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Pay-per-call for the long haul (34)

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Reading Finch's premium posts and meeting Mike at RingPartner gave me the motivation I needed to give pay-per-call a shot. I've been running mobile cpa full-time for about a year, but I have minimal experience with adwords. I started this follow-along to learn and hopefully help others as well, so I will try and be as candid as possible.

Here we go!

Offer: Locksmith Service
Payout: $9/per qualified call (My AM said it generally converts around 90sec)
Times: 24/7
Region: Select cities in the US

Keyword selection: I took the top 10 volume keywords for this vertical and pared them with the 250 largest cities on the offer's region list. I also pared the same city names with the only three locksmith company chain names I could find. Roughly 2,700 keywords total, all set to broad match modifier.

Lander: I just used one of the ringpartner templates: lander

Ads: Two completely different text ads with call extension buttons in place

Bid: Max CPC .30 w/ mobile 300% bid adjustment

Adwords settings: For general camp settings I followed Attila's case study pretty close: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...hlight=monster

Stats coming soon!

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I'm also getting started in PPC and using a hybrid of Finch's and Attila's guides. Very similar structure for both of us. Really looking forward to this. I hope you makes lots of money!

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The locksmith camp has been active for 24 hours and traffic is barely trickling in...116 impressions, 0 calls, I thought it might be a delay in stats, but Invoca isn't showing any calls either....I bumped up the max CPC to .40 hopefully that will open the flood gates a little bit more.

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Subscribed to the thread. Wishing you all the best.

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hi make it rain. i'm running that same offer. locksmith +major city keywords go for as much as $45 a click. you're gonna need to bump your cpc up a lot more to see any real traffic. Or go for super long tail. i'm running 20,000 keywords.

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Wow, I really appreciate the insight. This is a big eye opener.
For now I'm going to bump up my cpc to $1 and start building a10-20k long tail keyword list.
Thanks man

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You can definitely increase the bids with pay per call. Typically pay per call search traffic converts higher than other campaigns, especially on mobile.

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What is the traffic source you are using, Adwords?

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Yes, just adwords for now.

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Total
Spend: $19
Revenue: $9
Profit: $ -10

I made my max cpc $1 a couple days a go and it turned up the volume slightly, but still nowhere close to enough. My existing 2,700 keywords are too mainstream and expensive for this payout, so I just added a list of 20,000 longer tail keywords. I added zip codes, neighborhood names, etc. I also added a list of 200+ negative keywords.

Questions:
- I noticed only the first two ad placements are above the fold, ad placements 3 and up are on the very bottom, after the organic search results... I would think this would make placement 3< a lot less likely to convert....Is it possible to only on bid on the 1 and 2 position in adwords? Meaning if the placement was going to land on 3<, adwords would stop bidding for that impression.

- If the answer is no, should I pause all keywords that dont have a chance of ever making it into the top two ad positions?

- When using the 300% bid adjustment on mobile, does it increase my current max cpc by 300%? So my $1 bid is really $3?

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i don't think it is possible to only bid for top two spots.
why would you pause them?
yes in theory it would be 3. but google has a habit of raising your bids about 20% higher than your max epc.

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Interested in this, good luck

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thanks hlyghst
I think Ad spots 3< are proportionally not worth the cost for the cr% they get and will just drain my budget...I could be wrong, but I'm assuming that if the user scrolls past 2 ads, 10 organic search results, 8 google suggested search terms the likely hood of them converting on ad place 3, 4 or 5 plummets drastically. For example, for this offer I'm trying to target users that have just been locked out of their house, car, office etc. and need immediate assistance. If they scrolled past everything to get to ad place 3< on the bottom they are more likely just browsing, don't need immediate help and will not convert.

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Total
Spend: $22.87
Revenue: $18
Profit: $ -4.87

I've upped max spend to $400/day and I added another 40,000 keywords. So now I'm waiting on approval for 60,000+ new keywords.
I'm organizing everything so it's easy to list build again in the future.

Question:
I've added 60,000+ new keywords and I could easily triple that....Am I getting myself into trouble adding so many keywords? It's going to take a long ass time to go through all these.

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You can't bid on positions, at least not that I'm aware.

If you're using the device bid adjustment it's a +300%, equal to times 4. ($1 bid = $4 bid)

60,000 keywords is a lot and can be tough to manage. However, if you're bids are low enough on 60,000 lower traffic keywords, it could work to help generate a few clicks a day on different keywords, leading to a decent amount of traffic. You may not want to "go through them", but rather maintain them and manage them as best as possible to get clicks across thousands of keywords.

Thanks for sharing!

-Mike

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Good point mike! my math aint too good.

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Total
Spend: $253.58
Revenue: $45
Profit: $ -208.58

Impressions: 8,600
Clicks: 90
CTR: 1.04%
Avg Position: 4.7
Calls: 30

Mistake #1
90 clicks, but only 30 clicks went to my ad extension....why? Not sure, maybe the call button wasn't showing up on some of my ads?
Solution: I think the call button only shows up on your ad if you select to show on mobile only under the ad extension options

Will know if thats the right answer shortly....Please correct me if I'm wrong

Mistake #2
I had my camp running on $1 (@ 300%) max cpc.... $4/click adds up fast...
I now know to ask my AM the offer's avg CV% ahead of time and do the math on my possible max bid. My AM told me this offer has avg of 20% CV rate. With that 20%, I calculated my break even max CPC bid is $0.45 (w/ 300% adjustment). Now all my keywords are set on $0.45 CPC max.

Mistake #3
I picked an uber competitive niche for my first ppcall camp. My keywords and ads are way too blasé; the only way I'm going to pull this off is if I get more creative and unique with my angles.

Live and learn!

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Is that the CVR from calls to conversions, or from clicks to conversions?

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About the mistake #1. Why only mobile devices? If your ad also show on dekstop they will go directly to your LP. If you set all devices they can get a option to call you.

You can also check on what kind of type of device the impressions where made. --> https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2454072?hl=en

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20% CVR avg Calls to conversions.

Thanks, 81% of my clicks are from mobile. When I saw that I had 90 clicks, but only 30 went to my ad extension, I immediately thought something must be wrong with my settings and this was the only setting I wasn't sure about

But that wasn't the problem. I would prefer to to have the extension show on all devices anyways...maybe nothing is wrong and only 33% clicks from the ad extension is normal?

I test called the offer last night and an automated message said the call center was closed and to leave a message....not a good sign on a supposed 24/7 offer...I'm waiting to here back from my AM on this.

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Within AdWords, you can create an automated rule that effectively bids on a position.

Here's the documentation: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2497710?hl=en

The logic is this: If Avg Position < x, then increase bid by x%.

You can even create two rules and straddle a position using this logic. If Avg Position < x, then increase bid by x% && If Avg Position > x, then increase bid by x%.

In your case, to maintain position 2 or higher, the rule would look like this:

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I had to step away from pay-per-call for a moment, but now I'm back in the saddle and ready to grind. Like I said in the title, I'm in it for the long haul.
My old locksmith campaign that I started this follow-along with had a handful of very low volume profitable keywords, I ended up around -40% ROI on it.

Starting fresh:
Offer: Sylvan Learning Center, ALL USA
Payout: $13 - 14.40 / 60sec
Networks: RingPartner and Mundo
Traffic Source: Google Adwords
Ad type: Call-only mobile ads
Keyword selection: Since the adwords editor doesn't have this ad type as an option yet I'm focusing on a smaller set of broad keywords and will branch out once I see which are best performing. I made a list of keywords that the top three domains in this industry are currently using. Only 1,300 keywords were being used by all three. I slimmed it down to 250 based on cost and volume.

Just waiting for ad approval. Will have stats soon.

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Welcome back!

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It's quite overdue, but thank you for putting this together. It looks like you did something similar with "Be Top Dog or Die".
In retrospect, I think I just need to focus on getting clicks, no matter what ad position they come from.

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Yeah, this is bad. You need to know whats going on in the pipeline, do you record your calls? By far the best way to know what's happening with your calls, if they get through, if the call centre doesn't pick up, etc

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The Sylvan Learning Center campaign is live, but impressions are just trickling in. I'll give it another day or two, before I start tweaking it.
In the mean time I started another campaign:
Offer: Appliance Repair, ALL USA
I choose this offer because of the 30 sec duration requirement, limitless keyword options and the repair industry always does well during economic recession.
Payout: $4.5 / 30sec
Traffic Source: Google Adwords
Ad type: Call-only mobile ads
Keyword selection: There are seemingly endless keywords to use for this niche. I combed through the keywords of the top 5 players for appliance repair on adwords looking for low hanging fruit. I picked what I think is the best 3,000 and put everything in one adgroup until I see what works. I may regret this later....
Bid: Manual CPC, max $1.50. I'd like to bid higher, but I'd need 33% CR just to break even at $1.5.
Questions: 1. How many ad variations do you guys usually use when starting a campaign? I've been doing 5 per ad group.
2. My RingPartner AM said the payout duration requirement starts after IVR ends, but I assume the adwords conversion tracking will start timing the call as soon as the user is connected. With a 30 sec duration, I'm concerned my invoca / adwords conversion data will be very different. I'm thinking of making the conversion duration 60 sec on adwords to account for the IVR. Thoughts?

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UPDATE:
Learning Center Offer
Impressions: 104
Clicks: 2
CTR: 1.92%
Conversions: 1
Spend: $4.30
Revenue: $14.40
Profit: +$10.10


I'm happy to see green, but there is not enough data to celebrate yet. Volume is very low. At the moment I'm biding $2.88 (offer payout multiplied by the avg conversion rate of offer). I'm going to raise it to $3.02 to get ahead of all of the $3 bidders and see if that helps.

The Appliance Repair Offer isn't getting traffic yet…I think with this low payout ($4.50), I need to use super long-tail keywords to compete.

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Watch out, think Sylvan is getting paused this week.

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Thanks for the heads up man.

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Quick Update:
Sylvan Learning Center Offer:
No new spend or clicks…..Raising the bid didn't help volume at all. I think I may ditch this campaign and make a new text ad camp w/ the 300% mobile bid modifier and see if that helps.
*EDIT: I just found out this offer is paused now...

Fix my Appliance offer:
Spend: $5.20
Revenue: $22.50
Profit: +$17.30
Traffic is starting to roll in and I like the results so far, but I'm having a tracking problem I can't figure out. Adwords is showing 5 clicks and 2 conversions, but Invoca is showing 25 calls and 5 conversions…I've reviewed all the settings and everything looks correct…could this be an adwords reporting delay?

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@makeitrain Sylvan Learning is live. It was only the Canadian campaign that was paused. Let us know if we can help you out.

-Kevin

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Wow, it's been almost a year since I had started this follow along. I'm still grinding away with ppcall and it's been a great ride. I've been seeing consistent $xxx/day profit for the last half year, but i'm trying hard to add another digit on there. If any other pay per call marketers want to swap tips or collaborate please hit me up.

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@makeitrain hit me up on skype : swade80, if interested in pinging ideas off each other. Glad to hear your getting constancy

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$9 per qualified call for locksmith enquiries after 90 seconds in the US??? That is just nuts.

Move on ... there is nothing to see here ...

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