PPC Campaign Success Experiences

[kerer99]

Hello,

I was wondering if people could share their success (or unsuccess) with PPC campaigns through the major search engines - Google, Overture, maybe even MSN.

I'm wanting to start a PPC campaign on one of my sites, but am not sure which is best, meaning which PPC programs tend to provide the best traffic. Is there a difference? Please share.

Thanks guys!

[SEOforGoogle]

In my limited experience (2 clients) we found that Google brought more traffic, but Overture had better conversions.

Also, in Google, spots 1-3 brought the bulk of the traffic, whereas anything "under the fold" didn't get many hits. Overture was consistent up to the #7 spot, as far as getting respectable traffic.

Course, with Overture now being owned and run by Yahoo, things may change.

hope this helps.

[Jerry]

I've only used overture for PPC, but our company saw an immediate increase in both traffic and sales. My conversion rate is more than acceptable for what we pay. And our ad budget is not very large at all.

[kerer99]

Thanks for your responses - sounds like overture is a pretty way to go.

Just out of curiousity, does one tend to have higher bids for keywords than the other? If you were to bid on the same keyword in overture or google, which would be (generally) cheaper?

[brian.mark]

It depends a lot on your ad copy as to which one will cost you more. For what we get on Google for 10 to 20 cents per click, we're paying 30 to 50 cents for on Overture. We are getting the number one spot for each one. Our click through rate is enough higher than our competitors that we can bid very little and get the Google #1 paid spot.

I tried setting up a campaign for another company locally and it was costing him 5x as much on Google because there were only 2 competitors on Overture. You'll have to test the market and see what you can do.

I'd also add that when we expanded our keyword list out to 50,000 keywords we hit a lot that nobody bids on at all (we're seeing conversions from them, though) and that means Google is a nickel and Overture a dime. Conversion rates from Google are in the 8 - 12% range (higher on some, lower on others) for us, while overture is in the 14 - 16% range on most of our keywords. I know our conversion rates are higher than most sites, but Overture does indeed seem to convert better for just about everyone I talk to.

One thing that makes Google tough is that they assume an average click through rate, so you'll have to bid higher to compete with competitors with good click through rates when starting. Competitors with low click through rates will be much easier to beat.

I guess the answer is that it could go either way depending on your market. Most people find it easier to understand that Overture is just a "Bid higher go higher" model, while Google takes a much less direct approach with the CPC * CTR. Either system can be used to your advantage, but they both take some monitoring.

Best of luck.

Brian.

[voasi]

Google adwords and Overure are definitely the 2 biggies in the PPC realm.

I would jump over to www.MarketingExperiments.com . Sign up (it's free...as of recently) and check out some of their proven studies on PPC campaigns. Invaluable information can be gleaned from that site.

[Jerry]

voasi,

Thanks for the link to marketingexperiments, it looks like I'm going to be spending quite a bit of time there!

[Lori99]

I have used both Google and Overture for quite sometime. I keep changing my mind as too which one I like better. I have a variety of clients that I manage pay-per-click campaigns for. Google's site is easier to use in my opinion. Clicks vary dramatically between the two sites, it depends on how many other sites are bidding on the same phrases, ad copy, your budget.

The trend I see with my clients is that they end up spending a little bit more in Google and have a little bit higher click throughs in Google. But I would suggest using both services.

With a slim # of clients that have been unhappy with pay-per-click results, the majority of my clients that have participated in pay-per-click have continued to renew their contracts with us every year. E-commerce sites are just wonders with pay-per-click. I had one client stop placing ads in trade publications to be able to allocate more funds to his pay-per-click account. The conversion was just so impressive for him, he saw the value in pay-per-click.

[kerer99]

Thanks voasi for the marketing experiments site - very helpful.

And thank you to everyone who have shared their PPC campaign experiences. From your posts, I think it'll be best to sign up with both Overture and Google and monitor the effectiveness of campaigns on the two. I suppose it doesn't have to be one or the other - it's just that it can get a bit crazy to maintain!

Thanks so much again for your help. :)

[Lori99]

Ran across this bit of advice the other day. Advanced pay-per-click strategies
http://www.socengine.com/seo/guide/advanced-ppc-strategies.html

A couple points of advice. The article states that if you are going to start with just one, that you should start with Overture.