PPC Question

03 Feb 11 1:28 am

I suggest that you contact MSN AdCenter's support. They can look into your account and give you suggestions on how to improve your campaign.

They also have a program called QuickLaunch: http://advertising.microsoft.com/search ... uicklaunch

It's a free program where an adCenter expert will help you with everything from setting up your first campaign through optimizing it after it's been running for a little while. The agents are very familiar with adCenter and can answer most questions you'd have around seeing success with adCenter.

Here are also some ways to help lower CPCs: CPC as a Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

* Lower Bids Review your bid prices and CPCs in relation to your positioning and see if perhaps you could stand to lower your bids. First position, while desireable in many instances, is not the only spot that will bring in qualified traffic; you may find more desireable CPCs in 2nd or 3rd position.
* Match Types Bidding across all match types within the same ad group can not only help lower CPCs, but increase impressions, clicks and CTR as well.
* Negative Keywords Using negative keywords helps to reduce unqualified traffic as it keeps your ad from displaying when search queries are not relevant to your ads.

22 Jun 11 7:17 pm

It is better to use targeted keywords if you want to get lower CPC. CPM also can get you lw-cost clicks, but it requires a little bit more maintenance. *link removed by moderator* is a good place for more detailed info. I got my clicks as low as zero cents.

22 Oct 11 8:22 am

This is an old post by the OP but I'll chime in anyway. ;)

Another way to keep ad spend down is to have killer ads, this will get you a great CTR and then AdCenter or Adwords will place you higher in ad positions, then you can lower the CPC while still being in good positions, you can essentially be paying less then the ads below you all because of the killer ad copy, this is because AdCenter/Adwords would rather have your .25 cent clicks then some one else's 1.20 NO clicks.

But to do this you need more targeted ads, try to group your campaign/keywords better so that you end up with 4-5 or so keywords + one ad, which is targeted for those 4-5 keywords only, also create another ad just like it except for one change and split test the ads, when one ad is the clear winner copy it and change something, repeat, always improving the ad group. In AdCenter you cannot evenly split test very well as of yet, AdCenter will show the best ad for you and favor the one with the better CTR, in Adwords they will send the same amount of traffic to each ad I believe, which is better.

Delete keywords that get clicks; but don't get sales, even though you have great landing page optimization. Eventually you will end up with just a handful of keywords/ads that are your money makers.

Separate the Search networks and the Content networks. Create separate campaigns for each. On the Search net work give the searcher Exactly what they want, Prices work well on Bing, on the Content network your gonna have to think outside the box with the ad copy to attract attention to the Ads.

Also if you can get the conversion rate up on the landing-pages/offers, maybe you can afford a little higher level of ad-spend.

.Andrew.