Seeking Critique on PPC Campaign Gameplan
-
Background:
We're a home service business with potential for recurring clients. In the past, I've run PPC campaigns for a much larger company, and was profitable, but the business model was vastly different. The campaign also took place during their busy season, allowing flexibility I won't receive here.
Campaign Details:
- AdWords only
- SERPs only (not partner network)
- Desktop users only
Data Available:
Lots of past data was incomplete, prompting my best estimates and judgment calls. For past leads data, I'm using Google as lead source (organic + local pack rankings), generated specifically from our quote form.
Since our quote form doesn't render on Mobile/Tablet, I omitted those visits from our Analytics data, and only target Desktop in the campaign.
I wound up with the following statistics:
Organic (any web search), Desktop visitors who viewed our quote form page:
- Number of overall pageviews
- Number of overall leads generated from our quote form
- Number of overall leads which converted to sales
And for our sales/numbers end of things:
- % our clients choose targeted package
- Revenue of initial sale on that package
- Profit generated from sale on that package
Using these numbers, I calculated the % of clickers likely to bounce, complete the form, convert to clients, etc. Using our sales records, I calculated revenue/profit expected from each. And with that, I calculated the highest CPC to break even (unacceptable, obviously), as well as the projected ROI from lower, more reasonable CPCs.
Notes:
- We're a home service business. Not all homes are created equal. Through data, I found our clients average home size and the average estimate for that home.
- Due to incomplete records, I can't know which Google _clients _are specific to our quote form. Some likely called through the local pack or manually dialed and said "Google" if our staff asked. To combat this, I found the % of Google _leads _who completed the quote form vs. phone call, email and applied it to clients for a reliable estimate (our system removes the quote form identifier upon lead to client conversion).
- I'm not factoring in the % of clients who become recurring customers as I don't have this data. Given that it's much higher than 0%, I think this allows a LOT of breathing room on my estimates. Many of our clients have stayed with us for years. If only a small number convert to long-term status, the current ROI shoots WAY up.
- Similar to above, I'm also not factoring in the % of clients who don't choose the initial package, but instead choose a lesser package. Again, I think this provides breathing room.
Any PPC campaign will have a plethora of variables, especially intangible issues (damages, refunds, etc). I feel I have the important things down, but I'm far from an expert. I'd love to receive any advice or things I'm overlooking.
Thanks.
-
Thanks for that. This is definitely something for us to consider. We're pretty high up organically in the local pack already, but running a mobile-only call campaign would definitely interest us. Thanks for the suggestion.
-
Hi Alan,
Thanks for your help.
1. Why is an AdWords campaign more effective with those additional marketing campaigns in place? Beyond the quality score/ad rank going up, is there an additional direct benefit with those marketing facets occurring?
FWIW, we are in top 3 in a large city for many of the biggest KW's. Our local SEO is very strong, many of our organic hits are people typing in our brand name, we have 2 locations, etc. We don't do much by way of articles/videos/social as we haven't seen much benefit in those. Our social is mainly to promote whatever campaigns we're running for whatever reason.
2. For sure. Thank you.
-
Looks like you've given it a lot of thought and have a process in place to determine CPC bid. Couple other things to keep in mind:
-
AdWords is most effective when the other digital marketing components are in place -- strong SEO including local SEO, growing brand awareness, marketing automation tools and content marketing campaign and assets such as video, articles, etc. and of course, social media engagement. See marketing.grader.com from HubSpot.
-
Key addtional figures to track/monitor are Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) and CTR (which obviously includes the quality score as well as the bid).
These are some of the conversation points that come up often with clients. Wishing you success.
-
-
I'd also recommend setting up an Adwords call-only campaign, targeted specifically at mobile. This way if the site isn't hitting the local pack on broader terms, you can still get in front of potential leads while you work on making the form mobile-friendly. https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2453991?hl=en
-
Hi Alan,
1. We are. We lagged before because we couldn't facilitate the amount of leads then. We're in a better place now.
2. We'll do mobile later once we have organic stats to the loaded mobile pages. Since our pages display much differently on mobile (as do ads within SERPs), I'd rather jump into that with a bit of foresight as to how our users interact. I suspect the data will be quite different.
3. Yes, definitely. I have a comprehensive spreadsheet with the numbers above that I'll be plugging into the ad numbers as we go along. Will be on my toes comparing my estimates to a decent sample size of real campaign estimates to adjust and tweak.
5. I don't really think we're in need of that just yet unless my numbers are so wildly off that I'm completely screwed, hehe.
More looking for critique on how I derived my numbers and if I'm missing any glaring metrics to compose a plan as far as bidding, reasonable performance expectation, etc. I am acutely aware that I can't just set a bid and leave the computer for a month.
-
Some suggestions: 1 - Get your quote form to appear on mobile; 2 - Create a separate campaign for mobile and track just that data; 3 - test and test and do more testing. Identify the best combination of Settings, Ads and Keywords; 4 - allow enough time; 5 - this may not be the best forum -- consider hiring a PPC consultant to assist if you have the budget. Hope that's helpful. - Alan
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What's the best call tracking system to use for PPC & subsequent landing pages?
Client has about 30 locations. Not planning to get too fancy (i.e. like putting JS on the page so that a dynamically generated phone is displayed to track keywords). At this point, just we only want to see if PPC is providing telephone conversions. I've used Mongoose Metrics before and it seemed good. However, I don't want to go with something simply because it's what I already know. Would love to know some of your favourites and if there are better options. Also - client is in Canada. Not sure if that makes a difference.
Paid Search Marketing | | woodsy10100 -
PPC seems to have had a seriously negative impact on organic rankings?!?
We've been targeting a keyword on behalf of a client for the last few months. The page had good content and had been steadily climbing the rankings. It reached a position of #12 and then suddenly dropped off. Within 2 weeks it was out of the top 50 and is now around the 10th or 11th page (useless). This drop off matched exactly with the cleint switching on a low level PPC campaign, driving traffic from this specific keyword. The stats on this have shown a really high bounce rate (so we'll need to ask some other questions about content) - but could this be the reason that organic stats have taken a hammering? If Google associated people landing n that page from that keyword (even though its paid) as not finding relevant content, I'm assuming this could have a negative impact on the organic rank? Any Thoughts Welcome....!!!
Paid Search Marketing | | Purestone0 -
Number of reviews in PPC advert
Hi all Got an email from a client asking about this, Ive not come across this one before. The client has a Google + account with about 2500 reviews on their website on. They have linked this into their adwords so these show on their ppc. However, on the ppc ad it says only 650 reviews. Quite a difference!! Anyone know why this would be the case? Thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | GrumpyCarl0 -
Can I dynamically add city name to my PPC ad text and URL based on the user's search?
I have looked into DKI (Dynamic Keyword Insertion), but have not found a solution and thought that some excellent Mozzer might be able to help. Here is the idea: We have landing pages for hundreds of cities. The local content on each of these cities changes page to page, however the keywords that we are going after are the same. So, I am trying to create a dynamic ad group that looks something like this: Headline: {City Name} {Keyword} Description: We cover {City Name} {Keyword}, get more info now! URL: http://www.website.com/{City Name} Please let me know if you can assist with this, B
Paid Search Marketing | | Reis_Inc.0 -
PPC/Adwords in China
I am trying to understand the challenges of running PPC in China. If anyone has any experience with adwords/Baidu/Alibaba I would really appreciate them sharing. I was having a hard time locating the specific polices in Adwords help. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | JerrodDavid0 -
Facebook PPC. Using Google URL Builder - Now What?
Hey There! So I've been trying some FB PPC ads. I recently learned I needed to use Google's URL builder to add the appropriate tracking fields into the URL (source, campaign, etc). The FB ad link now uses a custom URL with all the correct parameters. Now what do I do in analytics? Do I create a filter? A goal? Getting a little dizzy going in circles with google analytic help, and I'm hoping someone here can direct me. Thanks! -Dan
Paid Search Marketing | | evolvingSEO0 -
PPC - Is this Budget suitable for me?
Hello, I have a question about a PPC(adwords) budget. If I want to invest 500$ / month , per year. Is that enough to reach more than 5.000 users(month) in my website? Keyword: TANGO Country: Br ( www.google.com.br ). I know I'm not giving a huge information about this question, but I just want to hear some toughts for a guy who has more experience in PPC than me. Any suggestion will be very appreciated, thanks.
Paid Search Marketing | | augustos0 -
Running Adwords Campaigns to show Improvement in Organic Traffic
Hi mozers, I have a new client who contacted because his organic traffic dropped all of a sudden from 5000 visits per month to 300 visits per month. I have been reviewing his website profile and there are several reasons that take me to beleave the agency that managed his account until 3 months ago, was doing PPC to show improvement in the orgranic (SEO Service) traffic. 1. The Website was showing traffic for several highly competitive keywords 2. Most of the traffic 95% was driven to the home page with several groups of keywords 3. The website has just a few external links with anchor text not related to keywords sending traffic. Is anyone familiar with this type of practice? Thanks in advanced.
Paid Search Marketing | | SEOPractices0