I wasn't sure if I should put this in the Adwords forums or here, but I decided that the concept can be applied to more than just Adwords and could be very useful here. Now I'm not a big Adwords guy -- I don't use it too much for my niches, but I sometimes do a little bit to drive more traffic where it's needed when I'm having an exceptionally profitable period. But I've noticed something. When I lower my cost per click on some of the keywords that normally cost more, I get more and better clients/customers. Now I'm not talking about lowering the price a little. I'm talking about lowering the price from $1 per click to 5 cents per click on a VERY competitive keyword. At first I thought that it didn't make sense and could just be by chance, but I've noticed it over and over again. But then it hit me... The niche that I did this in is one where people are more likely to look past the first page of results. And that means that those people were more determined to find exactly what it is that they were looking for. I offered a service that would do just that -- find them exactly what they were looking for in that niche free of charge. It seems as though those who looked past the first page or two had a better trait that worked well with my site than those who just clicked on it because it was on the first page of results. And it seems as though when I had it on the first page of results, many people just clicked on it for the heck of it even if they didn't know if it was right for them. So for lowering the cost of my advertising by a lot (one-tenth or less), I increased my sales twice-fold for that particular site. Now I soon realized that this didn't apply just to Adwords. In other advertisements and sites, I found that the less obvious sites with my ad in the "harder to find" pages actually got more sales than the more prominently placed ads. The prominently placed ads got more visitors hands down, but the other ones bring in more money to me. I'm sure that this might not apply to most niches, but I thought I'd post it to make a few people double think their advertising strategies for their sites regardless of their niche. Either way, it was a pretty interesting thing to notice. Any thoughts? Have you noticed similar things with your site(s), or is it the opposite with you? Brian
I would love to test that strategy, but if I go to $.05 on a $1.00 keyword, I get no impressions and no traffic whatsoever. And then google jacks up the min bid amounts.
You could try optimizing your site for the keywords. Also, this method probably doesn't work in every niche. The one that it works best on for me is one where a decent percent of people do look past the first page. Brian