I’m seeing a trend lately with new Google Adwords accounts and wanted to share my findings and get your feedback.
Back on January 11, I set up a Google Adwords account for a new client. We went all out, writing multiple ads for testing purposes, splitting the keywords into similar groups and targeting the ads geographically.
The results, at first, were poor. The campaign got one or two clicks the first couple of days, then went for days without a click. We decided to raise the bids significantly and write landing pages for each ad group that were designed to be highly relevant to the Google Adwords ads to drive conversion.
After we employed a more aggressive bidding strategy and directed ads to landing pages, the clicks started coming in, and just this week we’re seeing much better results. I’m unsure of what factor (the landing pages or the higher bids) had the biggest impact.
I recently read that advertisers should expect to bid higher at first to get desired results. This is good advice for all of you starting new Adwords campaigns. The folks over at MindValley Labs blogged earlier in the month that new advertisers “get crushed” when employing the same bidding strategies as an established advertiser, and they backed it up with test results.
My advice for those starting a new Google advertising campaign is to a) write and design your landing pages before you activate your campaign and b) start keyword bids higher than normal while also setting daily budgets high. Monitor your campaign closely, and if you’re getting a high clickthrough rate, test the effect on clickthrough rate of backing off of your bids gradually.
February 2nd, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Mike says:
I completely agree with your recommendations. That is exactly the lesson that we started to learn when helping one client after another.
In a way, you have to start aggressive to get a seat at the table with the established AdWords advertisers. Otherwise, your ads won’t show, you don’t get clicks, and you don’t build up a high quality score. Worse, if you don’t start strong, you end up in a “doom loop” vs. a “money loop.”
Glad to hear that you found our test results helpful. Will be sharing more shortly.
Mike, MindValley Labs
January 1st, 2011 at 3:28 pm
Chad Walls says:
Thanks for this post! I am fairly new to Adwords and discovered this same problem. I decided to be cheap and bid really low at first to test the waters but my experience was similar to yours. I have done some research and it seems that most in the industry would agree with your advice. I suppose the same can be applied to an account with poor history. If the previous campaign manager historically has a low click through rate one might have to focus on writing some effective ads and increase the bid price. I assume in time with a better CTR the CPC will reduce.