[Joe W Brown]

Back before christmas sales where flowing in nicely. Conversion rates where around or above 50% for every enquiry. For every £1 I spent with google adwords I made £3 in sales. Adwords was bringing in vast majority of my business.


Recently money has continued to be poured into adwords. Cost per click in adwords is around $3.50 at the moment to get me into top 3, much higher than before xmas. Very few enquiries and next to no conversions. My conversion rate (for the few enquiries ive been getting) seems to have withered down dramatically. Ive gone from scraping profit zone to being massively in loss.

And whats worse I have no idea why. I understand its a quiet time of month, but I have had over 80 clicks through adwords in the past week and not a single conversion.


80 x 3.50 & no conversions spells out disaster.

I have been working on improving my site, but maybe this has worked against me.

Got 5000 sexy looking leaflets on there way, with vouchers, but I doubt this will bail me out of crisis completely, if at all.

 

[prodry]

Get your Adwords quality score up and the cost will go down, position go up and get shown more..

Rule 101 - If you come up for the search term "carpet cleaner norwich"

Make sure your Adwords ad says Carpet Cleaner Norwich in the title and the description or similar.... Or you will pay through the nose.

Lots more to get your quality score up and things you could do with the site ie. landing pages for the smaller areas etc..

[prodry]

Also change your location settings so your Adwords results only show in the area you cover. Save you loads of with SEO companies in Manchester clicking on you.

Also check where you are appearing. Google Search Network Partners (box in the options) used to be other search engines powered by Google, but is now ebay, youtube and many more...

Have a separate campaign for mobile devices with click to call function. Only pay if they click to call you. Works well with most having iPhones or the like now..

  

[Joe W Brown]

Thanks Imola.

Is there a way to set an automatic ad title ie if someone types "carpet cleaner Norwich' the title will be 'carpet cleaner Norwich', if someone types 'carpet cleaner Norfolk' the title will be 'carpet cleaner Norfolk' etc?

[prodry]

No. You have to have a campaign or ad group for each area service.

"Carpet cleaner Norwich"  should be different ad to "carpet cleaner Sherringham" or "Upholstery cleaner Norwich" each with a different specific ad for the area or the service.

Pain but worth it..

Also are you using Exact keyword phases like "carpet cleaner norwich" or [carpet cleaner norwich]  or just putting in broad phrases without using  "phrase" or [phrase]

80 clicks even for a city like Norwich is a lot. Especially as you not getting anything from it..

[Richard Cole]

80 clicks sound like a another carpet cleaning company may be clicking on your ad, have you contacted google adwords team and asked them to check to see if all clicks are coming from same source?

[Joe W Brown]

80 clicks in a week is not abnormally high for me. In fact its quite low. Before xmas I was hitting 20 clicks a day at one point. From that I was getting one conversion every 1-2 days. The CPC was much lower ($2 click zone) to be top place and ROI was quite good. Direct ROI being roughly 1:3.


Now CPC is much higher. Im paying $3-$4 per click just to be in top 3, sometimes even drifting onto the sidebar with that bid. And they have stopped converting almost completely.


Clicks are search only, no network.

Thanks again Imola. I will look into it.

[terrymaloy]

Joe, did you set up ad words yourself ?
I'm considering getting adwords myself once my website is improved but having adwords set up by a professional. Could save you a lot of your cash.
I spoke to Ash the other day and got some sound advice.
I also find that when the weather is as bad as it has been the enquiries stop. March 2012, I earned over 2k we had warm sunshine...this year as you say is dismal, I'm sure things will pick up.

[Steven Galley]

There are 2 Norwich place names in America, are you possibly getting clicks from there. Maybe it would be a good idea to ring google adwords for free advise on your campaign.

[wynne jones]

How long you been going?

How many clients do you have?

Other than adwords and leaflets what other ways have you been getting new clients.

[Joe W Brown]

Joe, did you set up ad words yourself ?
I'm considering getting adwords myself once my website is improved but having adwords set up by a professional. Could save you a lot of your cash.
I spoke to Ash the other day and got some sound advice.
I also find that when the weather is as bad as it has been the enquiries stop. March 2012, I earned over 2k we had warm sunshine...this year as you say is dismal, I'm sure things will pick up.

Hi Terry. set up myself. No money to outsource at the moment.

[Joe W Brown]

There are 2 Norwich place names in America, are you possibly getting clicks from there. Maybe it would be a good idea to ring google adwords for free advise on your campaign.

The campaign is limited to people within 20 mile radius. I tend to watch traffic on my website realtime (it makes it really handy when I get a phonecall as I already tend to know where the person is based, how long theyv spent on my site, what page they are viewing etc!) Adwords traffic almost invariably comes from my area.

[Simon Gerrard]

Joe,
Don't panic. The thing to do when a quiet spell hits you is to not react by thinking it is just you, or one of your competitors have done something new that is sapping your calls, neither of which are true - it is just that the market is quiet. Best advice - cut your overheads as much as possible and WAIT for things to pick up. The worst thing you can do is spend all your reserves of money on a dead market and have nothing to spend when it picks up, which it will.
I'd even go as far as saying 'stop your adwords campaign' and let your competitors exhaust their funds and keep yours until it will do some good.
Simon

[garry22]

Joe,

Following on from what Michael said above, are your Adwords ads sending traffic to your homepage?

If they are, then I suspect that your quality score will be lousy (obviously you can see that value whilst we cannot.

If it is poor, it may be worth, as Simon says, stopping the Adwords campaign.

In the meantime, add a highly optimised page to your site and point a brand new (not amended) campaign at this.

If people click on an ad saying "carpet cleaning norwich" they expect to land on a page about that.

That way you should start with a much better quality score (which, allied to your bid price and click through rate) should get you more clicks for a lot less money.

Another point Simon makes is don't throw money at daft things like directories, no matter how tempting they sound. It's easy to think "Oh if I only get one job from  XXXXX". Most times you will get zero return.

[bennymon]

I'm finding my competitors at the top of Adwords have also got good sites but they are a lot cheaper than me and whatever people say they are taking away customers .ive not had a job for a week now . At the moment I'm going round local news agents putting adds in the window .not done this in a long time so will see how it goes del

[Joe W Brown]

How long you been going?

How many clients do you have?

Other than adwords and leaflets what other ways have you been getting new clients.

1 year now.

Ive satisfied about 150 clients.

 Ive experimented briefly with an advert in a local newsletter but didnt have much success. I dont think I had a single enquiry from it.

Groupon campaign last year. It wasnt terrible but I wouldnt repeat in a hurry.

SEO - i was spending over £300 a month on until recently. Im now first page number 5 for search term "carpet cleaner norwich' 'carpet cleaning norwich' im in top 3 for 'upholstery cleaner norwich' i think. Despite this not getting many clicks at all from organic. Not even sure if ive had one conversion from organic in the past few months.

Facebook - i invested a couple of hundred pounds into cpc paid facebook adverts. Untargated, to over 22 age if i remember rightly. First advert offering people chance to win a free carpet clean by liking the post. Second offering a free stain treatment by liking the post. Campaign went terribly. 30-40 people signed up for s free stain treatment, i sent them all messages to ask for there phone number so I could phone them to arrange a time to come round. Not a single person replied. Actually 2 people replied to say theyd clicked the button by accident.
 

Adwords has been pulling in vast majority of my work until recently when results from it flopped.

[Joe W Brown]

Simon and Garry - thanks ever so much for your advice.

Benny - i wonder the same thing. adverts im competing with on adwords include

 "whole house £79 deep cleaned. Free stainsheeld and alergyguard."

"Lounge, Dining Rm, Hall, Stairs and
Landing carpets cleaned for £29.99!"


"any 4 carpets cleaned £89
3 bedroom house £119"

Its crazy.

[Neil Jones]

You say you have no money for paying for someone to run the adwords for you properly but for a fraction of the £300 monthly spend then someone could save you a fortune and reduce your CPC. I'm sure someone would have a quick look for you on here to let you know what they could do???

[wynne jones]

Ok so you have done well in twelve months. This can be a quiet time and dont forget the serps and adwords will be people already thinking of carpet cleaning so if there aint anybody looking then you have to create interest now.

Sounds like your adwords is going wrong somewhere though. Are you taking out phrases that are not getting clicks? Are you setting up new ad groups for phrases that are working? Or did you just run it and leave it alone?

I think your best bet is to go back to the people you worked for a year ago and offer them something they would find hard to resist right now, not when the sun comes out or the kids are back at school but now.

[bennymon]

It is a big problem mate if people phone them first the web sites look good the price is good people will use them .and there's nothing we can do about it . Lets face it if I wasn't in this business there advertising would work on me .  Del