-
Search ads: First PPC campaign, nobody’s converting and am currently paying £0.67 per click on average. Help?
Posted by on January 15, 2021 at 12:11 pmHello everyone,
I’m fairly new to PPC and have very little experience doing it. I’ve done my best to familiarise myself with Google Ads, how it works etc (found Reddit & YT videos from Surfside PPC to be very helpful).
We’re a new vitamins and minerals brand based in the UK. We’ve just created a few ads — £30 daily budget, manual CPC (no enhanced CPC), max £0.60 per click, a combination of phrase match and modified broad match keywords (also added sitelink + callout extensions). The idea was to switch to a different bidding strategy once I had some conversions (as per Reddit & Surfside PPC advice).
The ad has been running for 10 days now. So far, the CPC has been £0.60 and above, which to me seems way too high. **We had 0 conversions (i.e. sales)**. Funnily enough, Google keeps telling me that £0.6 is way too low compared to the going rate (as much as £2.5/click for some keywords which is INSANE — could’ve understood it if 1 click = 1 sale). Most of the keywords aren’t that competitive (only 1-2 are very competitive).
The results are: 7.64k impressions, 239 clicks, £0.67 avg. CPC, 0 conversions/sales.
The website itself is obviously fully functional, we are VERY competitively priced and I believe we’ve clearly emphasised all our UPS on the landing page/s (and on all pages). Yet nobody wants to buy (they don’t even add products to cart).
Now, I’m very unfamiliar with PPC and can’t really get my head around it. We have no budget to pay someone for this, hence we’re trying to do it ourselves. But so far we’ve had 0 results.
Any advice on ad setup for a first campaign/ad? Based on your experience, why is nobody converting?
-
4 Replies
-
Hmm looking at the situation at a glance. £30 per day should be fine especially when starting out. Manual CPC, great since it will give you most control on bids once you do get data. Overall set up seems solid – using good match types, good bidding strat, using ad extensions.
The max CPC being £0.60 is what stands out to me. Of course this depends on the selection of KW you have but this definitely limits your potential for high potential search terms users are looking for. It’s like expecting a new car to drive for an hour when you only give it a half liter of gas to run off of, it’s going to underperform and won’t go anywhere. Your potential keywords that could convert don’t have enough bid to be able to compete with other ads. And high cpc terms (if you look up on the keyword planner) are actually a good indicator of success. Competitors are willing to pay more for clicks that convert. Yes raising the max CPC bid will drain your budget faster but it will help you find where successful clicks are coming from. And once you do you can lower the bids of the lower performing keywords. TLDR I would raise bids and bid adjust from there. (do research on the KW planner to get an idea where to start rather than just blindly taking googles suggestion)
Finding this info will drain budget for some time – it’s necessary to go through the experimental phase to find what works to get converting traffic to your site.
​
(also for context – how many keywords do you have in this campaign? For a campaign with a daily budget of £30 I would reccomend having 4-8 keywords since any more than that the budget will be spread too thin across those kw)
-
Here’s an article that should give you additional tips to set up your account.
[https://searchengineland.com/google-ads-and-smbs-how-to-drive-results-on-a-low-budget-345](https://searchengineland.com/google-ads-and-smbs-how-to-drive-results-on-a-low-budget-345228)
​
This article gives tips for driving results on a low budget aimed towards small businesses.
-
Without seeing the account I’m just guessing, but here are a couple ideas:
Don’t have too many keywords. I think someone else mentioned 4-8 and that sounds good to me. Too many keywords and you’ll spread the budget too thin to get any useful data.
Make sure your keywords are relevant. Check to see what the actual searches are that trigger your ad. If you’re worried about spending too much on the super competitive keywords then don’t bid on them, but they’re probably competitive for a reason.
A couple general rules to follow:
Put 3-5 ads in each ad group. Use a few keywords per ad group, don’t overdo it. This may also mean you only run 1-2 ad groups right now depending on your budget.
Any extensions that are relevant should be used.
Check on your location. I don’t know where you’re advertising, whether its mainly the UK or if you’re trying to do the US and other countries as well. It may be you’re spreading too far and wide for your budget.
A couple resources I’ve found very valuable are the skillshop course from Google (free and you can get certified) and the Udemy course from Isaac Rudansky (hopefully I spelled that right) which I got on sale for like $15.
If you’re looking to do it yourself it absolutely is doable, but you’re gonna need to put some time in to really learn it. That said, you got this!
-
Are your keywords for specific products/vitamins, or is it a more general “buy vitamins online” approach?
Also, have you looked into Google Shopping campaigns?
Log in to reply.