Attn all you google adwords Pros

I have had my account for one month.
Here are my stats:
Imp: 6,427
clicks: 106
Avg cpc: 2.23
Total cost: 236.01
Only two peoples info made it back to my email, who inquired and no estimates.

For you pros does this sound right, I did call my website company because the estimat forms were not coming through my email when I filled them out.
Either the leads are going straight to the website company and were not getting to me the whole month or I am having worse results then most in my industry.
I am in remodeling and the results right now go to my home page and I agree it could have a call to action but the site looks clean. www. ultimate home builder.com

This belongs in the Adwords board...

Anyways. I am not a pro at adwords. Probably far from that so won't even attempt to give advice here. If you are hiring a company to do the job for you I suggest paying GarytheScubaGuy to give you some advice and help. He will probably post in this thread in a bit.

It all depends on how well your ads and ad groups are organized and optimized in order to ascertain if this is typical for the industry.

On most a conservative estimate, even for BtoB, conversion can range on average of 1 -3% (much higher in some industries).
Six thousands impressions may be hard to assume anything yet, especially if you have the Content Network ..aka "Ads by Gooogle" turned on.

If you are working on a small budget, you can better your chances by doing certain best practices you may or may not already be doing.

If you are not seeing results, I would lower your cpc, turn off the content network, and add a conversion code to a short form page, tying it to a database, instead of making the effort on their part to shoot you an email from their Outlook. Also, do you have geo-targeting set? It is really hard to know if this is good or not without knowing this information.

I would recommend going to Barnes and Noble and picking up Perry Marshall's Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords. You can breeze through it in two days and probably make your efforts 90% more effective by changing little, but crucial, aspects of your campaigns.

**This was not a paid book endorsement** ; )

Neil

Make sure your ads are very specific to what you do, and have different ads set up for what regional market you are selling to. Also, make your keywords very specific. For example, I use adwords for a florist website and to use the keyword string: "valentines day roses" during valentines day would get us a lot of clicks, but since we are a local shop, I list in the ad the city we are located so that people who do not live in that city are deterred from clicking. If you are not working with an unlimited budget, then you not only want your ads to sell your site, you want your ads to turn away those that "need not apply".

Target keywords that are likely to convert if you're on a short budget.

Ex: If you're selling red widgets in Miami than target "Miami red widgets" derived keywords and not "red widgets" or "Miami widgets" or "widgets" alone.

Some good information above.

You need a CTA page (call to action) that is a short form that does not ask for personal information.

Use exact phrase match and stay off the content network.

set your bid to minimum and start out with adgroups of 100.

Revisit daily and keep increasing your bids until you get around the #3 position (This takes you across all of googles networks (go.com, ask.com, lycos, altavista, dogpile and others.)

After a couple weeks look at your conversion rates and spend the most on the kw's that convert, and less on the others that are not.

After doing this take the left-overs and create new ads with specific landing pages, then start adjusting bids again.

You really need a ton of work before you start worrying.

Where I usually see initial problems is when not enough keyword research, campaign monitoring and attention to detail is exercised...

I did a few ppc campaigns for builders over the years.

Your service is basically niche, even if you cover a wide area.

Use geo-targeting (local search) only, create multiple ads and landing pages that are specific to the area that you build in, and cta on the landing pages just below good content that someone would want to read.

GaryTheScubaGuy

This is why I scrutinize so heavily.

I spent time to give good fb and this guy will never be back to read it.

Unfortunate for the ones that will, and frustrating for those of us that try to help.

GaryTheScubaGuy

I read your stuff Gary...and "I" appreciate it.

QUESTION(s):

1) What is Adgroups of 100? (Does that mean i use 100 kw per Ad...or Per Landing Page?)

2) How (or which program can i use) to determine which kw convert?


PS. I enjoy your comments and incite..and i appreciate it!


JT

pm me.

Gary, Can I get your contact email Id please. I am new to ppc and have just started one campaign and have ton of questions to discuss.. I hope you will give few min to me for same. thanks, David

Based on your numbers you got a 2% conversion. That's average. If you want more leads, 106 visitors is not enough. You need hundreds and thousands. At the CPC you are paying, this is going to cost you thousands of dollars a month.

This is where you have to stop and think whether the revenue your ad campaign brings in is worth the cost of running it.