Ask HN: Does AdWords work for you?

[waterlooalex]

I've talked to a few businesses (mostly Saas) who run AdWords campaigns that don't "work". The campaigns drive some traffic, but they're not seeing a good positive ROI.

Have you made Adwords work for you? Can it be made to work for smaller businesses?

[petersouth]

I've used it for five years now. I started with one of those free fifty or hundred dollars vouchers in the business magazines and I don't think I've ever paid any extra. I would periodically get emails from google saying if I do something they would add an extra fifty bucks credit.

My biggest three recommendations are: -Keep cost low. I saw that some people were paying like $10 for a Justin Beiber click. Maybe if you are trying to sell some hair-gel to make you look like justin beiber buying a $.25 hair-gel keyword could be better from a cost perspective. -Target location. My clickrate went up a bunch for a few months but didn't see an influx of users. I checked analytics and found a bunch of clicks were coming from some weird Japanese website. Some kind of fraud. It was using like 90% of my click payments. I disabled Japan and had no problems since. -Be very careful accepting their auto-recommendations. I did all their recommendations and I think it would be bad for a serious company. It adds creepy shit like "watch grandma peeing" and my keywords aren't related to that at all. It also isn't accurate. It says "we estimate you'll get 150 new clicks every day from now for x dollars." and I'll get none or one.

[vijayaggarwal]

I've seen both sides of the story - both successful and unsuccessful. Following are some points that distinguish between the two:

1. Keyword research: understand the search volume and competition level for each target keyword before you start your campaigns. Having an estimate of CPC before you start is critical to right planning. If you operate in an industry where search volumes are less and/or competition is high, you should perhaps not depend on search engine are your primary traffic source.

2. Contextual relevancy of keywords: the more relevant the keyword is, the lesser price you pay as you drive more CTR. Google charges lower CPC for higher CTR ads. SEO directly helps SEM.

3. Catchy headlines, good description: ad making is an art. Even text ads. Test multiple copies for each keyword group and see which one does best. See if having FREE in the heading helps, try adding phone number, etc. Again higher CTR implies lower CPC.

[byoung2]

I experimented with it back in 2008 to advertise an ebook I paid to have written (my 4 hour work week phase). I was targeting long tail keywords, but no matter what I did, the cost per click was too high to make it worthwhile. $1 a click doesn't make sense when you're selling a $20 ebook. Then I hired a guy on elance to optimize my campaign and for $150 he tweaked the keywords, landing page text, and ad copy, and got the CPC down to under 5 cents. It's all about quality score. If your landing page text, ad copy, and keywords all line up, you get rewarded with cheaper clicks. That is the only way you can afford it.

[rahimnathwani]

That's great! How did you find and choose this particular guy?

[byoung2]

He was one of the best rated SEM guys on Elance. His name is Josh May, I believe. I contacted him later for another project, but he was no longer taking on new work.

[ASquare]

You should try asking this question at growthhackers.com - there's folks who hang out there that have more experience with paid marketing.

[GnarfGnarf]

The Emperor has no clothes.