Hello,

I'll possibly advertise my site using adwords or overture and i have a question. Lets just say i have $50 to use, in order to get most quality customers (not hits), would it be best to have a low bid on keywords or a higher bid ???

Thank you

If you bid too high then you'll get a lot of clicks by people who really aren't interested, but just automatically click the first link they see. I can't remember where I read this, but I've read that usually position #2 or #3 are the better positions to get with AdWords since they are still very visible, but have less of a problem with people clicking without reading the link first.

Another thing you'll want to do is make your ad text as clear as possible to where the link will go and take anyone who clicks on the link directly to the product or service you're advertising. If you mention a specific product take them to that product page not your home page.

I've found that my low budget works best with lower bids.

With a small budget, I usually end up able to burn it all up anyway, so the lower bids get me more clicks.

I've also got an unproven, but not disproved, idea that the cheaper clicks are more likely to turn into buyers, at least for search ads. I guess I should put in some ad tracking to find out for sure, but, my theory goes like this... if my ad shows up farther down the list, and someone's still interested enough to click on it when they got that far down, they're more likely to be seriously considering purchasing whatever they're looking for. On the other hand, those more expensive ads that show up at the top of the list are more likely to get clicks just from people who are slightly curious.

Maybe I'm just crazy, since I don't have any real stats to back it up, but it seems to me like I get more clicks and better conversion with the cheaper ads. This is at least when I'm doing low budget ads where I'm pretty sure I'm going to easily spend all my money anyway.

I think your theory is more than just theory. That's exactly what I was referring to with being #1 not being the best in the ads since people will just automatically click on the first link. I've seen this a lot with organic seo. My site will sometimes show up first when it's completely irrelevant to the search query. A simple reading of my title and description makes it clear yet people still click on the link. Fortunately it doesn't cost me anything.

I had read a study awhile back suggesting #2 or #3 were the optimal places for adwords and if I can find the study again I'll post a link to it. (It may be long gone from being found by me again though)

I think you're right in that the lower you are in the ads the higher conversion and I think the idea with being #2 or #3 was you get the maximum exposure for your ad while still retaining a high enough ROI.

thanks for that info vangogh and cstamets

I paid £60 out this month and got thousands of hits... but kept the clicks at about 15p so it does pay off advertising with them... also targeting specific sites really helps too!

Interesting martcoug. I would think the site targeting would work well, assuming you do a good job of targeting, but haven't heard many people talking about it. It's good to know it works.