The Wrong Way To Increase PPC Traffic
The primary purpose for using adwords is to get more clicks to your site. But is that what you really want?
Most of us think that clicks will translate to sales. That is not always the case.
Case in point, I have an experiment running with google adwords.
The primary goal was to create a google adwords ad, keyword set and landing page combination that produced a consistent amount of sales on a monthly bases without losing any money after the first 30 days.
I was able to achieve this until...Google moved me UP in the rankings for google adwords. Google "rewards" high CTR by moving you up in the rankings. Google Adwords does a calculation with your keyword bid and click through rate. If your CTR is high they "reward" you by moving you up in the rankings. I moved from an average adwords ranking position of 6.5 to an average adwords ranking position of 4.1. This may not seem like much of a difference but in the world of conversions it can mean everything.
High Google Adword Position May Not Translate To More Sales and Conversions.
I changed nothing....
same adword ad
same keywords
same landing page
different page position!
I noticed a surge in traffic. Actually my traffic doubled with the new position. And adsense revenue increased 400% for the two day period. But my sales went to zero for the two days my position was higher.
Adsense is for exit traffic monetization. The the fact that my adsense revenue when up 200% leads me to think that many of these people clicked out very quickly.
Analysis:
Adword position Higher : 2 positions
Increase of Traffic: 200% increase
Adsense Revenue: 400% Increase
Number of conversions to sales : 100% Decrease
Goal of the campaign: To produce a continuing stream of new sales.
Conclusions: Adword position has everything to do with conversions. Many times online advertisers are looking to increase traffic with no regard to the amount of conversions to sales.
Lesson: Monitor your position.
Immediately...I reduced my bid rate to pull the adword ad back DOWN the page and the sales started within 2 hours.
With PPC, don't try to overcome poor conversions with large amounts of traffic. It is just wasted money.
Best Regards,
David Bullock
www.results-squared.com
Optimizing Marketing Performance
Most of us think that clicks will translate to sales. That is not always the case.
Case in point, I have an experiment running with google adwords.
The primary goal was to create a google adwords ad, keyword set and landing page combination that produced a consistent amount of sales on a monthly bases without losing any money after the first 30 days.
I was able to achieve this until...Google moved me UP in the rankings for google adwords. Google "rewards" high CTR by moving you up in the rankings. Google Adwords does a calculation with your keyword bid and click through rate. If your CTR is high they "reward" you by moving you up in the rankings. I moved from an average adwords ranking position of 6.5 to an average adwords ranking position of 4.1. This may not seem like much of a difference but in the world of conversions it can mean everything.
High Google Adword Position May Not Translate To More Sales and Conversions.
I changed nothing....
same adword ad
same keywords
same landing page
different page position!
I noticed a surge in traffic. Actually my traffic doubled with the new position. And adsense revenue increased 400% for the two day period. But my sales went to zero for the two days my position was higher.
Adsense is for exit traffic monetization. The the fact that my adsense revenue when up 200% leads me to think that many of these people clicked out very quickly.
Analysis:
Adword position Higher : 2 positions
Increase of Traffic: 200% increase
Adsense Revenue: 400% Increase
Number of conversions to sales : 100% Decrease
Goal of the campaign: To produce a continuing stream of new sales.
Conclusions: Adword position has everything to do with conversions. Many times online advertisers are looking to increase traffic with no regard to the amount of conversions to sales.
Lesson: Monitor your position.
Immediately...I reduced my bid rate to pull the adword ad back DOWN the page and the sales started within 2 hours.
With PPC, don't try to overcome poor conversions with large amounts of traffic. It is just wasted money.
Best Regards,
David Bullock
www.results-squared.com
Optimizing Marketing Performance
2 Comments:
Pure coincidence. You can't jump to such a large conclusion -- you've got adsense running on your pages. And you can't control adsense. And more traffic may mean different ads. And displaying competitor's ads may reduce your sales to zero.
The only way you could may such a conclusion is to remove adesense completely & retest at the higher position. I think you'll probably find that a couple of position diferences only influences clicks, & has no significant effect (in statistical terms) on sales.
In addition, your quoted figures mean nothing without real data. How many clicks did you get? What was the before & after click rate? What is your normal conversion rate? etc etc
Thanks for your post.
But, I am very pragmatic in my approach to sales and conversions. Instead of bothering with the statistical significance and such. I am monitoring cost, revenue, number of clicks and 21 other factors as I run this PPC test. My raw data has proven to me over the last 4 months that the idea of sample size and significance is a limiting factor.
For instance, when do you know that a campaign is not working after the first 500 clicks or after 5000 clicks to make sure that the campaign is really losing money.
This campaign has been profitable since the first 30 days and has been increasing in gross revenue with controlled cost for the last 4 months.
The only thing that changed was the position of the ad. Which sent my ad costs up significantly. And whether it was chance or not adsense clicks and %CTR also increased. Had the sales moved with the increased traffic, I would not have bothered to take action.
BTW : With the lower position the sales are right back to normal.
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