Direct to merchant PPC Advice

[thai_king]

Hi,

I am going to start my first direct to merchant PPC campaign over the wkend and would appreciate any advice.

Why is it advised to start off with a high cost per click - is this to get a good CTR and therefore a good quality score?

How long do you leave a PPC campaign running before you pull the campaign if it is not performing? £100 or 100 clicks etc...?

I think the most important thing for me to do is track the various keywords to see if they are converting then optimising the campaign on the back of this.

Any more advice appreciated from you PPC veterns! :tup

[Shane]

yup. a higher bid usually means a higher placement, a higher placement usually means a better CTR which in turn means Google earns more, it's easier to go in high and drop down than it is to go in low, let a poor history establish itself and then try and move up.

The main tip I have is that negatives are an often overlooked area that can rocket a CTR compared to other advertisers, e.g. you have 500 impressions and get 10 clicks, that's a 2% CTR but if you can remove 250 impressions that aren't really targeted enough then you get 250 targeted impressions and the same 10 clicks but your CTR is 100% better at 4%, now if your competitors aren't doing the same with negatives and assuming you both have similar CTR's initially you should rank better for the same bid or end up having to bid less to stay where you are.

Therefore regularly check your negatives and hunt new ones down, always be looking to laser target who sees your ads, you'll then find some awesome click through rates, sure the traffic may be low volume but your CTR's could regularly be in the mid to high double figure range.

regarding when to pull a campaign, in general you should really be able to acheive at least 1% conversion on most things out of the blocks if an adgroup is set up ok so if you haven't had a sale after 100 clicks it's time to look at the risk v reward of the adgroup (and check the tracking) it's hard to give an arbitrary pound value as a cut off point as £100 of clicks for a loan campaign will be minimal yet for a travel campaign it will be lots of volume so you need to weigh up the cost against what it could earn if you get a sale but generally if it's gone 100 clicks with no action you need to give it some more love and attention and maybe refine it or swap merchants, then if it's still not working it's time to bin it

[thai_king]

Thanks for the advice Shane. I didn't even think about negative keywords. Bit of a random question.... but are there any common negative terms for clothing sites?

Any more advice from anyelse appreciated

[TimL85]

Thanks for the advice Shane. I didn't even think about negative keywords. Bit of a random question.... but are there any common negative terms for clothing sites?

Any more advice from anyelse appreciated

It depends on what you are selling. At a basic level, if you are only retailng men's clothing then woman, womens etc would be negative.

[tijan]

Nice advise Shane.

Still on negative:

If your ad is targetted enough then you should be looking at a range of similar products that fall outside of your target as -negative. E.g, Your ad is targetting size 40 Black bra, Other color and sizes could be set as negatives, e.c.t


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[djbarker]

hi, Thai,

here are a few suggestions:

1. Stick to the 'search network' initially. (or, if you plan to use the 'content network' set it up in a separate campaign)
2. For a trial campaign, try hundreds of very targeted 'exact match' or 'phrase match' keywords. The alternative - a handful of broad terms - is likely to get more clicks, but lower conversion, lower sales & won't scale as nicely.
3. Group your keywords as closely to your ad as possible. eg, if you're advertising pink/red berets, set up one ad group for 'pink berets' & one ad group for 'red berets'.
4. If your budget is limited: Don't just go for keywords highly related to your product. Go for keywords that are highly related *and* indicate the user is ready to buy. eg 'buy pink berets', 'pink beret gift' are good; 'reviews', 'pictures', 'photos', 'info' indicate the searcher may still just be researching & may make good negatives to save you some cash.

Hope that's useful!

daniel

[aotagain]

If you are going direct to merchant, check the merchant terms every week to see if they have excluded use of their url or brand in the advert.

Believe me, you should get notified of this, but you probably won't be, depending on the network and what letter the day begins with ;-)

[Shane]

If you are going direct to merchant, check the merchant terms every week to see if they have excluded use of their url or brand in the advert.

Believe me, you should get notified of this, but you probably won't be, depending on the network and what letter the day begins with ;-)

depending on the network don't forget to check in every single place you can as some often say one thing on one page and another thing on a different page yet if caught out.. you'll be in the wrong and treated like you did it on purpose or at best you'll be treated like you are the incompetant one lol