Does success followed by a question mark really mean success? I guess it depends on how you measure success.
The good news is I launched my first profitable pay per click campaign about a week ago, the bad news is I’m only up 3 bucks. Here is my earnings report from Neverblue Ads:
I don’t have very many keywords at all, this is really just a test to figure out how things work. I used what I learned from Zac’s Guide to PPC Marketing, Paul’s Uberaffiliate Marketing Guide, and the Super Affiliate Accelerator run by Amit from Super Affiliate Mindset to put together a basic campaign to learn the ropes.
Observations
I only have two adgroups A & B, and A brought in 5 out of the 6 conversions. Ad group A’s keyword statistics are shown following my observations:
The keyword with the highest number of impressions has brought in the highest # of conversions, which makes sense. However, its click through rate isn’t fantastic, I should split test more ads on that keyword to increase CTR.
The keyword with the third highest impressions has one of the poorest CTR’s, I need to optimize that ad as well. It has brought one conversion due to the high number of impressions, better ads should hopefully result in higher CTR -> conversions.
The ad group not shown, B, has more than double the cost per conversion as the adgroup below, A. If I had not been running adgroup B, expenses would be 29% lower and profits only 16% lower. Needless to say ad group B is not profitable.
Ad group B avg CTR is 1.9% while Ad group A avg CTR is only 1.35%. Yet the conversion rate for Ad group B is only 4% and the conversion rate for Ad group A is 10.20%. They both point to the same landing page, my ads for Ad group B must promise something other than the landing page offers. It may be that those keywords don’t convert as well for this offer. I’ll add more relevant ads to see if I can improve conversions.
CTR of 1.28% and up gives a Great quality score, anything less only has OK quality score.
The average position for ad group A is 4.4 and for ad group B is 2.1. I could consider dropping my current bid on some of the keywords by about 30% to lower my costs and see what effect it had on conversions. I’ll hold off on these changes until I’ve optimized my ads so I know which changes are actually having an effect.
So how am I going to improve my ad copy? Upon the recommendation of Amit, I bought the book, Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples and am part way through it now. I’ve picked up some great information, I’m going to use some of the formulas from the chapter on writing headlines to improve the ads I’m using.