August 14, 2009 by James Oliver
One of the major selling points of PPC over SEO is its immediacy. SEO campaigns are long term strategies that have to be planned far in advance and are difficult to adapt once they get going, PPC can be changed and meddled with limitlessly and instantaneously. If SEO is an oil tanker that takes miles of ocean to turn or stop, then PPC is a speed boat, capable of darting through the waves at will.
Obviously this is great, it allows you to respond to market changes at the drop of a hat and gives you the ability to adjust according to data in real time. However, in some instances this agility, the very thing that makes adwords so effective can be the major factor standing in the way of success.
When people come to us with campaigns that aren’t working, we often find that one of the major problems is the fact that they haven’t left the thing alone for long enough to know whether an idea is working or not, changing the campaign based on opinion and kneejerk reactions rather than data.
It’s understandable really, if something isn’t working then the impulse is to change it, but how do you know it’s not working, have you really tested it?
I’ll give you an example…
If an adgroup has had 10 clicks at £1.50 each and not converted then there is an impulse to think ‘well that’s cost me £15 and not made me any money, I’ll pause it,’ but just take a second to think about your expectations. For an adgroup to have converted once after 10 clicks would give it a conversion ratio of 10%, when 5% is considered an excellent conversion rate for most keywords this probably a bit premature. You really need to be waiting until the 40 – 50 click mark till you can start to draw conclusions like that.
Unfortunately, the ugly truth is that as much as you can minimise it with good research and planning, the early stages of a campaign are learning process. However, the data gathered at this stage will prove invaluable when optimising for the later stages, and eventually lead to an efficient well optimised account. If you can, it’s best to look at a slightly shaky first few weeks as an investment in future success.
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Completely agree, PPC campaigns need time to collect enough data to make informative decisions. Rushing in too early and making frequent changes can often just confuse things and make analysis incredibly difficult.
Comment by Alan Mitchell — August 15, 2009 @ 6:08 am