# Google AdWords vs. TargetClicks



## queerrep (Jul 18, 2006)

So I get a cold-call from Google last week and after asking the saleslady a million questions, I am seriously considering using their AdWord service. The only problem is my budget. She said realistically I'd need to spend $750 - 1,000/month for good placement.  I don't have that type of fundage right now!!!

Today I received a newsletter from my webhost about a service they offer called TargetClicks. Basically they review your site, pick appropriate/effective keywords, and create the text ad. They then place the ad and set bids on 30 different popular search engines – including Google, Yahoo and Ask. You pay $2 per click no matter what they have to pay to win the bid for the keyword.

They offer two plans. The cheapest is $180 per quarter ($60/mth) but you only get 360 clicks per year. I'm not so good with math so feel free to correct me – but say hypothetically I have a conversion rate of 2%. At 360 clicks that might net me a whopping $180 if my average order is $25. I'd need a conversion rate of 8% just to break even! Is 8% unrealistic considering I would (hopefully) be receiving targeted traffic?

I'm so confused about what to do.  I realize both would be a risk but I'm trying to figure out which one is a better bet. Any advice would be much appreciated.


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## Adam (Mar 21, 2005)

Just go with Adwords. You set your own budget on Adwords - I'm sure the Google rep knows what they are talking about but there is absolutely no reason why you need to spend that much money in a niche t-shirt market.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

I would say go with adwords, but I would do some research first.

It can definitely be a great way to add more sales, but it's not as easy as just picking some keywords and deciding how much to pay.

There's a lot of testing and retesting involved.

Check out this book if you're seriously considering adwords: Amazon.com: Winning Results with Google AdWords: Andrew Goodman: Books


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## queerrep (Jul 18, 2006)

Rodney said:


> Check out this book if you're seriously considering adwords: Amazon.com: Winning Results with Google AdWords: Andrew Goodman: Books


:tipthank:
I'm going to run out to Borders later and see if they have it.


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## Adam (Mar 21, 2005)

Another tip: Google Perry Marshall.


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## queerrep (Jul 18, 2006)

Adam said:


> Another tip: Google Perry Marshall.


Cool, thanks! He offers a free course, too. I like free.


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## beastapparel (Feb 22, 2008)

Yeah, I read that you can set your own budget on google. I'll be able to confirm that in a couple of weeks.


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## queerrep (Jul 18, 2006)

beastapparel said:


> Yeah, I read that you can set your own budget on google. I'll be able to confirm that in a couple of weeks.


That's what the Google saleslady told me. You can set a certain $ amount per day. Are you going to try it, Mike?


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## BIGNUMPT (Aug 31, 2006)

queerrep said:


> Cool, thanks! He offers a free course, too. I like free.


Hi all,

Just received a free basic "adwords for dummies" which my Dad had with his paper here in the UK, in it is a a free voucher, yes free £30 ($60 at least)  to spend on adwords before June 08-Must be similar things in the US.

I know Yahoo do a free £50 if you deposit £50 into your new account and then you just set your monthly budget


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## EnMartian (Feb 14, 2008)

$2 per click is much too high. Depending on the keywords you pick on Google or Yahoo, you'll pay anywhere from 10 cents to a couple dollars per click. The idea is to find the keywords that generate the most conversions yet have the lowest PPC cost. 

You can set your own budget on Google, and also on Yahoo. Keep in mind, the lower your budget, the less times your ad will show and the fewer opportunities there will be for people to click it. Also, even though the traffic is more "targeted" you should still only expect a conversion rate of between half a percent and two percent. Getting people to the site is half the battle. Your site has to be able to convert them once they're there. You need to test your site too. 

I've looked into Adwords, but we haven't done anything with it yet. We did, briefly, try Yahoo, but I wasn't impressed. One of the things I didn't like was that they automatically kept adding money to your account without asking you first. If your ads weren't working, it was just throwing good money after bad.


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## brand resistant (Mar 21, 2008)

I have been using google adwords for about a month now. It has taken me this long to optimise my text ads and keywords. I started with a daily budget of $2 to test keywords. I would recommend this approach. Initially my CTR was around .2% but now that the campaign is refined I am achieving 2-10% on selected keyowrds. I have increased my daily budget and I am getting good visitor numbers. I won't know my ROI for a couple of months though.


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## queerrep (Jul 18, 2006)

brand resistant said:


> I have been using google adwords for about a month now. It has taken me this long to optimise my text ads and keywords. I started with a daily budget of $2 to test keywords. I would recommend this approach. Initially my CTR was around .2% but now that the campaign is refined I am achieving 2-10% on selected keyowrds. I have increased my daily budget and I am getting good visitor numbers. I won't know my ROI for a couple of months though.


Hey, thanks. It sounds like it's working out nicely for you so far. I read the book by Andrew Goodman that Rodney suggested and I've definitely decided to go with AdWords. I will be starting my campaign the first week of April and I will report back here once I have enough time to judge how it's going.


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## stuffnthingz (Oct 1, 2007)

I have used ad words for a year and a half now and have never had to pay more than .20 for my niche keywords so $2 per click sounds awfully expensive. With some clever keyword work on your part you could be getting great traffic at a fraction of the price, it will just take you time to figure it all out. Tread carefully however because if you misconfigure your first adword campaign you could rack up a huge bill, cap your daily spending to ensure you don't make that mistake. I spend $1 to $4 per day and if I have a good run of sales I might bump it up a bit. Times that are good to bump up your spending are key holidays like Christmas, Valentine's day, Mother's day, Father's day etc. I have been very successful with Adwords and highly recommend it.


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## brand resistant (Mar 21, 2008)

I hadn't thought about bumbping up the campaign around the big retail spending times, thanks for the tip.


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## clothmoth (Sep 29, 2007)

I have played around with Adwords and just about every other CPC program out there. . . some work better than others, and I still dabble a bit in CPC as part of my overall marketing plan. 

BUT. . . . you have to decide what your goals are before you lay out any marketing plan. CPC has undoubtedly generated the MOST sales for me, quantity wise, of all of my marketing efforts. The sales it generates are, in the short term, the LEAST profitable for me, though. . . due in large part to the lower conversion rates (i.e. I have to pay for quite a few visitors to hit my site before someone buys) of the medium. 

I made the decision that for the first 3 or 4 years of my business, I don't mind breaking even or possibly even taking a loss on many sales, to build up my customer base. I have consciously chosen to focus on the lifetime value of a customer, as opposed to the dollar amount of the initial sale. My hope is that through careful product development and a great nurturing strategy for staying in touch with and engaging my customers, each of my visitors may be good for 5 or 10 sales instead of 1. So my profit is on the back end, down the line. And I accept that on the worst days, when you are hitting an average click-thru rate of .5% or so, it may cost me 10 or 15 bucks to get a customer that buys a $20 shirt. . . back out the infrastructure costs (hosting, merchant account fees, etc.) and there is no profit in that one sale, even if the shirt only cost you $3.00 to make.

So I do think CPC is worthwhile. I just don't put all my eggs in that basket. 

Flip-side of the coin is product reviews and endorsements. Finding well-established blogs or portal sites around niche topics where your shirts are highly relevant to the audience is where the real payoff is for me to date, in terms of cost per customer vs. margin of sale

A suggestion (and I'm not the first to make it by any means) is to use Google Analytics on your site to track where your visitors, and subsequently conversions, are coming from. Analytics has a great calculation that I am putting more and more weight on in making my marketing decisions. . . it shows from each traffic source (or CPC keyword, for that matter) what each visitor that has come in to date is worth to me. So if I had 2,000 visitors come in from a banner ad I placed on E-Commerce Hosting.com , with total sales of $82.00 from the traffic, Analytics does the math for me and tells me that each one of those visits is worth just a bit over 4 cents to me. If I paid .25 cents per click, I am clearly overpaying for the sale (if my only goal is profit). 

What happens with product placement in the example above, where a well-respected site reviews your product, is you send in a sample that costs you very little. . . . let's say $4.00 plus another $4.60 for USPS priority mail shipping. So $8.60 total. The blog or site has a dedicated readership that turns to the publication for their opinion. . . so a good review means the readers are more likely to buy. This is where my per visit value has skyrocketed, and at very little cost to me. Not as MANY sales, but much more profitable. These types of sales help me subsidize the CPC campaigns that bring me more marketable customers at no net gain in terms of profit. 

There are NO sales more profitable than those to repeat customers. So deliver on your promises, keep an eye on quality, ship promptly, and reach out to your customers every now and then (with permission, of course). 

My personal belief is that CPC is good as a supplement to a more robust marketing plan. If you exert all of your energy and spend all of your money on CPC, though, I'm worried you may be underwhelmed with the results in the long haul. Just my two cents, for what they're worth!


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## brand resistant (Mar 21, 2008)

What a thorough post, thanks. Your points are really valid. What it highlighted for me was the need for a marketing plan that is quite tailored not just to your product and customer base but your goals both short and long term. I use Analaytics as well and it is very powerful. I was wondering if you have had any experience with blogads?


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## clothmoth (Sep 29, 2007)

brand resistant said:


> I was wondering if you have had any experience with blogads?


I've never actually taken the plunge with blogads. . . when I last visited their site they had a few blogs I almost pulled the trigger on running ads with, but I ended up holding off. 

My primary reason was that the blogs I was interested in were heavily blanketed in advertising. It was hard to imagine how I could get a response high enough to justify the cost of some of the ads (not cheap on a PPM basis) with so many sponsors crammed on to a page. I decided to step back and focus on getting my products and site mentioned within the blog content, not just as a sponsor. 

I'm sure others have pointed this out in the forums as well, but the more your site is actually linked to within the body copy of a site (i.e. the site's actual content, not adwords or other paid ads) the better your sites traffic rankings and positioning within natural search on Google and other engines. I still get traffic from blog writeups that happened 6 months ago. . . every month that goes by I realize even more that the only way to really win this game is to capitalize on the viral nature of the internet. There is an enormous audience, and you do have to be seen. . . . but the amount of exposure you get on a dollar or two a day on Adwords is so minimal you would likely be better off investing that money in samples to send to sites that fit your niche. I can talk more about approaching site owners if anyone is interested. 

Right now I spend around $40 a day on targeted CPC advertising ($1200 a month). I pretty much break even, but have the luxury of marketing to my customers as I introduce new products, run specials, etc. so I believe it will pay off in the long run.


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## brand resistant (Mar 21, 2008)

I would be very interested in your advice on approaching site owners. Thanks. Your site is cleverly designed and focussed by the way.


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