

Ask HN: Google Adwords Effectiveness - nalidixic

Just wondering on how the community feels about Google AdWords? It seems like there is always hot and cold recommendations for it. Can you provide real world advice on how effective it's been for you when launching?
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ActVen
It has been very effective for a number of projects in which I have been
involved. I have seen many circumstances where a company "had tried AdWords
and it didn't work", but were very successful when it was implemented in the
right way. One of the key points of a good implementation is limiting the ads
with the right negative keywords, locations, and even the time of day. You
need to be creative in linking your product with your customer's expressed
need that might not necessarily be on the top of your list as well. Think
about what your customer might search for prior to even knowing that a product
like yours exists. For example, a customer might look for a spreadsheet
template for managing some process and not even know that your software helps
manage that process more effectively than a static spreadsheet. When you hear
the stories about AdWords not being effective, you can bet most of those were
implemented incorrectly...or the product wasn't meeting an expressed and
acknowledged need of the customer.

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nalidixic
Thanks for the comment. I think you have a very good point that it takes
creativity and iteration after measuring success to have a solid campaign.

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adam-_-
I'd be interested to know what the typical conversion rate people see when
sending customers to a landing page from adwords? I suppose it's probably too
complicated to have a "typical value".

I'm currently seeing about a 10% conversion rate for my project/landing page
but I don't have a feel for how good that is. I haven't done much to try and
improve it yet so presumably it could be better.

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nalidixic
Of those 10% are you able to track how many turn into paying customers?

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adam-_-
If I build the rest of the app I will be able to.

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creativeone
We have launched our service a few months back. We have been spending $x,xxx
per month. We are getting a lot of free users, but the quality is not as good
as users who come to our service through other parts of the web. The cost to
acquire users reasonable, but the jury is still out whether it is really cost
effective for finding our paying users.

