04.28.08
Budget Increase?
Tony,
I am advertising on Google and have set a daily budget and CPC based on your recommendations and my comfort level. Google has suggested that since I am using up my daily budget quickly, I should increase it. So far I have not converted any of the clicks so I am not sure if I should increase my daily budget to their recommendation. It would prove to be very costly for me if I still didn’t get conversions.
Do you suggest I try it for a day or two and see how it goes?
Leigh
Administrator said,
May 2, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Leigh,
No. I don’t suggest raising your budget under these circumstances. If the traffic you currently generate doesn’t convert well, then increasing the budget is just going to increase your losses.
Focus on improving your ad’s performance first. In this case, you may actually need to LOWER your ad’s CTR. It sounds like your ad is performing very well - in term of Click Thru Rate - but if it isn’t converting well, too, you may be over-promising in the ad, or the end user may be turned off by something you could warn them about in the ad.
Let me give a couple of examples;
Over-Promising in your ad: If you are including things like “Free Shipping” or “Great Low Prices” in your ad, but they don’t exist on the site you direct to, this can turn off end-users and really hurt your conversion rate. If prices aren’t really “rock-bottom”, talk about quality products and/or service instead. Bargain shoppers may not click on your ad anymore, but they probably wouldnt convert any way.
Warnings to users: Some sites, like eBay, require users to register. Other sites might require users to fill out surveys. Requirements like these might mean lower conversion rates, especially if the user doesn’t know about them before getting to the site. Letting people know in advance (via your ad text) about these kinds of requirements will lower your CTR, but only by weeding out people who wouldn’t have made you a commission anyway. You’ll have to pay more per click, but the higher conversion rate will hopefully more than make up for the higher CPC and lower volume.
These are just a couple of examples of the kinds of things to be thinking about when an ad clearly is perfoming well, but the conversions just aren’t there. After performance tuning your ad, if conversions push you past the break even point, THAT is the time to raise your budget.
If your performing tuning efforts don’t get your campaign tobreak-even, or at least get you closer (at which point keep tuning those ads), then you think about moving on to another campaign. Not all affiliate programs are right for search marketing, and even some that are might not prove to be right for you (I’d be a lot richer if I could make many on EVERY program that anybody else ever made work). Being successful will require that you learn which campaigns to walk away from, too.
Tony