you mean?

 

I have exact keywords in their own campaigns.

It's more organised and I prefer it that way.

I sometimes have phrase & broad in the same campaigns as their main purpose it to give me more long tail keywords that I hadn't already thought of or found when looking.

At the very least, don't put more than 1 match type into the same Ad Group.

 

Well, the laser safety niche isn't that populated as content so that`s why you are getting low results on bid content.
About negative keywords... my suggestion would be to put exact ones instead of phrases. I had terrible results with phrases as negative keywords.
Just my thoughts.

 

Is there a particular performance benefit to that, do you know? Is mixing up match types liable to make the ad perform worse? Or is it a tidyness thing?

 

Im also wondering that, i thought mixing them would be fine.

 

Are you referring to the Google Search Network here?

 

Search, yes. I've disabled content atm.

 

Well, I find it's easier when looking at the split testing, for a start.

If you had an Ad Group with 1 keyword x 3 (each match type) and 2 Ads (split test), when you go into your adgroup you won't have a clue which ad is performing best as a lot of that data will be for broad & phrase matched keywords too.

You can always use reports, but this isn't efficient if you are checking daily on a particular Ad Group.

Having them separated by Campaigns (Example: 'Widgets - Exact'; Widgets - Broad; Widgets - Phrase) enables you to also split the budgets up by the Campaign.
The 'Widgets - Exact' could have a budget of 5.00 as that brings in most the business - the phrase & broad can have separate budgets of say 1.00.
If there were all in the same adgroup this wouldn't be possible.

Trust me - it's easier having them in different Campaigns (at least, different Ad Groups).

I have weekly reports on my Exact campaigns and add the data to a master spreadsheet each week (automatically gets emailed to me each Monday). I don't bother doing this for Broad + Phrase, basically because my Max Bids on those are low and I just use them to find out what other keywords people are searching before - before either adding a negative or producing a new long tailed exact match.

 

better delete it but before you do you should adjust bid to reach the min bid first