Are You Afraid to Bid On Your Keywords?

I’ve decided to post about something you don’t really see/read about too often when it comes to PPC. The title of this post really hits the nail on the head but I wanted to go into it a little deeper with some of my own personal experiences.

We’ve all been at the point in our campaigns where we upload our keywords, write our ads, design our landing pages, etc. After we finish doing these, we must make a rather important decision. What do I set my max cpc at?

So, you finally decide what to set your max cpc at only to find that your losing money with your newly established campaign. So what now? Well, according to most affiliates I talk to that are just starting out, common sense would tell them to lower their bids on their keywords. My question to you is why would you think that? I challenge you to try a different approach.

First, lets list some reasons why being at the bottom of the list of ads hurts you and your conversions.

1. A lot of affiliate marketers out there are using the same affiliate program you are using, so while being in position 6 or even 8 may seem like a good idea, you have to realize that someone may have already seen the same affiliate landing page your promoting from an affiliate in one of the top positions, which could hurt your conversions.

2. Most of the people that come down the list of ads and click on them one by one and look at the offers are normally the type of people that are looking for the best deal and not just going to make a spur of the moment decision and purchase your product without doing research to see if someone is offering it at a better price.

3. And last but not least, by bidding lower and being the lower ad positions, you are inhibiting your ability to get the impressions/leads that you want in order for your campaign to really kick ass!

So, I challenge you to try something new when you launch a campaign and it doesn’t take off and you don’t see the conversions you would like to see. Instead of automatically lowering all your bids across the board, try increasing your bids…You may very well be surprised!

For example, when I was doing some insurance niches, like auto, health, home, and life insurance, I started my bids at an average of .30 cents per click. My campaign lost money…the first day I lost about 400 bucks total. I almost scrapped the campaign but then decided that maybe the users were getting to my site but not completing the step required for me to receive the payout because of some or all of the examples I gave above. I thought if I increase my bids and get higher ad spots, maybe, just maybe it will help my conversions. Sure enough, I raised my bids to .60 cents average and the next day made 400 dollars profit instead of losing 400 dollars. So try it out, see if it will help you. You never know until you test!

Please Note: Now, before I get comments saying that the above isn’t true, I am fully aware that sometimes bidding lower works and sometime bidding higher doesn’t work, I’m simply saying that sometimes it does and too many times we lower our bids trying to make a profit when sometimes what we really need to do is increase our bids to make a profit.

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