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Downsizer Forum Index -> Small Business Questions, Ideas and Advice

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jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28239
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Fri Jul 20, 07 8:36 am Post subject: Google Analytics

If you use adwords I think this is pretty much essential.

I have just been caught out

I kicked off my adwords campaign very simply and effectively and ran it for close to two years.
Then google popped up and said "we can help!" and suggested a lot of complex changes

I went with what they said and it went badly

installed the analytics a couple of days ago and I can see where money is going straight down the drain

and it is down to one of their suggestions.

advertising costs money, a lot of money, anyone not tracking performance with all possible tools deserves a good slapping

Fee

Joined: 21 Mar 2005
Posts: 15922
Location: Earth

Posted: Fri Jul 20, 07 8:48 am Post subject:
I had a similar experience using Google's 'budget optimiser' for a client ad, I only ran it for a week, but it was clear to see in the google analytics that their suggestions simply weren't working.

Bodger

Joined: 23 May 2006
Posts: 13524

Posted: Tue Jul 24, 07 9:58 am Post subject:

Like most people, our business is bombarded by people offering us pay for clicks.
On the one occasion that we took up one of these offers we to saw good money go down the drain.
Most of our products only cost between 15 and 25 pounds and so the profit per item is not much in hard cash terms.
The take up per click is miniscule and whilst it might pay if the items you are selling are high value items, it certainly doesn't on lower vaue ones.
When we sold electric riser recliner chairs we made two to three hundred pounds on each one we sold but now we only make a little over a tenner on a back belt , if that

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28239
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Tue Jul 24, 07 10:05 am Post subject:
I think you have to factor in repeat business, which may or may not apply to what you are selling. But on low profit items, you may struggle with most forms of advertising simply as the marketplace may be too crowded.

Bodger

Joined: 23 May 2006
Posts: 13524

Posted: Tue Jul 24, 07 10:11 am Post subject:

I'd have to sell fifty items to make the hard cash that I use to make on one chair.
The items that we sell now are fairly low value and they last for ages.
If I was to sell you a back belt or a pillow, its likely to be a couple of years at least before you are in the market for another one. We do get repeat business by recomendation from customers however, so there is a knock on effect but it wasn't viable for us in the end.

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28239
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Tue Jul 24, 07 10:14 am Post subject:
I have heard the same from others. But I guess that is the way of things with mail order. I know my advertising budget is my biggest outlay, and it would not take very much for it to become a real problem.

Jb

Joined: 08 Jun 2005
Posts: 7761
Location: 91� N

Posted: Tue Jul 24, 07 10:19 am Post subject:

Google's advertising also has flaws if you work it the other way. If you host adverts on a site you need to monitor them closely to ensure that the adverts google places really are appropriate to the site hosting them. Picture ads were where I got caught out, one site I had suddenly started hosting ads for gay gymnasia, gymmasia would have been fine so I can see why the ad was placed there by google but gay gymnasia was inappropriate so I had to kill the advertising fairly quickly.

Is it more expensive to place picture ads than text ads? Because the major thing I found was that text ads were usually more contextually appropriate so I've stopped hosting picture ads.

chez

Joined: 13 Aug 2006
Posts: 35935
Location: The Hive of the Uberbee, Quantock Hills, Somerset

Posted: Tue Jul 24, 07 10:20 am Post subject:
I stopped our Pay Per Click because it just wasn't giving us enough return for our money. I think that keyword optimisation gives us just as many click-throughs. And I enjoy the geeky continual tweaking of the keywords to get us up to the top of Google .

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28239
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Tue Jul 24, 07 10:24 am Post subject:

Googles contextual advertising can be odd and sometimes suffer from real delays.

A good example is that I started getting cleaning company adverts on a site, and tracked this to the prominent use of the word "uncluttered", but a few weeks on the adverts are still showing

Keyword optimization is good, assuming you stand a chance in hell of getting their. e.g. for my business "free forums" would be very very hard to manage the keyword route. The words are just too popular.

Bodger

Joined: 23 May 2006
Posts: 13524

Posted: Tue Jul 24, 07 10:25 am Post subject:
My wife Kaz read somewhere what sort of a percentage of your businessses turn over should be spent on advertising. I can't recall what it was but remember being suprised at just how much was recommended. At times , it can be quite a suprise as to which key words produce the goods. I'm still looking for a good one though.

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28239
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Tue Jul 24, 07 10:42 am Post subject:
I really can't believe that a standard figure can apply to all businesses. For example supermarkets rely on vast turnovers rather than massive margins, whereas something like my business would have to rely on constantly recruiting new people and hence advertising would be expected to be disproportionately high.

franco

Joined: 05 Nov 2004
Posts: 113
Location: Bolton, Lancashire

Posted: Mon Jul 30, 07 6:22 pm Post subject:

I use adwords for all my sites, but, I have had limited success with them. i only use them for my furniture business as all my competitors do!

I have just launched www.knives.co.uk and I am only on page 2 of google for my search terms and adwords are the only way in the short term to get me noticed. In the long term I think that optimisation and inbound links are the only way to get a high page rank .

Franco

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