3 ‘Rules’ for Bidding in AdWords PPC Today
I’m getting a lot of questions about PPC keyword bid strategies these days.
That makes sense, because with all the changes going on in PPC at the moment, a lot of people are confused about how to bid successfully.
Whether you are using PPC to get leads for CPA, your own business or just getting people to your opt-in form, here are a few ‘golden rules’ for bidding in PPC (not just Google – but other PPC engines such as AdCenter and Yahoo also);
1. Bid High to Start, then go Lower
With PPC competition hotting up (even more so in this down economy – online advertising is hotter than ever with advertisers falling over each other to grab new customers where they can) you often only get one chance with a new campaign, to ‘impress’ the PPC management system with your campaign.
If it dies early, it will be harder to bring it back to life. So give your AdWords or other campaign the best chance of success by not scrimping on bids initially. I try to bid so I will be in the upper half of the page (goes for both Search and Content campaigns)
2. Always Bid with an Odd Number
I always bid with an ‘odd’ number of cents. For example, instead of bidding $1.00, bid $1.03 . Rather than $0.70…. bid $0.73. Because you are ‘randomizing’ a little more than the next guy, this gives you a little bit of an edge. Because most other people are bidding with round numbers and you can slightly lead them if you consistently do this. Remember; in Google AdWords the next highest ad is ‘supposed’ to only be paying a penny more than the ad below it… no way to tell if this is actually happening… only Google can know
3. Test Small, Test Often
Some people have come to me with tales of losing $3,000 … $5,000 or more without getting a single sale. The way to avoid this, is have a mindset that if you do not recover at least 50% of your ad spend after 100 clicks, stop your PPC campaign and try a different approach. Then, at least you can avoid large losses that are very hard to recover from.
I hope these 3 bidding rules help make your ad campaigns more successful in August, for general sales, CPA or whatever your project at the moment.
Talk soon,
Roger
