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Follow Along: Adwords Pay Per Call (47)

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I started my first pay per call campaign today and I thought I would document my progress to get some feedback.

So far I have signed up with Ring Partner, F5 pay per call, and Mundo Media pay per call. I then applied to a bunch of different campaigns, so far only Ring Partner has accepted me on any campaigns.

I also bought the Premium23 course and have been following that. (Thanks Leonidas)

First Campaign: Credit Repair
I scraped some basic keywords (about 12,000) and followed the Premium23 method to setting up a campaign in Adwords with Broad match modifier, and one keyword per ad group. All that good stuff.

Day 1:
Impressions: 404
Clicks: 8
CTR: 1.98%
Avg. CPC: $0.68
Cost: 5.47
Conversions: 1
Revenue: 7.20
Profit: 1.73
ROI: 31.63%

Not a whole lot of data, but I got a conversion so that's cool. I'm just going to let this sit for awhile and see what happens.

To Do List:
Sign up for unbounce to help make landers quickly.
Start a new campaign. The home improvement/plumbing/pest niches seem to be doing well. I will start brainstorming what type of keywords I need to gather for these types of campaigns.
Launch more campaigns and collect data.

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Looks like a good start mate, and gotta be happy with a conversion so early!

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Well done! It is always a great feeling when a campaign starts off positive right off the bat!

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Nice one! I'll be following the updates here.

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Update:
Oct. 4 Results:
Impressions: 412
Clicks: 9
CTR: 2.18%
Avg. CPC: $1.23
Cost: 11.09
Conversions: 0
Profit: -11.09
ROI: -100%

I upped the bid to $0.40 today from $0.20 to see what effect that would have. Still not getting that many impressions. And I didn't get any conversions. I'm really only getting traffic from maybe 20-25 keywords. So I wonder if I need to up my bid to get traffic from so different keywords. Anyone have suggestions on how to optimize? I probably just need to gather more data.

In other news I have a lot of good ideas on keywords to gather for other campaigns and how I will go about gathering them all. Looking forward to launching the new campaigns.

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Campaign 1:
Impressions:346
Clicks: 8
Spend: 11.02
Conversions: 1
Revenue: 7.2
Profit: $ - 3.82

Google isn't showing conversions. I've heard this is delayed 24 hours so I'll keep an eye on it. I'll let this continue to run and then I will cut some keywords that aren't preforming.

Campaign 2:
Gathered a list of 16000 keywords. Refined that to around 3000. This was only for a small section of the country. Need to repeat the process for different parts of the country. I just started this campaign. So far no clicks.

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Wow man thats a tonne of keywords, also watching this paypercall is super interesting space keep it flowing!

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Yeah I have no idea if that many is standard. Maybe someone more experienced can chime in.

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Campaign 1:
Impressions: 429
Clicks: 9
CTR: 2.1%
Avg. CPC: $1.37
Conversions: 0
Cost: 12.33
Profit: - 12.33
ROI: - 100%

Kinda lost on this one. Considering pausing it.

Campaign 2:
Impressions: 112
Clicks: 4
CTR: 3.57%
Avg. CPC: 1.02
Cost: $4.09
Conversions: 1
Profit: $15.91
ROI: 389%

Just started this one today. Have around 5000 keywords. Not sure if I got lucky with the conversion or if this campaign has promise. I will continue to gather more data.

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It is not necessarily large. Usually we manage at any given time between 1.5 million to 2 million different keyword combinations.

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Guess I better step my game up.

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Nice! Your seeing some profit. With that much data you're going to need a lot of testing to find the winners, keep that data flowing

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Start increasing spend, and start figuring out at the keyword level what is profitable and what is not. Start generating multiple combinations and permutations of what works, and reallocate budget to those keywords. Take budget away from those keywords that generate clicks but unprofitable level of conversions.

At a very basic level, whatever is good, do more ... whatever is bad do less. More Good. Less Bad.

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Thanks, this is great.

Update:

Yesterday I added 2,000 more keywords. Apparently I didn't vet them well enough because there were a lot of irrelevant and general keywords that ate up my budget with clicks. So I lost $30 in no time at all with no conversions. Not the end of the world, I spent a lot of time going through each keyword and deleting a bunch. We'll see what happens today.

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^ You should be happy it was just $30. Many times I have lost $xxxx due to small errors like that

Keep us updated how it goes.

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Those are the results for today. Not very encouraging. I am going to continue to refine and add keywords.

What else should I focus on? My quality scores for my keywords are not very good. I have nothing higher than 5, and there are a lot of 3s and 1s. I suppose I need to try some dynamic keyword insertion into the headline and also improve my landing pages. Right now I am just using the landing page that Ring Partner provides which I assume is hurting my quality scores. If I can improve my QS then I can get cheaper clicks. Right now I feel like my CPC is really high.

I have another keyword strategy idea and I will start gathering keywords for it. I will also start brainstorming keyword ideas/angles for a new campaign.

Anyone want to weigh in on my stats or have any guidance?

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You'll need a lot more impressions to gather any meaningful data. You will also want to calls initiated vs call converted, as you have control over the former but not of the latter.

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Do you have any negative keywords? Stuff like: jobs, careers etc

If you search on Google for 'negative keyword lists' then you should get something to start with.

Most importantly, check the exact search queries you have received so far (this is usually delayed) and add them as negatives constantly.

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Great input, thanks guys.
I'll start posting the calls initiated vs converted stats.
I am using negative keywords, but I should be utilizing them more. Now that I think about it, I could have saved a lot of work as far as optimizing keywords if I had just strategically used a few negative keywords.

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Today I had only 3 clicks/calls and no conversions. Spent about $10.

I'll continue to let that one gather data, but in the meantime I took a step back and thought about what I was choosing for keywords. The keywords for this campaign are pretty specific and very low volume. I'm not sure that these are the keywords that people would search for when attempting to find a certain product.

I started a new campaign where I thought about four "root" phrases that someone might search for and then added on various modifiers. After compiling all of these keywords I had about 60,000 so I broke the campaign into 4 separate campaigns.

I also used dynamic keyword insertion in the headline so I will see if that improves my quality score. I still need to make higher quality landers, but I will do this once a campaign shows some promise.

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Okay so you had 3 calls initiated but none of them passed the minimum call duration, is that correct?

If so, you definitely should go through the funnel yourself.

You should go to your lander and you should initiate the call and you should hear what messaging you get from the advertiser's call centre.

If you have not done this already, you may find the experience surprisingly insightful in revealing why someone may not complete the call after passing all the way down through your funnel.

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Those are the results from yesterday.

Today more of the same. 3 calls, no conversions.

I added 3 more campaigns today. 1 campaign is based on problems a person might experience, the other two use location based keywords.

With dynamic keyword insertion my quality score has gone up to a 6 on average. I haven't seen anything below a 5 on my new campaigns so that's cool.

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Have you gone through the call process yourself?

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Do you mean a test call?

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Exactly.

You should ring the number as if you were a real customer, you can even pretend to be one for some time.

Someone recently did this and found that the call center 'accidentally' dropped the call at e.g. 45 s then called him back, apologised and continued. The result being that your calls didn't pass the necessary duration threshold because the return call was not tracked. Very shady.

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Actually, what I meant is doing the call through the interface at the PPCall network. If you act like a customer, can't you have a problem if you go over the time period and trigger a payment based on your call?

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Yes. I've change the ad text to more closely emulate what the user hears on the initial IVR. Not sure if this is the right approach or if i should be looking for something else. Still thinking about how this should effect my ads.

Yesterday's Stats:

Cost: $40
Revenue: $37
Clicks/Calls: 20
Converted Calls: 3

Slightly negative. But two of the conversions were from calls made about a week ago. I don't understand why is was so delayed in having these conversions register.

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Nevermind. Another conversion just came in. $47 revenue from $42 spend.

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Great, you are getting there. Keep it up and keep on making improvements like you are doing.

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That's a win! Keep building.

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Credit Repair are some of the toughest and most competitive keywords you will find. Yes, you can go after long tail but getting 5-20 clicks per day will always be tough.

My advice would be to go for broader keywords, bid high and use negatives to cut the fat. Pay Per Call is a fierce battle on Adwords since its pretty much the only place to run. Drive volume and get pay bumps quickly if you want to stay in the game

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I stopped the credit offer. Running plumbing, lawyer, and flooring right now.

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Credit Repair is pretty tough and the problem with any mobile-based search campaigns on Adwords/Bing is that mobile searchers don't look for longer 4-5+ keyword searches.

You can try broader terms, with localized keywords. Like "credit repair new york" or "credit help in seattle". Then let an IVR sort out where that calls goes.

Bidding higher seems to help, conversion rates on calls are much higher and it does work.

Quality calls will give you leverage on payouts as well. The more the advertiser wants your calls, the better.

Thinking local for "urgent" services works well, people need to call for plumbing issues, locksmiths, etc.

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Today's Stats:

Campaign 1:

Clicks/Calls: 7
Cost: $12.80
Revenue: 0
Profit: -12.80

Campaign 2:

Clicks/Calls: 12
Converted Calls: 2
Cost: $13.50
Conversions: 2
Revenue: $52.50
ROI: 288.89%

Total:

Cost: $27.03
Revenue: $52.50
Profit: $25.47

Hopefully this ROI maintains. For Campaign 1 I'm not going to change spend or bid, but I am going to add some more keywords I thought of based on the advice of RingPartner. For Campaign 2 there are some additional keywords I might test out in a separate campaign and I might also increase the ad spend. Not sure if it is to early to do this. Any thoughts?

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I got burned recently with this (within the last week). $100 of calls sent at $1 per call. 2 conversions. ~90 dropped before the 30 second mark.

I called the number, and hung up after reaching a rep to see if the number was still active. They ended up calling me 7 times after that...

Shady as fuck.

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Way to go!

Keep on finding ways to scale!

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Today's Stats:

Campaign 1:

Clicks/Calls: 8
Cost: $14
Revenue: 0
Profit: - $14

Campaign 2:

Clicks/Calls: 15
Converted Calls: 1
Cost: $13.09
Conversions: 1
Revenue: $15
Profit: $1.91

Total:

Cost: $29.48
Revenue: $15
Profit: - $15 or so

I am going to pause Campaign 1 and focus on Campaign 2. I need to add more keywords in a seperate campaign, and I will keep slowly increasing campaign spend each day.

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Looking good!

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Here are the results for the last week or so.

I'm just barely profitable with $119 in revenue. Hopefully with some more optimizing this will improve.

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I was digging this follow along, what happened next dangle? How's your campaign going?

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Life got in the way and I stopped this follow along and running the pay per call campaigns. Starting up again.

Campaign 1:
Spend: 21.19
Revenue: 14.40
Clicks: 21
Impressions: 157
CTR: 13.4
Conversions: 2
Profit: -6.79

Started off the spend really low so I could get rid of keywords that weren't relevant right off the bat. I expected to get around 900 impressions but didn't even get close to that because my CTR was so high. Which I suppose is good but I don't have a lot of data to go off of. This campaign has 20,000 keywords. Not going to touch it right now.

Over the weekend I plan on launching another campaign. Will pair city names with keywords relevant to the offer. I have about 14k city names and a few different keyword combinations. Will be massive amount of keywords altogether. Overkill?

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New Campaign 2:
Clicks: 35
Impressions: 2955
CTR: 1.18%
CPC: 1.07
Avg. Pos. : 2.4
Cost: $37.50
Conversions: 5
Revenue: $65
Profit: $27.50

Good start to this campaign. Will let it run for a few more days before I try to figure out how to optimize more.

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Yesterday:

Impressions: 3400
Clicks: 27
CTR: .79%
Calls: 12
Conversions: 3
Revenue: $39
Cost: $31
Profit: $8

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Nice - looks like a solid start.

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I know you're not supposed to out anyone but can you at least say which vertical this is?

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I used to deal with fairly large volume of keywords and it's not so much as how many, but how you organize the keywords. I personally put no more than 10 keywords in a group.

I bid broad. Then add negative as quickly as possible to cut out crap. If you find the winning keyword, try the "peel and stick" method ... i forget who came up with that term, but it means that you should take them out of the ad groups and create their OWN ad groups. There's a thread on STM about a mobile CPI marketer who uses this on CPI offers on RON traffic. Similar concept.

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I believe Perry Marshall, arguably of of the best Adwords experts on the planet, coined that term. Good advice on the "peel and stick!"

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