Kansas City Google AdWords Horror story – Part One

Don’t worry, this is a Fictional story:

You try Google AdWords because someone you know said it would help your business. You set up a Kansas City Google AdWords Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign. You set up an ad group. You set up 50 keywords / key phrases that describe your business. You set up an ad. You set your budget at $50 per day. You have set a $5 default Cost Per Click (CPC) bid. Smile! You are going to be finding more potential customers willing to come to your online Kansas City Website!

The end of the first month comes. You received 100 visitors to your website from AdWords. You have spent $500.

What happened?

Looking into your AdWords account, you realize that your default CPC bid was too low, and your ads were not shown for most of your keywords / keyphrases. $10 was the average bid to be shown for most of your keywords/keyphrases. Wow, it costs $10 a person?

What did you do?

Naturally, you raised the bid to $10. Now you think everything is set up correctly.

The end of the second month comes. You received 200 visitors from your site. 100 visitors clicked on keywords/keyphrases that cost you $10 a click. 100 visitors clicked on keywords/keyphrases that cost you $5 a click. You’ve spend $1500 for 200 people. An average of $7.50 a person.

You check your Google Analytics, and you find out that 400 people came to your Kansas City Web design. The extra 200 came organically. You didn’t have to pay for any of those visitors.

Now imagine having a real store. A Google representative is standing outside of your store, showing your ad to the masses. Every time someone comes into your store, you give the Google representative $7.50. Google is keeping track and will give you the bill at the end of the month. They let you know that 200 people saw the ad and came in because of it. They know that the other 200 people did not. They passed right on by without seeing the ad.

Who were the people who entered the store? What did they do?

Some people walked in, took one look at the place, and walked out. Some people came in, perused the products, then left. Some people came in just to ask a question. Some people bought your product. This is the day-to-day life of a shopkeeper.

You did the math at the end of the month. You spent $1,500 that month, and you sold $1,500 of products. It turns out that the people who bought the products were not the people who saw the advertisement! It was the people who came without seeing the ad!

Is AdWords really for me? Did I just waste all that money?

Some of you out there are thinking this happens to so many people, which is true; it does. But this is a fictional story. This is a story to demonstrate how setting up AdWords the right way is the most crucial step should you decide to advertise online.

What do you think could have been done better? How would you have optimized the campaign differently? What tips and tricks would you implement to create the super campaign? Did this company need AdWords at all?

KC Web Specialists’ Kansas City SEO / PPC specialist who enjoys blogging about all things web-related.