Adwords Performance

[microdoc]

I am writing an article on Adwords. What I am seeking is the performance of 20 or so Adwords program examples. What I am wanting to know is:

Cost per click (CPC)
Averae clicks per sale (ACPS)
Cost of Advertising (COA)
Average Profit/loss per sale (AP/LPS)

So far I have two examples:

E-Book Sales
=========
CPC US$1.65
ACPS 15
COA: US$24.75
AP/LPS: (US$2.50)
(Shut down after 15 sales).

Coins
====
CPC US$0.95
ACPS 35
COA: US$33.25
AP/LPS: US$13.54
(Stopped after 12 sales -- advertising costs too much.)

Are there examples where you are making good money from Adwords -- so far I have not found one example where Adwords is doing well. I would like to be able to quote examples -- will not be naming names.

[ihelpyou]

That would be good microdoc.

The one problem you will always have is "is the page or site sellable" the way it is? Many things go into this tracking stuff for ROI. It could be the first one you mention has usability problems or just does not promote trust to the visitor. There is really no way to judge things like that. Solid figures are fine, but it's the small stuff that really matters with any campaign. That small stuff cannot be judged by the actual figures.

I think sometimes we fail to acknowledge the most important parts of using AdWords, overture, or any kind of 'click' campaign. Cost per click or cost per anything does not mean two cents if the page or site is unfriendly in any way, shape, or form.

So what those sites should be asking themselves is 'why' am I losing visitors/sales? Is it because of AdWords or is it because of something else? That something else could be a huge problem.

[Bernard]

Microdoc,

It occurs to me that your CPC is way too high. My average CPC is $0.06. I do not have a direct sale/shopping cart, but rather funnel PPC traffic into leads (brochure/contact form requests). Our products usually require selling to a couple layers of management to close.

I'll break even if I get one sale of our lower priced product for every 77,166 click-throughs. I'm not too worried about the cost justification.

FWIW, I cancelled our Looksmart campaign as it was not converting any qualified traffic into sales leads. That combined with the fact that I think I can achieve decent SERP positions on MSN/INK organically.

[Advisor]

I agree that you're probably bidding way too much for your keywords to have a profitable ad.

I won't pay more than 5c for a click on my ads. Now, granted, I'm not a real serious advertiser. I mostly target my ad towards getting newsletter subscribers, however, those subscribers many times down the line also turn into paying clients, or customers for my Nitty-gritty report. Sometimes even the ad for the newsletter will make a sale for the report right away, bringing my cost per subscriber from AdWords way down to almost nothing.

For instance, since May 1 my AdWords newsletter ad had 1130 clickthroughs at 5c a pop. So that works out to $56.50 altogether.

But from those clicks I received 1 direct sale of my Nitty-gritty which gives me $47.28 after paypal charges. So now my cost for the ads is only $9.22.

From that same ad I got 72 new subscribers to the newsletter. If my math is correct, those subscribers each cost me about 12c to obtain. Not bad, considering the potential later on.

However, I get better conversions for other things that don't cost me a penny. Like in the past few weeks since I've been measuring it, my signature in these forums has been clicked on 83 times and two people purchased the $49 report from those clicks! Plus, I got 11 new subscribers from them.

Ads in my own newsletter also produce a really high conversion rate for me. (Which of course makes sense.) These don't cost me anything either as I used unfilled inventory for my own ads.

Even better is a big link at the top of my home page to my Nitty-gritty report. Brings in many sales at no cost to me. Since I've been measuring this stuff it's quite an eye-opener.

Hope this helps!

Jill

[jiml8]

Hello. Been browsing, just had to join in order to post on this thread.

Google Adwords turns out to be one of the lynchpins of my marketing campaign. Since I sign up with every search engine marketer I can find, and since my niche product often goes several months between first contact and sale, I am not able to tell at all how effective adwords is for me.

All I know is this: I don't get nearly good enough ranking in Google with my critical keywords, but roughly half of my traffic is from Google. My current internet advertising campaign is running about $1700.00 per month, and Adwords gets between $900 and $1000 of it. Overture gets most of the rest. The remainder goes to Yahoo, Looksmart, Excite, and several others.

I really would like to get more "bang for the buck" but to this point I have not found the right formula to accomplish that.

Internet advertising, trade shows, word of mouth, links from other sites are pretty much it. I have taken advertising in trade magazines a few times, but I find the internet advertising to be much more cost effective.

[Advisor]

Welcome jiml8! :bigwave: Nice to have you de-lurk!

It sounds like you could use some conversion tracking software or better stats program. There are many coming on the market right now, with a number of different features. You should look into some of them so you can better assess where to spend your marketing dollars.

Jill

[jiml8]

Oh, I can follow the traffic alright.

I just wind up not being able to (usually) link a sale to a referrer.

Usual pattern is this: User browses site. User downloads demo. User runs demo. User returns to site - a day, a month, six months later - and purchases.

Optional pattern, which happens daily. User browses site then calls us asking for more information. We send a marketing package. A few weeks later we may pick up a sale.

I refuse to put spyware in my demos. Consequently I have no way to link the purchase today to the demo download three months ago, unless at the time of the download the user placed real information in the form I make them fill out before they can download.

My low-end product sells for $189 and the highest end version sells for $8500. It is rare indeed that I get an impulse buyer. Mostly they look us over pretty closely first. Given that, without resorting to the kind of behavior that I personally take great pains to safeguard my own machines against, how could I link a sale to the original visit, coming from adwords, or overture?

[Advisor]

Is there are form they fill out on the site when they make a purchase? And/or a subsequent thank you page?

Many of the new conversion tracking software work like this... (ConversionRuler does at least.)

1. You have a special tracking link on your adwords link.

2. You have some code on your landing page that sets a cookie on the person's computer.

3. You have a different code on your "thank you for ordering" page.

Then you go look at your reports, and you can see the day they came to the site, and the day they made a purchase. You are correct that these are not always the same.

With the Nitty-gritty report that I sell, I'll see people have clicked through one day and then maybe come back 3 days later and purchase it. It's really cool to be able to see this!

WebTrends has also just released a brand new version that tracks this sort of stuff using your log files. I haven't tested it, but saw their demo and it looks pretty cool. It's a more expensive solution then something like ConversionRuler, but may tell you more.

There are many other types out there too. My next test will be on ClickTracks which looks really cool too!

Jill

[jiml8]

2. You have some code on your landing page that sets a cookie on the person's computer.

3. You have a different code on your "thank you for ordering" page.

Then you go look at your reports, and you can see the day they came to the site, and the day they made a purchase. You are correct that these are not always the same.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

None of that would work with me, in particular. My security would prevent you from setting cookies, and would prevent my systems from sending cookies back to you. I would only disable that feature if I decided to make an online purchase.

Actually, the security issues have been causing me some difficulties in accessing this particular site. I can't seem to get my Linux Mozilla browser to work with this site. Not sure if it is security or this site doesn't support Linux. In any case, I am forced to use IE6 on Win2000 in order to post this message. For security reasons, I don't like to browse using IE and Windows.

Basically, I am a privacy fanatic and I have a very serious problem with most means of tracking that are not voluntary means. The privacy statement on my site says we don't track, except when you choose to buy. Placing a tracking cookie is, to my mind, an involuntary invasion of another's privacy. A session cookie to maintain state information while the user browses is another thing entirely.

I do recognize the value of tracking customers, from the standpoint of a vendor. But I also consider it to be an invasion of my privacy and subject to serious (and potentially dangerous) abuse. Consequently, I don't permit it to be done to me and I won't do it to others.

That being the case, I can only optimize my marketing within broad limits. It'll have to be good enough. I would like to improve it, but not by stepping over a line that I won't permit others to step over with me.

I do have them fill out a form before they download, and they have to fill it out. But I don't check it to determine if it is valid information; to do so would remove the "voluntary" aspect of the tracking. And, for that matter, since both ZDNet and Download.com deep-link into my site to get the demo, I don't get the information about all the downloaders anyway.

[Advisor]

Ah well, yes. If you won't use cookies it definitely becomes difficult (if not impossible) to track.

I don't believe that cookies are very dangerous or invasive when used for these types of purposes. From what I understand, there's not much you can do with a cookie.

My browser does block certain types of cookies. It apparently knows the difference between the bad and the good.

It must not block the conversion ruler cookies because my hits do show up in my reports.

I think it blocks those big ad agency cookies that track you between different sites.

[microdoc]

Originally posted by Advisor
I agree that you're probably bidding way too much for your keywords to have a profitable ad.

. . . .

However, I get better conversions for other things that don't cost me a penny. Like in the past few weeks since I've been measuring it, my signature in these forums has been clicked on 83 times and two people purchased the $49 report from those clicks! Plus, I got 11 new subscribers from them.

Ads in my own newsletter also produce a really high conversion rate for me. (Which of course makes sense.) These don't cost me anything either as I used unfilled inventory for my own ads.

Even better is a big link at the top of my home page to my Nitty-gritty report. Brings in many sales at no cost to me. Since I've been measuring this stuff it's quite an eye-opener.

Hope this helps!

Jill

Jill

Those items I quoted are not my conversions -- I have been collecting people's war stories to find out how well Adwords is working for others.

Second, the experience that seems to be coming through to me is that many people try and then do not use Adwords because other means of obtaining customers -- such as free ones are better.

AS for me, I have been trialling Adwords and spent US$400 just trying to get a set of words that will actually work.

In the end an Adwords staff member create a set for me, and the CPC has been around US$0.88 without a single sale. On the other hand through advertising on my own site for my own stuff I have a cost of $0 and convert 3 out of 4.

In comparison, Advertising on Weblogs compendium, the CPC is $0.03 and on average a sale costs me US$1.50.