Using my Adwords budget

[YNWA]

Hi,

I have a huge budget for adwords but I only seem to be using about 1/10 of it daily.

How to I go about using more budget but also keeping my conversion costs and % around the same?

And should each campaign have its own set of unique keywords? Should these keywords never appear in more than 1 campaign?

Any tips on maximising budget and increasing conversions would be great.

Thanks

[SamMaley]

Campaigns will often naturally not perform great at the beginning. It is just a risk you have to take when creating them, so yes your %'s may drop to start with, but once you start optimising that campaign and its been running a while it should pick up and start converting as your other campaigns do providing you're doing everything right.

one day is absolutely nothing. CTR'S, conversion rates and all kinds of PPC metrics can fluctuate HUGELY between only a few days. You need to let a campaign run for weeks before you fully assess what's going on. Obviously you should look at the campaign regularly to see if any keywords are seriously under performing (ie. Lots of impressions, few clicks and therefore a shocking CTR) and pause/delete these where appropriate, but otherwise you need to give them time.

In order to avoid huge upsets to your other campaign metrics, start you new campaigns off with only Exact match keywords. Then as you see which keywords start to perform well, change those to Phrase match and keep moving up in this fashion as this allows you to identify which keywords will perform without destroying your accounts CTR and QS by immediately throwing out lots of broad match terms. This kind of methodology has always worked well for me

Hope this helps.

[YNWA]

Thanks.

The problem I have is, having taken on a client on 1st November, I have increased conversion % and decreased conversion cost. However I reduced the campaigns/ads running. So I only have 2 campaigns targeting their own product/service.

So as I reduced the campaigns, I also reduced the clicks and spend. Now what I have done is perfect but what I now need to do is add in new campaigns/ad groups looking at a different service. But I need these to maintain the %'s and conversion costs of the 2 I have running.

I dont want to add in new campaigns and it blows the good work I have done by upping cost on wasted clicks with no or little conversions.

I am worried that if I start a campaign and after 1 day the figures are poor, do I swtich it off or do I wait if I cam confident on my QS, ad look, keywords etc..?

How long should I give a campaign before saying "this isn't working"?

Thanks

[DarinPirkey]

Don't let your budget determine your strategy.  I'm not a fan of spending money because you have it.  I would focus on making sure that the clicks you are getting are actually turning into paying customers for the business and once you can confirm that the clicks are actually working for you, then you can scale up your campaign. But it can be done.  I have a client campaign running that I spend $15,000 per month on and still maintain a >4.5% CTR.  So don't let your budget decide your strategy, let what's working decide and scale it upward.

Giving specific advice on your campaign is tough because we don't know if it's a local campaign, product campaign, affiliate campaign, etc.

You asked, "And should each campaign have its own set of unique keywords? Should these keywords never appear in more than 1 campaign?"

Quick answer:  1. Campaigns should have adgroups that target their own niche and then those adgroups should have their own ads that target specific set of keywords.  2. I personally feel that if you do #1 right then keywords will not appear in multiple adgroups.

I like to build adgroups around 1 product and then ads based on keywords that are intuitive for that search and then I target each of those keywords with their own CPC.  For instance, if I'm selling widgets I'll set up a campaign called widgets, an adgroup called blue widgets, and then have keywords like blue widgets, buy blue-green widgets, light blue widgets.  I'll then try to target each of those keywords with their own CPC instead of setting the at the adgroup level.  I also try to make sure that all my keywords in my ad groups are "phrase match" instead of broad or exact.  And, like Sam mentioned, I negative keyword out keywords that don't relate to my strategy.  For instance if you only sell new items, you could add the negative keywords -refurbished, -old, etc.

I don't use PPC like most pros however,  I try to only target people who need "Now" things and keep the competitive shoppers to the organic side.  This will generally help keep your cost down and conversions up.  There are some tricks and things you can do in the title and text to help get only now shoppers.  Also, enhanced campaigns in AdWords now get higher Quality Scores so I would definitely look into optimizing that along with each landing page you have on your own site.

Here is some information on enhanced campaigns from Google.

I'll repeat myself again, but let your goals decide what your strategy is and not your "lack of budget spending".  I generally tell clients that I need $10,000 per month on a campaign but only spend roughly $7,000 or so.   As your quality score and CTR increases, your CPC will go down.   If you worked for me and weren't spending all of the budget I gave you and we were still meeting our goals, you'd be getting a bonus.

Hope that helps.

[SamMaley]

Hi there,

You will not always be able to get a higher volume of searches while maintaining the same CTR or costs.

To get more traffic, you should look at using more broad or modified broad match terms, however you must keep an eye on your negative keywords in order to maintain relevance. What keyword types are you currently using?

You should also keep doing keyword research, basically adding in more new keywords as you find them as this should expand your reach. You should also look at fully utilising ad extensions to help draw in that extra traffic.

Ad groups should have their own unique keywords as otherwise they will compete against each other, this also helps you maintain the adverts relevancy.

Let me know if you need further explanation/more help!

Sam