Bid Management Tools

[Jon12345]

What do people think about bid management tools such as Atlas for affiliate marketing? Good idea or you wouldn't trust someone else getting access to your data?

Thanks,

Jon

[Jon236]

In my experience they're great for managing huge lists of longtail keywords that don't cost much or attract much traffic, but you would still be best off managing your top performing keywords manually. So I guess it depends on how big your campaigns are as to if you'd see the benefit from using it. Data protection isn't an issue I'd suggest.

[Jon12345]

Questions:

1. Why would you be best off managing your top performing keywords manually? For what reason?

2. Why do you think data protection isn't an issue?

[Jon236]

1. if you had say 10 keywords which drove 85% of your sales, you would want to look after them yourself and adapt and react to competitors and market trends accordingly. Leaving it upto a bid management tool leaves you open to error, which could cost you sales, leads or conversions . Whilst if you had say another 1000 keywords that drove 15% of your sales, it would be time and cost effective to manage those remotely. This is just going on what my experience and what I've been taught, you may find it suits you to play it differently.

2. Who is going to access your data? it's all controlled automatically, I doubt someone like Atlas would have any use for your data other than to improve your service.

[Jon12345]

1. Those 10 keywords could be tracked for ROI and the bids altered 12 times per day. You can't do this very well manually. My thoughts are it is more important to use a bid management tool for your most important keywords.

2. Employees of Atlas might be able to view your data and so clone your affiliate campaign with their own private campaigns at home.

Interesting debate. Would be great if someone who actually used bid management tools piped in!

[Jon236]

This is all just going on how I was taught to run PPC campaigns in an online marketing agency, you may well have differing views of how to get the best out of your keywords, which is all part of the fun!

And as for the employees at atlas, you could argue the same that the google or Yahoo or MSN employees could look at your data and optimize their own campaigns off the back of it.. chances are slim I'd suggest.. although I could be entirely wrong!

[Jon12345]

That is a good point about the Google etc. employees. I suppose my take is that at Google, there may be more safeguards against stuff. And with Atlas, they can give ROI stats. Many affiliates seem to be concerned with someone getting their data. My view is that I am concerned but the larger the company, the less likely it is that your data will be stolen. I may be wrong. Imagine a single guy running a bid management system. If they copied your data, it would represent a significant proportion of his profits.

[BFG 9000]

If I was cynical, I'd suggest that at least one person in this thread is trying to sell 'Atlas'.......


But I'm not, so I won't.


TTFN

BFG

[Jon236]

Haha, well it's definitely not me BFG, i can assure you!

[Shane]

Originally Posted by Jon12345 1. Those 10 keywords could be tracked for ROI and the bids altered 12 times per day.

To justify altering a bid 12 times per day there would have to be doing some serious volume on those keywords, and to be fair it's a bit like watching the stock price by the second, when in actual fact by the day, week or month may be better overall.

Originally Posted by Jon12345 2. Employees of Atlas might be able to view your data and so clone your affiliate campaign with their own private campaigns at home.

I can guess virtually any brand out there's "top" keywords, but getting them to convert where I send them is a totally different matter, each adwords account is like an organic entity, just becuase I know what works for merchant x doesn't mean I can get it to work for me if I send it somewhere else from my account.

I've used many and the only one's worth their money measure the ROI and adjust according to your CPA, the rest are just like having some chimp in the corner.. bidding at X pence per click regardless of the outcome

[Jon12345]

It is this specific feature - bid according to ROI - that interests me most. Some of the tools out there let you alter your strategy using a combination of sliders. One can be to minimise costs. This would be great if you were having cashflow issues because you could have the tool auto alter the bids by keeping costs low but the number of conversions as high as possible. One tool I saw that did this was quite expensive, with over $1000 per month as a starting point + fees. Great for an agency, too expensive for me.

Alterting a bid 12 times per day is just one option. You can do it once every 48 hours if you like. It was just an example.