Thread: Adwords is so far useless for me Tweet

Ok, Decided to start using adwords to increase sales, have put £85 in adwords and so far I got 1 customer, £40 of it is gone, and from that I have gotten 60k impressions and 112 clicks, is this good or bad?

Hi there,

It's not as easy to answer your question as you might imagine!

Whether it's good or bad depends upon your industry, how much a customer acquisition is worth to you, whether you're targeting the right keywords and plenty of other factors.

If you want to provide a few more specifics then I'll try and give some more detailed advice (I've been using Adwords since 2002, so I do have a fair bit of experience!)

You need to gain more experience in targeting the ads because that could be the problem. I advice you to try a cheaper site before you spend a huge amount of money.

I have been using adwords for years now. As it grew it became more complex and seem to cater to bigger sites. It doesn't mean that a smaller site can't make adwords work for them, but I yearn for the simplicity that is the trademark of google search engine.

Every time google updated and made changes, I became more frustrated. I knew to maintain the same results I was getting, it would take more research, more fine tuning, more monitoring, more and more.

The bad news is that there are not many options or at least options to compete with adwords. I'm afraid to improve your numbers, you will have to fine tune and learn the ins and outs of adwords for it to be an effective tool.

If the keywords you're bidding on are driving traffic but not buyers you need to scrap those keywords. A smaller amount of buyer traffic is much more valuable than a large amount of tire kickers.

But like SWinchester said, it's difficult to help you more than that without having more specific information about what keywords you're using.

I find that only targeted keywords work well on a budget. For me, there are certain phrases that are used by people that are likely candidates to buy our software, so we are able to get decent ROI (not great, but decent).

112 clicks for 60k impressions is a poor hitrate, and google will penalise you for low CTR, with a higher cost per click. Are you using the search and content networks? Adwords has a fantastic ability to empty your wallet quicker than you can blink, if you aren't set up to your advantage. My advice is to put your ads on hold and buy a decent adwords guide before you carry on. It can be made to work (lucratively in many cases), if you are set up correctly.