6500+ Posts. I feel in a good mood.

eliquid

eliquid

Serpwoo.com
May 10, 2007
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A/B Testing
Honestly, things in my life are going pretty good right now in this moment. Better then I had planned or thought they would be.

In order to get good Karma going and to pay it forward, I want to help some of you out. So I decided to do this post and see who all is interested in a topic that has done very well for me in my life, Pay Per Click traffic.

Now, I know a lot of you guys are advanced in this topic. However, a lot of guys here are not. Please don't flame me for sharing things that should be "normal" for us more advanced guys, I am trying to help out some people that don't have the same chops as us.

I am going to offer some tips in this post at random over the course of this week/month. Hope it helps out.
 


Biggest Mistake I See In PPC Accounts

No matter the account or business model, the most common and biggest mistake I see in most PPC accounts is having more then 2 ads per adgroup or only having 1.​

The second most common is having 2 ads, but not properly split testing them ( meaning not having a split testing plan, not picking a winner, not using the right metrics, etc )​

Stick with 2 ads, just do an A/B test per adgroup. Having 1 ad is lazy, having more then 2 is wasting money 90% of the time, and having 2 but not doing proper split testing is just wasting money as well​
 
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You Really Need To Know YOUR Numbers

I've done work for ecommerce clients that didn't know their customer lifetime value or didn't know their true profit/revenue after PPC cost were taken out.

I've also done lead gen work in PPC where the client didn't know how to scale to other traffic sources or how to budget their money for PPC campaigns because they didn't know their conversation rate for their funnel or the value of their customer.

I've seen people come up with all kinds of complex excel formulas and long drawn out ideas of what they should pay for when it comes to leads or sales. However, most times it just comes down to knowing 2 basic things:

1. What is your conversion rate once a lead/customer hits your sales funnel until they are a paid customer?

2. What can you spend on 1 customer until you are no longer profitable ( this could be dependent per item sold or lead source, etc )?

If you know these 2 numbers, you can make PPC profitable for you the majority of the time.

As an example, once I acquire a lead/customer I know that for one of my programs I can convert that prospect into a sale/lead 9% of the time. I also know that for this same program, I can spent up to $2500 and still be profitable.

Knowing this, I can take $2500 and multiple that by .09 and come up with $225. I can now spend $225 per customer and still be profitable in PPC for this 1 specific program. As long as I can spend <= $225 per lead/prospect, I am doing well.

There are a few things to take into consideration, but that is a good baseline to help you figure out what you should be spending per prospect.​
 
ReMarketing

So many people do this wrong. Here is what I see most times:

1. Not doing it. Why not? If a prospect hits your site and doesn't convert, you can remarket to them and potentially convert them by spending another $2. You can show them banners about your product if they dont convert to remind them to come back and buy, you can ask them why they didnt convert and send them to a survey, or you can wait until they do convert and upsell them later thru the remarketing channel. I have even done remarketing to remind people that got into my sales funnel that the webinar they signed up to is in 3 days. For the low amount of money it costs to convert highly qualified traffic, you can do just about anything you want with it. I have even toy'd with the idea that every 4 weeks after a diet pill sale to remind the customer to get a refill of their acai ( this was a straight sale campaign ). With the way emails can get spam boxed, lost, or not delivered these days, I can rest assure people see my message while they are surfing the web this way.

2. Your doing it too often. Most people set the cookie to default or longer and then never touch the impression cap. Sorry, I don't want to visit your site and then see just your banner only for the next 12 hours over the course of the next 90 days per day. You need to pull some hard data on what is giving you best ROI and set your caps and cookies to that.

3. Turning off the remarketing. Ok, I am a customer now.. why I am still being followed by your presale banners again? Someone forgot to move me off the list and move me into the correct one once I became a customer.

4. Only having 1 remarketing strategy. Listen, do you sell more then 1 product? Do you offer more then 1 degree program at your school? Stop showing me your generic catch all remarketing banners and get specific with me and what I looked at while on your site.

5. Not understanding View Thru conversions. These guys seen your ads on the display network but maybe didn't convert and didn't click on the banner ad itself. They came back later and converted elsewhere BUT they did see your remarketing banner ( but came back to the site via domain type in or another search ad ). You need to count these conversions like you would a branding campaign. This makes remarketing powerful. I generally count each View Thru conversion has .5 a conversion since they really didn't click on that banner to convert, but got assisted in the conversion.​
 
Seems like nobody really posted and I have only glanced at PPC.

From what I understand, PPC appears to be getting harder and harder with the main PPC vendors (google, bing, facebook) seeming to be much more stricter on what they allow to be advertised.

Thoughts? Please no flame PPC noob here
 
Hey Eli,

Good Posts Mate! I've never been particularly successful running PPC and have typically shied away from it.

One of the things i've really struggled with is getting well priced clicks...seems almost every niche I would look at had rediculous click costs or the traffic was complete junk.

I'm wondering what you do to actually track down keywords that are reasonably priced and to what extent click-fraud impacts your overall stats. Is it really just a case of spending a chunk of cash to find out what keywords convert.

Appreciate it Bro!
 
jryan54 said:
One of the things i've really struggled with is getting well priced clicks...seems almost every niche I would look at had rediculous click costs or the traffic was complete junk.
Click to expand...

Are those niches filled with affiliates or product owners? If it's the latter then maybe those high priced clicks are still profitable.

Subbed to thread.
 
p-t-r said:
Seems like nobody really posted and I have only glanced at PPC.

From what I understand, PPC appears to be getting harder and harder with the main PPC vendors (google, bing, facebook) seeming to be much more stricter on what they allow to be advertised.

Thoughts? Please no flame PPC noob here
Click to expand...

I think it has gotten easier over the years myself. Google has relaxed some rules and bing has always been gravy.

Facebook, it comes and goes like the stock market. Seems the rules are always relaxed in Q4.
 
jryan54 said:
Hey Eli,

Good Posts Mate! I've never been particularly successful running PPC and have typically shied away from it.

One of the things i've really struggled with is getting well priced clicks...seems almost every niche I would look at had rediculous click costs or the traffic was complete junk.

I'm wondering what you do to actually track down keywords that are reasonably priced and to what extent click-fraud impacts your overall stats. Is it really just a case of spending a chunk of cash to find out what keywords convert.

Appreciate it Bro!
Click to expand...

On the well priced clicks, you really have to spend some money to find out what the issue is. It could be that your getting bad ROI clicks from 8-10am, only on Wednesdays, only on the Search Partners network, you have low/bad QS, bad converting ads, and or a mix of all of these.

Also, Google takes care of most of my fraud clicks for me.. but fraud is rampant on Bing.

Each campaign is different, just like each SERP. You need to spend some money to find out whats working for you and your auidence and narrow down those KWs that work and turn off everything else.

As an example, when I get asked to do audits or manage an account, I do not take on anything that is less then $200 spend a day if I can help it. Anything less and it normally takes forever to get enough data quickly enough to make good decisions in lots of niches. Even at $200 a day, its hard.
 
I have never properly learned PPC and I would love to get some tips to be able to get some profitable campaigns going now and then. I'd love to hear more about keyword targeting tactics, bidding, etc, cause I'm uber-noob when it comes to this.

PLEASE POST MOAR
 
I wanted to post this above, but my edit time ran out.

Example. I have a site which has been getting decent traffic/conversions from organic search results. I put together a small Adword campaign targeting some of the keyword variations of the one's I already rank for organically. I sent them to the a version of the same page my organic conversions are coming from, but with different tracking etc. Just a couple ads, and a couple dozen keywords. After 2 days, and $200 bucks, I had a good number of clicks, but not a single conversion. I know I would need to split target a lander, but it makes no sense that I can't get one conversion out of 40+ clicks, when I have about a 4% conversion rate on the people that hit my site organically. My site is 100% on target with the keywords I'm including in my campaigns, yet I end up with a QS of 10/10 on only a couple and the rest are mostly 7/10 and worse. This shit pisses me off. I would think a couple hundred bucks would be enough to get some data and find a couple keyword/ad combos that can convert. Adding to the frustration is that the traffic that was clicking on my ads was also clicking through on the lander to my end offers. They just weren't signing up. So if the ads are good enough to get clicks, the lander get's people to the offer and then they bail, that's a whole different issue altogether.
 
did you mix display and search in your campaign?

did you bid for position #1?

was your page mobile optimized and ready for tablets too?

did you double check the tracking was working?

did you check your geolocation?
 
did you mix display and search in your campaign? - Just search.

did you bid for position #1? - Not for every keyword. It's a competitive niche, but the damn thing wanted me at $25/click for some keywords with 7/10. Most of the other keywords were at $5.00-$7.00 for #1 bid.

was your page mobile optimized and ready for tablets too? - Yes

did you double check the tracking was working? - Yes

did you check your geolocation? - Had it set to US only, which was what I needed for the offers.
 
Could you share a story on how you found a low hanging fruit to market with PPC?

What would take to find a profitable and never touched niche for PPC?

Thank you
 
eliquid said:
Biggest Mistake I See In PPC Accounts
No matter the account or business model, the most common and biggest mistake I see in most PPC accounts is having more then 2 ads per adgroup or only having 1.​
The second most common is having 2 ads, but not properly split testing them ( meaning not having a split testing plan, not picking a winner, not using the right metrics, etc )​
Stick with 2 ads, just do an A/B test per adgroup. Having 1 ad is lazy, having more then 2 is wasting money 90% of the time, and having 2 but not doing proper split testing is just wasting money as well​
Click to expand...


Do you have a program or statistical spreadsheet you use to decide when your test is over? Do you do it by feel?

I'm a big a fan of using split testing software on landers, and my software gives me statistical confidence numbers. I use them as guidelines instead of rules, but find that mathematical analysis very useful.
 
WF needs more PPC threads .... seems like the resveratrol days killed any conversation about this side of affiliate marketing here.

Great start to a thread E
 
efeezy said:
did you mix display and search in your campaign? - Just search.

did you bid for position #1? - Not for every keyword. It's a competitive niche, but the damn thing wanted me at $25/click for some keywords with 7/10. Most of the other keywords were at $5.00-$7.00 for #1 bid.

was your page mobile optimized and ready for tablets too? - Yes

did you double check the tracking was working? - Yes

did you check your geolocation? - Had it set to US only, which was what I needed for the offers.
Click to expand...

Well, $200-$250 spend is still really low. If you dont spend more money to find out what it could be, then you need something like crazyegg or clicktale to find out whats going with your LP, but in the niche your in ( $25 a click, $5-$7 a click ), $250 spend is nothing.


martini said:
Could you share a story on how you found a low hanging fruit to market with PPC?

What would take to find a profitable and never touched niche for PPC?

Thank you
Click to expand...

Never touched niche for PPC, I dont think it really exist. I dont aim for something untested or not done, there generally is no money in it ( big money ). I like fishing in big ponds, not small ones.

As far as low hanging fruit, several times I have expanded upon my initial KWs with research tools ( no, not GKW or other tools that use GKW. Think more ISP level data ) and spyed on my competitors to find out how else they were using their terms.

As an example, in the EDU niche sometimes the degree you could be pushing could be the same degree at another school, but titled and labeled something totally different. Kinda like how the same car in the USA built by Ford could go under a different name in Brazil. Tapping into those opportunities are big money.



User9364 said:
Do you have a program or statistical spreadsheet you use to decide when your test is over? Do you do it by feel?

I'm a big a fan of using split testing software on landers, and my software gives me statistical confidence numbers. I use them as guidelines instead of rules, but find that mathematical analysis very useful.
Click to expand...

I have some, but I dont use them. I am optimizing every week so if I were to wait until 95% statistical relevance I would get behind. I know most of the markets I am in very very well so I tend to look at results over a 7-10 day period as long as enough data has came in and looks valid. I wouldnt make choices if Conversions between 2 ads were only 1-2 conversions off or if clicks were within the same range as well. I look for at least a 15-25% difference over a valid number of impressions for most of my tests. If I dont see at least that much, I will let it run into a longer term test where I might go back and look at it over 3 months worth of data.
 
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