Do most people find Google Adwords useful?...

I currently have started using Google Base for product feeds set up in http://system.fastcommerce.com/. Out of 274 items on my store I get around 300 hits a day and around 1 sale per day. For a new store I'd like to think this is good but also I'm looking into using Google Adwords. I've heard you can even track it so you know how many sales are coming from Google Adwords. Is this true? Also, have most people found it to be cost effective? I found out I have $25 credit for setting up a new account but I'm not sure how long that'll last and if it'll be worth it beyond that so I'm looking for opinions.

Re : Do most people find Google Adwords useful?

I find it real useful especially in multiple target markets, because you can narrow down what areas you want to advertise in.

Re : Do most people find Google Adwords useful?

Google Adwords is useful if you need to be able to drive traffic to your site and want to be able to predict the quantities of traffic you get.

Through experimentation you can set the levels and auto-monitoring facilities to drive fairly accurately a set number of people to your site per day.

Now, if you can gain that traffic at a cost such that you make a profit on the customer, then you are happy. If you spend more per sale than you get, then you are unhappy. That's pretty much it!

Re : Do most people find Google Adwords useful?

I've never used Adwords myself because I don't think they're worth the money unless you are selling a product with a high profit margin (which I'm not).

I always feel that with Adwords competitors will just click on your site to waste your money!

I've not researched Adwords much but I would recommend SEO for your site for all your key phrases so you get the maximum free traffic & once you are making a profit, you could invest in Adwords to get extra sales.
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Re : Do most people find Google Adwords useful?

Well, millions of advertisers (literally) do use adwords, so the bottom line is that there must be something in it for them.

The problem is that monitoring the effectiveness of adverts is in itself a full time job and requires much tweaking and trialling to find what works best.

Re : Do most people find Google Adwords useful?

Managed well, following proper research and planning, and in conjunction with a site that is naturally optimised, adwords campaigns can be very powerful.
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Re : Do most people find Google Adwords useful?

Your competitors can click your site as often as they like but it will only count as one click
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Re : Do most people find Google Adwords useful?

Thanks Sheffy - interesting reply as I have seen the query find accountant raised before.

Re : Do most people find Google Adwords useful?

I believe that the key with this sort of product is to do your research carefully first and understand from others just how to get the best from it - otherwise you can easily end up burning money

Re : Do most people find Google Adwords useful?

It is useful in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing with it

Re : Do most people find Google Adwords useful?

I think that Google Adwords can be very useful if you have the time to properly manage the system and if you choose your keywords very carefully. You will be able to tell very quickly just how cost effective is it by the number of click throughs you are getting an whether people are actually buying the goods. I've ran Google Adwords on a number of different sites and if you can combine your efforts with some top notch SEO you should be fine.
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Re : Do most people find Google Adwords useful?

We actually built our business on adwords at the beginning and found it very effective.

To dispell one of the most common errors... adwords isn't a straight bid to win system. Your click-bid is only one factor to where you appear. You can actually be paying less than other ads below you if your ad and landing page is better quality than theirs and more relevant to the search

The quickest way to burn your cash and achieve little return is to bid high because your determined to appear at number 1 with a single ad, broad matched keywords and your homepage as your landing page.

Building a successful adwords campaign is all to do with choosing keywords carefully... avoid broad match keywords if you can (although they can be useful at the start to find longer tail keywords but get rid of them as soon as poss or make good use of negative keywords), crafting good ads which are relevant to each keyword (a different ad for each keyword not one blanket ad for the whole lot is recommended), and ensuring your landing pages are relevant to each keyword also. Our site uses many different landing pages to ensure the content the visitor sees is as relevant to the keyword they typed into Google as possible. ALWAYS take the time to set up analytics or at least the basic conversion tracking thats free to setup within the adwords account. Track the conversion and then focus on what converts best and tweak to improve. One of the best features of adwords is the ability to split test ads and landing pages... so use it... let it run with several different ads and land page varitions and then remove ones that don't work and then create slightly different versions of the ones that do work and test again.

Theres many different tutorials on adwords out there so really this is just a brief summary. If you do a search for 'adwords tips' you will see plenty of results which give more detailed info on this.

HTH

Joe
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Re : Do most people find Google Adwords useful?

You have to spend a lot of time on Adwords to make a campain breaks even, or that is actualy profitable.

If you spend that time. Then it is very useful. I have a campain now that drives me about 400 customers a month and breaks even. Some of them have refered friends to me and I have mede profits off them.

So for me it is useful.
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Re : Do most people find Google Adwords useful?

It sounds like there is a whole science to getting the best out of Adwords.

I have heard there are even agencies that specialise in doing nothing else but running Adwords campaigns for their clients! Don't like to think what would happen to them if Google ever hits the rocks...

Re : Do most people find Google Adwords useful?

We find adwords extremely useful. We use an outsourced adwords management agency and they bring in some incredibly strong traffic for very little cost.

Re : Do most people find Google Adwords useful?

I think like any mode of marketing, you should only be pumping lots of money into it if it is proving cost effective at the end of the day - if it isn't then you need another strategy. Lots of people have mentioned SEO, and it is definitely a good place to start.
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Re : Do most people find Google Adwords useful?

Similary to Mybrandedmerch many business find they get the most from it either by hiring a someone best would be(Google adwords proffesional) or ppc management agency like (Contextured)

Otherwise you could waste alot of money because of common adwords mistakes, low quality score, wrong bid, un-competitive cpc and the list goes on...
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