PPC Strategy Discussion

Hey,

So I'm looking for some basic help on PPC strategy. I have heard many people say that you should bid as high as possible in the beginning to get initial good placement. I have done this but was never able to get profitable although it could've been the campaign and that I gave up after a few weeks.

Has anyone tried a bid low strategy? Bid low, block high visit sources with 0 clicks to offer. Keep high visits sources that have good CTR to offer. Keep bid on those potential sources at the same cpc. Overall increase your cpc by 10 cents. Do the same process over.

The goal in this is to weave out the high visit with 0 clicks, while keeping the good sources with clicks to offer at a cheap cpc. This will increase the clicks to offer which is what you technically need for conversions. This only really works when you have fixed cpc, as in content.ad etc that does not optimize automatically.

Do you guys think this is a good technique? Or would you still suggest to bid high and then work down as opposed to the opposite.

Note: in this technique i use cloaker which filters out bot traffic, and i can capture tracking tokens from these bot traffics, so I'm assuming that most of my visits to my money page are residential real people.

High is a relative term. There is also your ad quality - Quality Score - to take into consideration.

First, no secret that you want the top spot as much as possible. Just like on organic listings, click rates are higher for the top ads. All else being equal, that is your conversion rate, this means you'll make more sales (and presumably more profits) by being on top. But there's another reason, keep it a secret. I've found that ads on top also tend to convert more. So you get a double boost by positioning yourself at the top.

Now as you may know, ads are ranked by their QS and their bid. Bid more and you get closer to the top. However, I do not recommend this if your QS is below 7. You'll just end up paying more than you should. In any auction, you'll go against those with great quality and bidding the going rate. So if the going rate is $1, there will be a range between say $0.80 and $1.20 and a few competitors will have QS of 7, 8, 9 and even 10. Less so at the upper end but you have to assume there are a few.

So if someone bids $1 (100 cents) and has a QS of 8, he has an adrank of 800. You need to beat this adrank to show above him. If your QS is only 5, you need to bid $1.60. If you do outrank him, you'll pay almost that much. But if your QS is 7, you just need to bid $1.15. That's the power of QS and why you need to improve it before thinking about trying to outrank others.

You have tried bidding high (I take it you mean as much as others are) and not been profitable. My guess is that your QS is average or even poor. But your landing page may not be doing a good selling job. It all has to work in concert. Traffic does not equate sales.

You are advertising. The goal is to get quality visitors. You also need to outsmart competitors. PPC is not about bidding and in fact is the least important.