Hello

I used google adwords last year for my website http://www.britisheco.com and got a lot of orders from it. However, although my sales shot up so did my bill fom google into the hundreds a week. So it seems every order I was getting was just paying towards all the other clicks that did not result in a purchase. I think I had set my cpc to high last year, this year i have a very small campaign but miss all those extra orders. If i could just work it out and find and be sure of what its all costing and if i'm making any money would be great but its like an elusive mystery. Does anyone run a website selling stuff, uses adwords and makes it work for them have any advice.

Thanks

Nick

I always tell clients that the first rule of using something like Adwords is to have good sales tracking in place. I've never been very convinced of the accuracy of the Adwords tracking provided by Google.

Chucking money at Adwords without tracking is OK if you are trying a big-budget brand awareness campaign, but it is just money down the pan for the average advertiser. I don't know about you, but I can't afford to be paying for visitors who have no intention of purchasing.

I'd say track sales, but also visits. The tracking I use logs the exact search term used by each visitor that Adwords refers as well as what adgroup they came from. This can then be cross referenced against sales later, but the non-buying visitor information is worth its weight in gold on it's own. For instance a customer I mine was spending a fair old wack on advertising watches. When we installed tracking for them we realised they were paying out a substantial sum for traffic relating to watch straps, watch batteries, watch repairs etc - none of which they offered. Once we stopped added a good number of stop words to their campaigns they not only stopped paying for those visitors, but their CTR went up - meaning that all their ads ended up cheaper. Result was that the campaign went from loss to profit very quickly allowing us to negotiate a bigger budget for it.

That's just one tip, but I reckon it's a common problem from what I have seen.

If you are just starting out with Adwords there is an eBook by Perry Marshall that is well worth reading. Like most eBooks it is a bit OTT and rather full of that in your face over emphasis that seems to be so popular state-side, but it still would make my list of essential reading for online marketers. Link to eBook

If you are feeling charitable I have an affiliate link for that as well (PM me - the link above is a "straight" link) - same price but I get a few bob. I don't though have any qualms about recommending it whether I'm on a commission or not. It doesn't cover everything, but I think it is well worth the $50 price tag.

Conversion tracking, conversion tracking, conversion tracking...I think you get the point. Although Google's conversion tracking isn't 100% accurate, it is very close and will give you the analytical information you need to boost your ROI. There is much to be learnt about Adwords and how to effectively manage your campaigns.

Has anyone ever used one of those places that claim they can help increase your adwords ROI? I am just curious. We track, and track, and track, and it seems the traffic we get from google is not converting well at all.