When to drop a PPC campaign?

[robertcwik]

Hello,

I'd like to ask how you make a decision on when to drop a PPC campaign. Basically, if I start a PPC campaign and it does not bring any results after, say, 100, 200, or 300 clicks, is it worth to keep it or is it better to kill it before it becomes to expensive? I am quite new to PPC, and any help here will be much appreciated.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Robert,

Great question and I'm not sure I know the answer but hope some of our PPC affiliates will weigh in.

Part of the answer though lies in conversion rates. Sometimes when you are new and don't know yet how the game is played or if you have a merchant that does not convert well, it can take 500 clicks to get your 1st sale.

If you aren't doing your keywords optimally have have lots of info KW as opposed to buy KW you could get lots of clicks with no sales. You also may need to add negative keywords.

Also conversion rates vary depending on the type of product. Average conversion rates are 1 - 2 % for retail type products but for lead based affiliate programs where no credit card is required, conversions can be much higher.

Ask your affiliate manager what average conversion rates are. That will help you gauge better how long to test a campaign.

And remember there are so many variables that can have an effect on PPC conversions - your keywords, your ad copy, your landing page copy, call to action and presell. So you need to test, tweak and measure all those elements.

Then once they click through, the merchant landing page, selling price, site and cart all play a part.

All that said, I think I've heard skilled marketers say they give it 500 clicks, because they know what they are doing so if the offer does not convert they drop it. But if you are new you may need more because you don't have as good of a feel about what works and what needs to be tweaked on your end. Anything less and you could drop a perfectly good converting offer simply because you had not done all you could on your end to make it work.

There is an EXCELLENT free PPC course launching next week. I think I'll probably be blogging about it at some point so keep your eye on my blog.

 

[RevenueWire]

Hi Robert,

Although there is no magic number as to know when to drop an account (due to the significant number of variables involved), it really comes down to your own subjectivity and how comfortable your are with the amount of testing you've done. If you are continually testing your campaign (keywords, ad copy, landing page, etc) and are still not seeing any increase in conversion rate you may definitely wanting to consider shutting down your campaign. The key is of course, is the testing aspect.

After a prolonged period of low conversions, before you drop your campaign, you may want to consider switching out your current product links for another similar high quality product (similar attributes of course) provided by a different merchant. This way you can be sure it's your campaign and not the actual product itself that is resulting in poor ROI. Considering the amount of work an affiliate can put into a product launch it would be a shame to drop a campaign knowing that it may be the product itself that is converting poorly.

I hope this helps!

 

[robertcwik]

Linda and Brent, thank you for the answer. I thought about it, and I think I have found an answer, especially after watching the Google Cash Detective videos. Why should I spend money on 500 clicks, if I can assign only as much for a campaign as the highest commission I can get on selling the product? All the vendors claim that their sales pages convert at 3-5%, so statistically 40 clicks should be enough to verify it. It may be an over-simplification, but if I can find a good keyword (high traffic, low price even despite competition), I'll bid on it. And if this is 0.30 per click, and I can get, say $30 in commission for one sale, then I can risk 100 clicks. That's it. If I get this one click before reaching 100 clicks, OK, let's see what happens next. If there is another (2% conversion), then it's worth continuing, if not, I quit.
Now you can say that it is hard to expect even distribution of conversions (2 conversions every 100 clicks), and you are right! Why, however, should I waste money in expectation of better conversion? I move on to the next campaign, until I find one that lives up to my expectations.

Final conclusion: Now I find only those campaigns worthwhile where the cost of 100 clicks is not greater than the commission I can earn. Otherwise I pass. I'm a newbie and I rely mostly on the materials provided by the vendors themselves. Still I think that the cap I apply makes sense. Do you agree?