Yesterday's article looked at the advantages offered by Google AdWords and other PPC options, namely the risk minimisation. We also looked at whether it's possible to lose money from Google AdWords, and the answer was a clear and resounding yes.In my hypothetical scenario, I outlined two companies, both of whom were happy with their respective AdWords spending, mainly on the basis that as they were only paying for clicks, they couldn't lose.
The reason why they both might be wrong is simple.
Here's a real life example.
Our company (SharewarePromotions) has just introduced our Google AdWords Deluxe package, open to all software companies, wherever you are in the world.
To celebrate our launch, we are offering anyone who signs up for the package today, Wednesday the 6th of April, $1,000 of Google AdWords credit, paid for by ourselves. Click here for details now.
My guess is that most people reading this will have clicked the link. So we'll have received a fairly high number of hits. But how many people will actually sign up for the package? I'm guessing very few.
If we were paying for the ad, even on a pay per click basis, we'll probably have spent a fair amount on the number clicks. But our ROI would probably be zero.
The point here is that the information you see in the AdWords control panel is only half the story. The rest of the information lies in your web server logs.
An ad may generate hundreds (or even thousands) of visitors per day, at a reasonable cost. But if 99 percent of these visitors take one look at your website and then leave, you can't really consider the ad to be a great success.
If however 75 percent of the visitors go on to explore your website, and 40% of them actually download the trial version, then you may be onto something.
If we take a quick look at the factors involved here, in order of importance, we're looking at the ad itself, the landing page, the product, and then the price.
Tomorrow we'll take a look at why these factors are in this order, and how to polish each of them to start improving your conversion rates. All of which will help you to spend less on your ads, receive more clicks, and increase your ROI. Watch this space.
