Archives for "User Tips & Info"
What’s wrong with my PPC campaign?
Maybe it’s not your PPC campaign at all. If you’ve carefully researched your keywords, compiled a comprehensive list of negatives, matched up the best landing pages to your tightly organized adgroups, written killer ad copy, and the conversions still aren’t coming in, it’s time to think about other factors that could be sabotaging your profitability. (If you hate criticism about your website, you’ll probably want to stop reading here.)
If you’re a web merchant, the problem could very well lie somewhere in the shopping experience you provide. Your landing page, shopping basket, site speed, and pricing could all be playing a role. Before writing off PPC as a loss, check to make sure these components of your site aren’t the problem. Continue Reading
When PPC is not a good fit
Like all forms of advertising, pay per click has its limitations. We here at ClickSweeper have been in pay per click for a while, and we’ve seen all types of businesses try their hand at PPC. Some have succeeded, others have not. In the interest of making your online marketing efforts as successful as possible, we’re going to share with you some of the things we’ve seen repeatedly in unsuccessful PPC campaigns. Don’t let this be you!
1. Low budget, high cost clicks. The days of super cheap clicks are mostly gone. In competitive fields, like insurance, web design, and legal help, you could end up paying $5 or more for a single click. If you’re on a very tight budget, say $10 a day for a total of $300 a month, your advertising money isn’t going to buy many clicks before running out. Continue Reading
A Guide to Common Acronyms
If you’re just getting into PPC — pay per click, that is — you might find yourself a little lost in all the acronyms being thrown about. Here at ClickSweeper, we’ve assembled a friendly guide to common acronyms you’re likely to encounter as you delve into PPC.
CPC: cost per click. The CPC refers to the dollar amount you pay every time someone clicks your ad. How high or low your CPC is will depend on how competitive your industry or keywords are, your click through rate (CTR), and other factors.
CPM: cost per thousand [impressions]. For certain types of content network ads, you can opt to pay per thousand impressions (times your ad is shown) rather than by click. The minimum CPM Google allows is .25.
CPV/CPA: cost per conversion/cost per acquisition. The CPV is calculated by dividing the amount of money spent on advertising by the number of conversions. E.g., if you spent $1,000 in the month of June on clicks and had a total of 100 conversions, the CPV is $10. Continue Reading
New ClickSweeper Feature: Cross-Engine Keyword Addition
We’re excited to launch a new time-saving feature that makes improving and synchronizing your campaigns across multiple vendors faster and easier. Now you can add keywords across Google and MSN through ClickSweeper with minimal navigation.
Simply log in, click the keywords tab, and select the ‘Add keywords’ button. An editor will pop up in which you can choose the vendor, campaign, adgroup, match type, and enter keywords. Let’s try adding the keyword ‘paycheck cashing problems’ to our Google campaign. Continue Reading
Keyword ROI Bidding Strategy
A quick head’s up about a special ClickSweeper feature you may have missed. Among the four automated PPC bidding strategy Clicksweeper offers is one that is especially tailored to online merchants who manage many products with different pricing and ROI goals. Keyword ROI based bidding, available for Google, Yahoo, and MSN, allows you to easily control and optimize for ROAS on an individual keyword level.
Here’s how it works. You set a campaign level ROAS goal to start with, say 300%. You can easily adjust the ROAS for different AdGroups or even set a specific ROAS for an individual keyword. If the conversion tracking code is customized to include the revenue from sales completed through your shopping cart, the revenue generated by each keyword is imported to ClickSweeper and compared with your keyword ROAS goals. Keywords that perform better than 300% get rewarded with higher bids for more exposure; keywords that perform worse are penalized with lower bids. To cap spending, you can also enter in max bids for individual keywords. Continue Reading
Content & Site-Targeted Ads on ClickSweeper
Have you written off content network ads as unprofitable and pointless? 2010 might be a good year to change your mind. Managed right, content network and site targeted ads on Google can achieve high click through and conversion rates.
Let’s start off with a quick look at the three types of ads you can run through Google AdWords: keyword search ads, content network ads, and site-targeted ads. Keyword search ads are triggered by the user’s queries on search engine results pages. Content network ads, which can be run with your keyword search campaigns or as separate campaigns, are shown on content network sites that either Google chooses (automatic placement) or you do (managed placement), based on the keywords you are bidding on. And site-targeted ads are separate campaigns in which you choose the keywords, the sites on which you want your ads shown, and set bids per site (not by keyword).
Content and site targeted ads, although often cheaper in terms of cost per click, can have frustratingly low CTR and conversion rates. Part of the problem stems from the structure of site-based ads: less targeted traffic, a more scattershot approach, less control. However, advantages include more traffic, wider exposure for your brand, and the opportunity to reach relevant audiences that you would never have thought of. Some quick tips to keep in mind:
- keep your search and content campaigns separate so you can set different budgets for each
- filter out sites that have very low click through rates (CTRs) and 0 conversions
- use content network advertising to figure out which sites convert, then use those for your more expensive site-targeted ads
- focus your AdGroups for higher quality scores and CTRs
- monitor your conversions closely
- stay on top of your bidding
But managing your bids can be time consuming and tedious. ClickSweeper stands out amongst other PPC software in that it offers advanced bid options on both content network and site-targeted ads. Automated bid updates keep you on top of the game: you can set target bids, ranks, or cost per conversion, and ClickSweeper will automatically update your bids for you.
Want to try it out? Get a free 1-month trial of ClickSweeper, and get full automation of all three types of ads.
Not Seeing Results from Rank Based Bidding?
Rank based bidding is the forerunner of all bidding strategies, and even though pay per click algorithms have become vastly more complicated, rank still makes a difference in visibility and clickthrough rates. ClickSweeper’s rank based bidding combines flexibility and simplicity. You can choose to manage some or all of your keywords under the campaign level strategy, or (as we recommend for smaller budgets) use a different campaign strategy and set just your top keywords to rank driven.
If you’re using rank based as your campaign strategy, we have a few tips to make it work well for you.
Help! My keyword ROI bidding strategy isn’t working!
ClickSweeper’s ROI bidding strategy is a smart strategy for businesses with at least 3-5 conversions per day. (You’ll avoid most issues with this strategy by meeting that baseline requirement.) In this strategy, you set a target cost per conversion or ROAS goal for your keywords. ClickSweeper uses this baseline to promote or demote keywords based on their performance. Over time, you’ll spend less on keywords that don’t meet your goals, reserving your budget for profitable keywords.
Need some extra help mastering this strategy? Read on!
Getting the Most out of Budget Based Bidding
Click costs on the rise? Budget based bidding is one of ClickSweeper’s most useful tools for stretching your marketing budget as far as it will go in the competitive and expensive world of pay per click ads. Here’s how it works. You set a budget (keep it realistic for best results!), and ClickSweeper uses it to reward keywords that get clicks for less. With budget based bidding, you swap budget-draining keywords for those that generate cheaper clicks. More clicks for your buck!
Getting started is easy; just turn off your Google or Yahoo optimizers, set a realistic budget, and go. But just in case you do run into issues, here are some easy troubleshooting tips.