I set up an adwords account for a client that is 2 weeks old now. There was about 800 keywords targeted and are are related to a small enough niche market and the campaign is targeted to only one country. There is not many competitors in the market. Possibly 15 maximum. The account was divided into the right amount of campaigns and relevant adgroups. And the Ads were all keyword related. So everything was optimised as it should be. I've worked on many campaigns and have my GAP cert so to put it bluntly I knew what I was doing. For the first week each of the campaigns I was getting about 500 impressions on a daily basis for all the campaigns campaign combined. The CTR was averaging 12%. And the the CPC was between 40 and 60 cent for all my keywords. My positions were all between 1 and 4. And the Quality scores on most of the keywords were great. So all in all things were running very well. All of a sudden my impression dropped to 80 one day. Then the next day they dropped to 15. I investigated each of the campaigns and there was no apparent reason. Quality scores were good. I tried upping the CPC on each of the campaigns by 20 cent per day. But the impressions kept on dropping. Currently the the CPC per campaign is $2, but the impressions are at zero. I've looked into all the campaign settings. The max daily budget is set very high. The the campaigns are on accelerated. Google and search network are turned on and all campaigns are active. I've been onto a rep in Google who looked at the account and said he couldn't figure it out either. So I'm hoping someone out there might have an idea of what's going on? Any help greatly appreciated.
Investigate your market using Google Trends. It may be that your market is bound by seasonal trends and that you're currently going through a "dry" season. Other than that, I can't think of anything else at the moment.
Thanks for getting back masterful. No, it's nothing to do with seasonal trends. I've doubled my CPC again today for all the keywords but it the impressions are zero. I've checked google myself and all my ads are showing in very last position for every keyword. It's not that a competitive market. There are only about 15 competitors showing ads. Still very confused what's going on?
If you're showing in the last spot for all your keywords I would say it's a bit more competitive (or has become so) than you originally thought. Have you checked the diagnostic tool? Sometimes it can provide some insight that sends you down the right path.
I used the diagnostic tool for a number of the campaigns and increased the CPC as recommended, but to no avail. I've added $2 to some of the keywords. And its not as if a lot of the keywords are very common. Some are very distinctive. It's weird the way everything was going really well and then all of a sudden it just all goes wrong?
When you first started the campaign, google gave it a shot on the content network. It didn't really pan out so those extra impressions you got in the beginning were taken away. Google wants people to click your ads and will give you the benefit of the doubt, but if they give a burst of impressions, (which they did), and nothing happened, then you're up the creek without a paddle. Increasing your bids is not going to do it. You need to work on the ad copy to get the click.
Hi PPC-Coach, I made sure I turned off the content network before I started the campaign, as I do with all my campaigns, so I don't think that's the reason. I was onto Google again this morning, and a different rep had a look at it and she couldn't see anything obvious either. She's passing it onto the tech team. Thanks for all your suggestions so far.