19 replies to this topic

[Viv G]

I am new to forum concept but hopefully someone out there can give me some guidance. A client has agreed to an AdWords campaign. I have broken the campaign down to 2 campaigns, the first running 2 Adgroups, the second running 4 Adgroups, all Adgroups of 6-11 keywords each.
How long should this take to set up and how many hours a week should it take to manage?
Would appreciate your input.
Thanks

[Jill]

Offtopic

Umm...you're going to take money from a client for this, but have never done it before? I sure hope the client understands this or you're doing it for free as a learning experience!

[1dmf]

To set up, a couple of hours, if set up correctly, to manage it will take bugger all hours.

If you set up G! adwords correctly the first time, it runs itself and you reap the rewards.

However, if you do it wrong, for the wrong keywords, or you have too small a budget and project time frame, it'll be like throwing money down the drain.

Also remember, G! Adwords only works if your site is geared up for it, correct relevant landing pages, clear , precise call to action, relevant content and keyword to advert relevancy (G! adwords bidded keyword relevancy) to on page keyword relevacy.

If i type in G! 'quality pool balls', and end on a page selling inflatable balls for when around the swiming pool and not the bar game 8 ball pool , i'm gonna be mighty pissed , not buy anything and leave, and it's gonna cost you a shed load in clicks.

we would need more info on what your trying to advertise and the landing pages you have along with budget before we could advise on a more productive course of action

[Viv G]

Jill, Yes our client does know it is our first campaign and we are very careful not to charge him for learning time. I am a full time mum, been out of the industry for nearly 5 years and it seems that a marketing program using the standard chanels is not enough anymore..

1dmf - thank you for your help. Our client has written 3 food and travel books covering 2 European countries. They are beautiful - they cover food, wine, history, places to go, experiences.....
The web site has been up for 12 months and contains a shop. The writer of the site has discovered the site does not do what we need it to do so needs a bit of work. In view of the Adwords campaign, we will be writing more landing pages to tie in the campaign, make sure the keyword and ad is relevant to content of landing page, ensure there is plenty for the surfer to do within the site, make sure it is easy to move around in and plenty of opportunities to be led to the shop.
The biggest task we have found is narrowing down the keyword selection, especially when 3 books are full of thousands and thousands of words. So I have been reading all the 'dos' and 'don't do' articles and hope I am close.
The monthly budget we are looking at is A$1000.00
Not sure what else I can tell you - thank you

[RiYo]

You will need to spend some time in discovering on what you should do, I would recommend that you spend some dollars and buy Perry Marshalls book (www.perrymarshall.com) he is one of the 'gurus' re Adwords.

If I may give you one tip: separate every country in your campaigns. So for country A you have 2 campaigns and for country B you have a copy 2 other campaigns. This way you can track if what is working in country A is also working for country B.

Good luck with your Adwords learning curve

Richard

[nethy]

If you set up G! adwords correctly the first time, it runs itself and you reap the rewards.
However, if you do it wrong, for the wrong keywords, or you have too small a budget and project time frame, it'll be like throwing money down the drain.

Frankly, I disagree . Setting up correctly is important, buts its the ongoing maintanence, splittesting, adjusting bids, finding profit points etc. that end up putting a campaign ahead. It is rare that a campaign cannot be improved. It is virtually impossible, IMO that a campaign has been set & forget cannot be improved, a lot.

It is pretty much impossible that you would hit the optimal ad text and predict successfully at what rate keywords convert. Its not about having the best keywords, its about knowing how 'good' exactly keywords are.

[nethy]

I am new to forum concept but hopefully someone out there can give me some guidance. A client has agreed to an AdWords campaign. I have broken the campaign down to 2 campaigns, the first running 2 Adgroups, the second running 4 Adgroups, all Adgroups of 6-11 keywords each.
How long should this take to set up and how many hours a week should it take to manage?
Would appreciate your input.
Thanks

Pricing & packaging ppc management is IMO a tricky subject. One thing to be aware of is not to create unecessary work and/or a less-then optimal campaign because of rigidness in the 'terms' you have priced & committed to with the client. Its important that the pricing & packaging structure is not prohibitive to best practices.

For example,it is optimal to at least have one ad per adgroup. It maybe necessary to do more. Maybe 2 or 3 or 10 splittests untill you find the perfect copy. If you are pricing per ad, It can ad up. you may have priced 'up to 20 keywords'. What if this turns out to be sub-optimal.

Another issue is client involvement. If a client has to approve (and very possibly return to you for rewriting) every ad this increases time-spent-on-project. The consequence of running via the client is inevitably a sub-optimal campaign. You have to tell them why A is better then B (you may possibly have CTR & conversion rate data to prove it). Ultimately you'll be trying to cut down on the number af ads written because of the hassle involved.

Even pricing by hour is IMO very problematic. A client proably does not understand the advantage of creating 50 finely segmented ad-groups for slight variations of the same term. Asking them to pay by the hour while you spend 15-20 hours setting up a razor-sharp campaign will cause a lot of anxiety. So will charging them an itemized quote periodically for - 6 ad texts, 24 keywords, 3 bid adjustments.

Requiring a client to basically 'manage' an IM campaign (which itemised or by-the-hour pricing is) at anything more granular then 'ppc for these services' & 'within this budget' is a problem.

[Viv G]

You will need to spend some time in discovering on what you should do, I would recommend that you spend some dollars and buy Perry Marshalls book (www.perrymarshall.com) he is one of the 'gurus' re Adwords.

If I may give you one tip: separate every country in your campaigns. So for country A you have 2 campaigns and for country B you have a copy 2 other campaigns. This way you can track if what is working in country A is also working for country B.

Good luck with your Adwords learning curve

Richard

Thank you for that tip - we have done that to a point but when I looked at the camapign again I saw how it could be broken down further.

[RiYo]

Hi Viv,

You are completely right, you must break it down as much as possible. This was just an explanation of how to deal with multiple countries.

Richard

[Viv G]

Hi Viv,

You are completely right, you must break it down as much as possible. This was just an explanation of how to deal with multiple countries.

Richard

Richard - Thank you also for the Perry Marshall site - it has been excellent and seems like a geat investment.

[goodman]

Richard - Thank you also for the Perry Marshall site - it has been excellent and seems like a geat investment.

Sigh to this thread. All I can say is that there many of us doing this full time en masse for large accounts and small, and have done for 6+ years. I wouldn't even know where to begin, in terms of giving you a couple of tips in a forum post. There is a lot more to this game than it appears... the tendency for these discussions is to distort the skill sets and techniques, to oversimplify them and make it all seem rather narrow. That can't be, though -- paid search constitutes almost 50% of online ad spending. Any quick tips anyone offers should be backed up by much more solid, in-depth research. I don't think I even managed my first of hundreds of campaigns, back in 2001, with the casual attitude displayed here.

And, ahem (see avatar at left), Perry Marshall isn't the only published "AdWords guy" out there.

[RiYo]

Andrew is completely right here, it is too difficult to give a full 100% overview of what you need to do to make your Adwords work. That is why I suggested to start with buying Perrys book, but you can also buy Andrew Goodmans ... I have been told that his book also is very good!

richard

[torka]

I have been told that his book also is very good!

IMO, it is.

--Torka

[nethy]

Perry Marshall is IMO (I haven't read Goodman sorry) very useful to begginers. It's advantage is that it is an example of a good mindset & approach. It is likely to improve reader's tendency to seek the right information in the future.

A point to note is that Perry Marshal is more or less focused on eutrepeneur types (often selling ebooks, widgets, & other made for ppc 'products') rather then consultants or medium to large businesses. It is an interesting perspective, but it is a minority in the ppc game.

[RiYo]

A point to note is that Perry Marshal is more or less focused on eutrepeneur types (often selling ebooks, widgets, & other made for ppc 'products') rather then consultants or medium to large businesses. It is an interesting perspective, but it is a minority in the ppc game.

Hi Nethy, you are right that Perry in his book is focussing a lot on selling online products and less on services. But as a member of his Mastermind group there are montly calls you can participate in where there is a lot of focus on all kind of other business models as well. Including consultancy, selling of physical products, services, etc etc.

Although his book is mainly about the techniques aroundAdwords the calls are mainly about the whole mindset around selling things online, whether it be goods or services.

Richard