Google Adwords to drive traffic and growth

[ifitry]

Hi folks,

I am thinking about investing in Adwords campaigns to drive traffic to my a product site. I want to do this in parallel to regular content-marketing.

My hope is to get some traffic to further test different landing page versions, conversions, feature ideas etc. Given this strategy, I have the following questions:

1. Are there any folks here who use Adwords as their primary traffic channel? How has the cost, conversion, quality of leads in been for you?
2. What are some of the pitfalls with this strategy I should watch out for?
3. If you think this is a bad idea at this stage, why is that, and what else should I consider?
4. Are there any coaching, consultants, resources you can recommend to maximize success?

Really appreciate your help.

 

[jlm107]

@ifitry I work as a consultant to help companies grow profitably across all sort of optimization and paid media channels..

Yes - I see paid search (Google Ads) work amazingly for many businesses, both e-commerce and lead generation, across all verticals.

Pitfalls I see most often? It takes more investment than you might think to get statistically significant data to grow off of - I usually recommend around $5k minimum per month in ad spend… and to commit to 4-6 months of that before even thinking of pulling the plug. (Really closer to $8k-$10k per month would be nice if cash flows allow).

There are TONS of consultants/ad agencies out there.. be careful, most of them aren’t worth it. There’s plenty of free resources out there - my honest advice for someone like you just starting? Don’t pay anyone management fees to launch an account for you. Go through a few sales funnels to gather audits and talk with agencies, that should give you a good idea on how to structure your accounts and things to keep in mind. Then save on agency fees and spend 100% of your budget ON the advertising and 0% on agency fees. Once you have 4-6 months of data in the account (also make SURE you have conversion tracking scripts set up correctly), go back to agencies for free audits again - they’ll review your accounts and tell you what’s wrong and what’s right - and of course pitch you on their services.

At that point you can make a better educated decision on if you want to hire a vendor or not.

Just my initial advice

 

[ifitry]

@jlm107 This is great! Thanks for the advice

 

[wapitzer]

@ifitry Great advice! Agency fees will eat away at your budget. Go it alone and you’ll soon get addicted to growing your account (and your business!)

 

[ccoopp]

@ifitry Consider the fact that your product should have existing search traffic. Good scenario: “fix windows in cityname”. Bad scenario “AR accounting tool for scaling businesses”. The latter has noone looking for it.

 

[manker]

@ifitry What sort of e commerce would it best work for ? /Drognorironfist