It’s been a while, friends, since I last wrote an article. No real excuses. I just got lazy. But, as March winds down, I’m making an effort to ignite the writing engine within and pick up the pace.
This will be a quick post, and it’s come to fruition after a recent experience with a client, and I think it should be addressed. I’m not writing this post to vent, or to make light of anyone’s experience. There is plenty of time for making fun of people, but this is a common problem in the PPC realm, and I just want to get my two cents out there. If, by chance, said client reads this (who am I kidding, no one reads these), again, I’m not making light of your actions, and you should know that what you did was not uncommon.
One of my clients has a retail site, that sells widgets. Over time, business has slowly dropped off. This could be because of a number of factors, some completely visible, some likely not as visible. Retail has taken a hit on all levels, from brick-and-mortar to internet sales, and this problem probably spans across all aspects of retail. Anyway, said client is searching for ways to bring in more business through the internet, which is where they make all of their sales. They try to do two things with the site, make sales and get potential customers to order samples. The customer has assumed that if $1000 per day produces 10 conversion or sales, that $1500 per day would produce 15 conversion. This, without considering that other issues could possibly at play that are hindering the performance of the campaign. The general consensus is, if $1 makes you $1.01 or more, pour money into your campaigns, because you are not losing.
But, if you spend $1000 a day, and you really don’t know what that $1000 is actually getting you because your conversions are not tied to monetary figures, then you need to make sure your campaign is nailed down tight before you throw more money at it. Things to consider before you bump that budget up:
1) Are you bidding on the right keywords? Many businesses try and use the shotgun approach. If you’re Amazon.com, and you sell everything from cds to the souls of the dead, shotgun away. But, if you are a business that sells a very focused line of products, or at least that’s what you’re advertising for, then you really need to be careful how you approach your keyword selection. If they are too broad, you’re going to get people coming to the site that you don’t want, and that is money spent.
2) Are you constantly checking the performance of your ads? You should always have 2 ads running at the same time. Periodically, you should check the performance, and if one ad is doing noticeably worse in whatever metric you decide to measure, then it’s time to write a new ad to compete with the “winner.” And you keep doing this forever.
3) When a potential customer goes to your site, do they know what to do when they get there? If you’re selling widgets, is it clear enough that someone one the fence is compelled to make the purchase? If not, you really need to consider the flow that a customer will go through to make the purchase. Too many steps, or not enough/too much info, and the customer will abandon the site. Make sure the customer can see exactly where to go to do whatever it is that they are supposed to do on that site.
I have an analogy that I think is fitting in this situation. You have a car. When it’s new, it’s getting 40 MPG, and doing it cheaply. Over time, performance starts to dip, and the MPG drops to 30. It costs the same to fill the gas tank, but you do it 5 times a month, instead of 4. In time, the MPG has dropped to 20, and now you’re filling it up 10 times a month. You keep throwing money at the car so that you get the same performance out of it over the course of a month. But, what you don’t know is that the gas tank has a leak and you’re just wasting money by putting more gas in all the time. And if that leak was fixed, the car would get closer to 40 MPG than 20MPG. This is like upping your PPC spend, without making sure all the other potential problems are addressed. You’re just wasting money…