I have been running a campaign for about 3 days on with 1 or 2 highly focused keyword's within their own groups 4 groups all together. I know the keywords are highly focused as I ran a campaign last year experimenting with keywords and chose the best performing ones for this campaign. My business is location/seasonal and this is a the reason I am able to highly focus the keywords. For a little over 780 impressions I have had 35 clicks with 2 definite conversions. The ROI figure is in my opinion very good in that the 35 clicks have cost me less than £5 and the return is a little under 20 times that. My CTR on this campaign is currently 4.46%. Is this a good figure? I have read a few of the guides I have found through this forum and am getting a better understanding on how things work every day. As a novice who has only done this twice are these figures reasonable?
You got nice CTR, but CTR is nothing when we talk about ROI - this should attract your attention first.
hey geezer I found that a good basic click through rate is around 4-7% in some cases higher. If however you ctr seems to raise very fast such as one minute its at 1% and then its over 10% google looks into this just as a checkup it case something dodgy is going on. But I have seen people getting well over that in ctr.
you cant glance at a CTR and say... " yup thats good" You can ballpark your success by going to campaign >> Adgroup >> Keyword list >> unhide quality score QS of OK = little under average compared to competition Good = doing about the same as competition GREAT = doing better than the competition Remember CTR is relative to each keyword, match type and position. so CTR of 10% might be low if competition CTR is 11% and above CTR of 0.50% might be really good if competition CTR is 0.40% and below
If your ROI is 20x your cost, then who cares what your CTR is! You're doing something right to get those kind of returns.
CTR is irrelevant to a positive ROI but don't just leave it at "your doing something right" figure out what your doing right and then duplicate. Dont just leave it that way, and hope it never changes.
Within one of your Adgroups (i.e. the sheet with all the keywords listed), click on Customize Columns (in the middle, above the first keyword). It's in there...
you must focus on ROI that tell you about incomes. I have high CTR about 8% but low ROI that make me loss .
4.46% is pretty good. I have almost the same CTR on one of my sites but the niche is low paying so my earnings on that is pretty slow.
I've been able to average 8.45% with some of my campaigns, but around 4% seems to be what is reality. I'm not sure one this one, but I think linking of your page in other places will also lower your cost per click. Is this true? I tested this out last week. I set up a campagn for a page that wasn't linked up anywhere and was looking at about .50-1.00 per click. Then linked up the same page, started a new campaign and was able to get a cost per click of .02-.05. Pretty neet if you ask me. Layne http://www.stoopsmarketing.com/recomends/adsensebig
definitely focus on your roi and just use ctrs as more of a guide. ROI is what you're looking to improve. Whether it's a good figure or not can depend on how you've targeted your ad groups. Eg. if you've targeted your brand, then 4.46% would have room for improvement, but if your ad groups are targeting high competition or less specific keywords, then that's a pretty good figure.
Have to agree that CTR is just one of several parameters that will affect your quality score and your ROI, albeit a very important one. The question I would next be asking would be "how can I best optimize the campaign to increase my ROI"? AdWords related things to consider for improving ROI include; improving quality of ads - ad split testing, testing new keywords, trying a content campaign if not ready done, weeding out any poorly performing keywords. experimenting to find the optimal ad position that works for the product or service, and improving landing page relevance to the ad and keywords. Other suggested things to test and improve upon are sales page related – ie you can test different prices, headings, the first paragraph, the PS, bonuses, testimonials, payment options. You only want to ever test ONE of these factors at a time otherwise you won’t know 'what change' was responsible for any improvement. Also, sounds like a 'test run' on Yahoo or Microsoft adCenter may be worthwhile. cheers. Anthony Buchalka
Many thanks to all posters for there exceptionally good advice particularly from the Adwords professionals. (you know who you are). As an update my CTR is reducing slightly and now stands at 4.02% but this morning I have just crunched the numbers again and significantly I am retaining a return of just under 20 times return on investment. Currently my business model relies on potential trade contacting me by telephone or by email I then quote a price and they either purchase or they do not (Its the accommodation sector). Yesterday I signed up for a commission based on-line sales service (6%) and expect that that to be up and running inside a week. Does anyone have any experience on how levels of business have increased within the above parameters? Essentially moving from a verbal or written sales pitch to one where the customer can see, choose and purchase his product online? Clearly the sales blurb by the online service will be just that and they would have quoted notional figures that may or may not be achievable. I feel I have got a deal though (commission only) which means I only lose the 6% once bookings are made. Their is an initial outlay for the software but I would of course expect that in any event. As an aside my business is very much a localised service although I take customers from all over the UK. That said the competition in the traditional advertising sense is exceptionally fierce. I believe most of my competitors can barley just about switch a PC on. Many use on-line booking systems but as they have no idea how to market on the internet are wasting many opportunities. That said a few do use adwords although it seems to be the larger businesses and those smaller operators that do so I am sure most use a professional to work their campaigns. My point being if you can take the time to sit down and learn all you can about the potential of the system then you will achieve results. In addition the expert assistance available through this forum is invaluable. That is to say there is of course a place for persons that make their living with adwords and always will be, my point is simply one where if an individual has the accumen then they will pick it up..... and in the process save even more money..