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3:57 am
June 10, 2011
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QuoteJust thought I'd report in on my experience with Microsoft Ad Network. Overall, it's been a good experience:
- The customer service is fantastic. Staff are very friendly and helpful. They even called me personally, which was impressive because I'm not exactly making them mega-bucks. They offered some advice that helped me out quite a bit.
- The cost per click is good. While my average for this month is $0.22 a click, I've been tweaking things, and it's been down to about $0.08 a click for me the last couple days.
- The amount of traffic is variable. At $0.08 a click, I'm only getting about ten hits a day. If I wanted to pay more per click, I could increase that by quite a bit. If I had a bigger funnel (and thus a higher $ value per subscriber) or a better conversion rate, I would pay more.
- The conversion rate has been mediocre. My S/UD is only about 13%, but seems to be improving.
I need to keep fine-tuning some things, but I think I can massage this into a decent source of traffic. I'm going to check out Click River. Facebook ads haven't been working for me for a while -- I think the competition in my genre has become too strong, and I just can't get the CPC that I used to.
7:34 pm
June 9, 2011
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Stay the course Charley.
Even at $.08 per click and 10 visitors per day, you can make this very profitable slowly but surely.
The idea is to keep tweaking the squeeze page to convert higher and to refine the sales funnel to convert more sales.
The goal is to make 2 cents for every cent you spend. At that point , all logic says to buy more advertising.
At your current numbers (if I understand correctly S/UD is your sign-up rate?) coverting 13% at 10 visitors per day, means in 10 days you should have 13 subscribers from ppc, so after 90 days you should have 117 leads and enough to generate 1 sale (at 1% sales rate).
90 days at $.80 cents per day = $72 spent on clicks per 1 sale. If you are selling a $10.00 package you're losing $62.
So that 13% needs to come up significantly to turn a profit.
However, I don't know what your sales conversion percentage is. It could be higher than 1% (if so, good for you!)
If you double the optin rate to 26%, you cut your loss in half. If you double your sales rate as well, you will only be losing $15 (if your cpc stays the same). So you are in a refining process, trying to increase both conversions and trying to lower your cpc even further.
As you improve the sales funnel and squeeze page, you'll see the leads and sales increase to where your cost per lead will drop significantly. You might even find yourself profiting per lead. <——— Bonus!
Even where you are right now, I'm sure your competition is paying much more per lead… if they are even capturing leads in the first place.
The win goes to Charley Langer. 
11:27 pm
June 10, 2011
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Hi Steve,
Yeah, my sales conversion rate is quite a bit better than 1%. It's never been lower than 3%, and it's averaged about 6% since I've been tracking (beginning of this year). I think that's a function of my demographic. Commercial smooth jazz radio tends to advertise higher-end products like luxury cars, smooth jazz cruises, etc. I've never heard a Pepsi ad on smooth jazz radio. I get a smaller audience than you rockers, but they will actually open their wallets. 
11:53 pm
June 9, 2011
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Oh that's great, Charley!
Yeah you may be right... I mean what's a few bucks for music to somebody that buys luxury items? Sounds like you've also got some high-end up-sell opportunities.
Good stuff, man.
Hey, are you running any split tests on your squeeze page?
1:35 am
June 10, 2011
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Steve Rodgers said:
Oh that's great, Charley!
Hey, are you running any split tests on your squeeze page?
It's on my to do list! LOL! Actually, I'd appreciate a thought on what changes to test. It's hard for me to be objective. Any suggestions?
3:58 am
June 10, 2011
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Another thing I thought I'd ask, 'cause I haven't been doing this long enough to tell, but... is it likely that my conversion rate is improving because I'm now bidding LESS for the ad? It's only been a few days since I've lowered my bids, but my conversion rate appears to have improved quite a bit. I suppose time will tell what my actual conversion rate is. But it sorta makes sense that, if I'm not in the #1 spot, maybe those who are clicking on my ad are more serious. Has anyone who has been doing this a while noticed that? Just curious...
2:16 pm
June 9, 2011
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That's a great question.
Your conversion rate and cost per click are sort of related.
Your cost per click goes down when your ad is more highly targeted than your competition. The more targeted your ads are, the more likely your visitors will be to sign up when they land on your site. That's why your conversions are going up.
It's kind of like you're selling an Aston Martin, but advertising for "sports car". You may get a lot of clicks and impressions, but the cost per click will be higher because your ad will show for people who are searching for Ferarris as well.
If you refine the ad to reflect Aston Martin sports car, then you are weeding out the ferarri searches and therefore honing your targeting to your ideal target market. In which case your cost-per click will go down... and your clicks might go down as well, but also your traffic will be more qualified and more likely to sign up on your site.
Make sense?
Sounds like your doing extraordinarily well for a self-described "newbie"
11:36 pm
June 7, 2011
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Charley Langer said:
Hi Steve,
Yeah, my sales conversion rate is quite a bit better than 1%. It's never been lower than 3%, and it's averaged about 6% since I've been tracking (beginning of this year). I think that's a function of my demographic. Commercial smooth jazz radio tends to advertise higher-end products like luxury cars, smooth jazz cruises, etc. I've never heard a Pepsi ad on smooth jazz radio. I get a smaller audience than you rockers, but they will actually open their wallets.
A 6% conversion rate is considered very good. For music, I think it's outstanding. Very cool.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
11:48 pm
June 7, 2011
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Charley Langer said:
Another thing I thought I'd ask, 'cause I haven't been doing this long enough to tell, but... is it likely that my conversion rate is improving because I'm now bidding LESS for the ad? It's only been a few days since I've lowered my bids, but my conversion rate appears to have improved quite a bit. I suppose time will tell what my actual conversion rate is. But it sorta makes sense that, if I'm not in the #1 spot, maybe those who are clicking on my ad are more serious. Has anyone who has been doing this a while noticed that? Just curious...
It depends if your price is going down because your CTR is going up or if it's simply that you brought down your bid price. I think you said it was the latter. Assuming that's the case then yes, you hit the nail on the head. When you are lower on the page you tend to get more serious traffic. This is actually a well established strategy. Sometimes when a conversion rate is too low people will lower their bid to get the ad to drop a few slots. Often this boosts the conversion rate as you experienced. I have heard it said that the ideal slot is 3 or 4. But of course #1 can serve you well if your conversion rate is high enough. Honestly, I'm not half as controlled as you are. I throw a bunch of money at something for a day and then move on if it doesn't work. But I don't advise that 🙂
One thing you might want to be aware of... If you are bidding for the content network as well, and if they are the same as Google in this regard, there is likely a cut off point where all ads ranking between 1 - 4 get priority syndication (as typical ad blocks have 1,2,3 or 4 slots). So if your ad drops below that cut off point you'll suddenly lose a huge percentage of the available content traffic.
I just read through 68 posts that were waiting for me to check them. My eyes are fuzzy. Let me know if that doesn't make sense.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
7:37 am
June 10, 2011
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John Oszajca said:
Charley Langer said:
Another thing I thought I'd ask, 'cause I haven't been doing this long enough to tell, but... is it likely that my conversion rate is improving because I'm now bidding LESS for the ad? It's only been a few days since I've lowered my bids, but my conversion rate appears to have improved quite a bit. I suppose time will tell what my actual conversion rate is. But it sorta makes sense that, if I'm not in the #1 spot, maybe those who are clicking on my ad are more serious. Has anyone who has been doing this a while noticed that? Just curious...
It depends if your price is going down because your CTR is going up or if it's simply that you brought down your bid price. I think you said it was the latter. Assuming that's the case then yes, you hit the nail on the head. When you are lower on the page you tend to get more serious traffic. This is actually a well established strategy. Sometimes when a conversion rate is too low people will lower their bid to get the ad to drop a few slots. Often this boosts the conversion rate as you experienced. I have heard it said that the ideal slot is 3 or 4.
Yeah, you got it right. I'm bidding less. I had been in the #1 slot, and my conversions weren't too good. I thought, "Man, I don't want to pay that much for bad conversions," so I brought my bids down. Then, to my surprise, my conversions went up! So, then I was thinking, "Hmmm...what's going on?" And then the lightbulb went on -- if I was just surfing, I'd click on an ad at the top that said "free download" just to see what it was. But, if I was *really* looking for something, I'd check out the ads below it.
Thanks for your input. I didn't know that was an actual strategy used by marketers, but it makes complete sense. Sure saves some money. Now I'm thinking if I can get on some other networks in the #3 or #4 slot, assuming the cost is comparable to MS Network, that could be a pretty easy traffic source and I'd actually make money.
I learned something. Thanks!!
1:03 pm
June 7, 2011
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Awesome. Glad I could help.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
1:55 am
June 10, 2011
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Update: My conversions are now up to 20%, and I'm paying less than $0.10/click. I might try lowering my bids even more. I'm very pleased with Microsoft Ad Network. This seems to be working for me better than Facebook ads.
6:35 pm
June 7, 2011
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Charley Langer said:
Update: My conversions are now up to 20%, and I'm paying less than $0.10/click. I might try lowering my bids even more. I'm very pleased with Microsoft Ad Network. This seems to be working for me better than Facebook ads.
Nice.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
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