GoogleAds does it work for you?

[Mollified]

I'm just starting up on my own as a one man band. The guy who helped me with my website suggested I use GoogleAds as a promotional tool and following a long chat with the man from Google I think I understand how it works. I'm put off because when I search for a Mollified in my area up pop my competitors from the other side of the country on GoogleAds which is no use to me or my potential clients (its a very local business).
I was wondering if anyone has any experience using GoogleAds that they might want to share?

venus

short answer - yes
long answer - yes for the first year

proper answer - I've had my campaign running since 2006. My budget is £2 per day. I've got around 80 active keywords. At the moment a lot of my stuff is showing as below first page - I suspect because they have dished out so many vouchers that the market is flooded. I know from my site analytics that the £10 a month I spend with them is multiplied around 50 times in turnover.
In the first month you spend time every day tweaking it. Then it drops to every week. After a year you are under an hour a week. I've not actually logged into mine for several months. (Then again I've got an adblocker set on my browsers).
Looking at it now in the other tab, a lot of their "estimates" are bilge. But I have tweaked a few page prices up by 4p (to 10p).
Small movements - there is no limit on how many times you change the price ...
Also, check what times your ads are active - save your budget for when your target audience is awake.

BUT, yes, you can waste spend HOURS playing with it. But remember to have the product good for when they click through.
Look at your landing page and make it FAB

Thanks talkinpeace - my site has been long overdue for some revision, and this has given me the impetus to get on with it.

I have just spent ages staring at adwords trying to work out how to change the landing page, I'm probably just very tired but please help, how do I change the landing page for an ad that is live?
Thanks

stared some more and finaly worked it out

LOL
feel free to PM me at any time.
AS I've always done on the ebay boards, I may or may not reply privately, but I WILL post an anonymised answer to your situation on the board.

PS that stands for any relevant advice that MrAnchovy or I cover.

it was a long day yesterday, and not a adword click after all that! however my site is getting a slowly increasing amount of organic clicks so I'm happy that word is getting out.

how many impressions?
and organic is the best - its free after all .....

4763 impressions in the last month, I have it set to only show in quite a small area so I don't know if thats great or not in the grand scheme of things.

I have a bounce rate of 34% but I have just improved the landing page. I would guess that atm about 20% of my business is coming from internet searches, the rest from referral and recommendations. I'm happy with things growing at this rate, this is only my second month of doing business for myself. :)

ooh - remove the area criteria - because that will pick up where the servers are rather than the users...
my servers are in Scotland, yet I live on the south coast

Oh blimey talkin - I never thought of that, worra gimmer! I set mine to UK & several EU countries - yet I myself am often surfing via a US server for work and yet I'm trying to attract corporate customers. GIMMER GIMMER GIMMER!

:-)
grey hairs have their uses :-)

Oh I didn't know that! but its no use to me if people in Bristol, London etc are seeing and clicking on my ad, how do I get round that?

Right, so I removed the "country specific" setting and have had 6 clicks in the last 30 minutes. I need to look at these very closely to see where they're coming from and whether they're worth it - but clearly a very obvious increase in traffic within just a few minutes and at this time of day I think it's probably safe to assume it's not US office workers sat at their desks.

I'm a little confused, I have it set to show adds to those in or searching for information within my targeted location or viewing pages in my targeted location. should I open it up to everyone? I guess my ad does say where I actually am..

Well I've just had a quick look at all these clicks - they originated from India/Phillipines/Srik Lanka - so I've taken the view that none of my potential clients are going through a server in one of those locations and I've removed them from the criteria.

You can also say "no" to certain countries rather than just including the ones you want.

Thank god I'm still on the voucher and these numpties clicking through on to EUROPEAN ads aren't costing me moolah! ;)

You could always try running two ads, one which is open to "everyone" and a duplicate which is only open to your area e.g., "Bristol" and see what happens...

Hi Mollified,

How did you get on with this? I've only just seen the posts but I do a lot of PPC and SEO campaigns (from very low budgets through to £1000 a month budgets).

Happy to give you any pointers if you get stuck.

If your business is local - a shop or a local service, have you had yourself included in Google maps - and get your ads to appear whenever people search for related stuff in your area?

agree with Alpine about multiple ads with slightly different settings .....

the simplest way I've found to limit the silly clicks though is to have my ads running from 6 am to midnight so that when the far side of the world is awake, they are asleep.
I've also got Saturdays and Sundays starting at 7am ....

Hi RPMusical,

Mine is a non existent budget at the moment, I had no idea setting up a business would have so many hidden costs its staggering.

TBH I'm near the end of my voucher now and I think I'm going to give ads a break for a bit, the site seems to be coming up organically for most relevant searches now, and I have google maps and a free yell listing which seem to help too.

Thank you all for your kind help and I hope that we can continue to call in every now and again just for moral support if nothing else!