

How To De-Risk Your New Idea Using Google Adwords - Part 1 of 2 - _pius
http://blog.stevebarsh.com/barsh_bits/2009/01/5-surprising-ways-to-derisk-your-new-idea-using-google-adwords-part-1-of-2.html

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patio11
I have seen, over and over again, this idea of making an AdWords account go to
a placeholder page to test out ideas that don't quite exist yet. It has
routinely been suggested by people who I would otherwise consider quite
intelligent and well-informed about marketing on the Internet.

 _Have these people used AdWords in the last 3 years?_

Google is _not neutral at all_ about what content you put up behind the click.
If your page is content-free, their automated algorithms which calculate
Quality Score, a key metric which determines how much you pay, are going to
penalize you. If you use the landing page as a squeeze page (i.e. "sign up for
our mailing list for when we release!", the most frequent suggestion) your QS
will drop so low you will probably terminate your test quickly, after you
start getting charged 10 to 100 times the going rate for clicks.

AdWords will also manually ban an account they catch doing this. It stands to
reason for Google: they want people who click on ads to get what they
expected, not hear "Psyche! That positioning was just a marketing test. Well,
that will teach you to click on AdWords ads in the future, won't it?"

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jtbarrett
Maybe I'm missing the point here, but it sounds like he's suggesting using
AdWords to do some quick A|B tests to solidify a position and confirm
assumptions. Sure, the low-QS page will perform poorly in absolute terms, and
it will be difficult to extract meaningful raw information; but it could still
be helpful to compare the relative performance of a few nearly identical ads
that point to the same content.

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patio11
The problem with low-QS is not just that it will perform poorly in absolute
terms. In addition to various monkeying with your positioning they will do,
which will distort the heck out of your assumptions you're confirming, each
click will cost a punitive amount of money. My highest QS ads go for 3 to 4
cents a click. Your low QS ads, for _the same keyword_ , will cost $1, $5, or
$10. (And the sky is the limit on that if you are in a niche more money-rich
than educational bingo cards. Basically, it is priced to punish based on
whatever the prevailing CPC is in your niche -- if it normally cost
$8.20~9.80, it now costs $100 even, etc.)

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dhimes
Distorted the assumptions is bad, but paying a buck a click for market
research is not, especially if it saves you $1000s in dev costs.

(I still don't think I'd feel right doing it, though).

OT: How long does it take for your Google ad to start getting impressions when
you submit it? Mine are embargoed for several days, and I cannot figure out
why (nor will they tell me).

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tphyahoo
This idea was suggested by the four hour workweek (tim ferriss), that's
probably why it's getting a lot of play.

I was thinking of trying it out for myself sometime soon, but I see from the
other comments on this thread that it's probably not as much of a slam dunk
idea as it sounds.

