The Limos.com Forum Has Moved!!!

I have heard nothing but good things about adwords, but after day one I am up 15 clicks, down 20 bucks, with no calls or emails to show for it. I know I can't base its usefulness on that, which is why I am curious about how much you guys are spending daily on adwords and how much business it is generating for you. I am in a pretty competitive area, sandwiched in between San Diego and LA, so I think my click rates are pretty damned high ($2+ for top 3 placement) and that might be my problem.

Our company doesn’t pay as much as we used to on Adwords. Thankfully our natural listing on Google is quite high (1 or 2). But one has to remember that Adwords doesn’t only appear on Google alone. I see the listing for our company right now at the top of this forum in the Ads by Google box. So even with our high natural listing, we still use Adwords. You just have to set a daily budget for your ad, so you don’t over extend your funds. However for Yahoo, we are not as lucky with our natural listing and pay roughly $300 a month for Yahoo Search Marketing.

I pay about $300 a month for adwords.

it is worth it to pay. Most people are using the internet versus the yellow pages. They want to see your cars inside and outside. They want color pictures and able to find out the price quickly.

The yellow pages you sign a yearly contract, but with adwords it is a day to day contract.

Gunny, I hear what you are syaing and we do track but perhaps the question needs to dig deeper. They are broke down by category such as Internet, Radio, Print Media, Television etc.

So, I know that 38.2% of my business "heard about us" on the Internet. The question is, "How did you hear about us" and they reservationist checks one of 8 categories.

You are lucky that you only spend that much. In more saturated market I know guys that set up budget up to $500 a day to come up first. I tell you one thing - Im not spending that much money on no guarantees.

quote:

Originally posted by limo dum-e:
I used adword when i first started, money better spent on someone to rank your site to first page. im first page on all search in my area and i pay 0 now
bossone.net

Hey funny you should mention that, I offer that service, with a very good track record, and SEO specific knowledge to the limousine industry. See my signature. webmaster@firstclasslimos.net

I used adword when i first started, money better spent on someone to rank your site to first page. im first page on all search in my area and i pay 0 now
bossone.net

quote:

Originally posted by Limo Scene:

There really is no way that I know of ot determine how many of the 531 people who visited our site actually booked.

Big Dawg & all,

Devise within your systems a "source & activity" tracking method. Make it part of the questions asked while inputting reservations.

I don't know exactly what these things mean but I went to Google Adwords to get a report of the last 30 days.

It says .59 Average CPC
.97$ CTR
531 Clicks
54,273 Impressions

I am assuming that 54,273 people were exposed to my "sponsored" ad and that 531 of those people clicked to my website at a cost of $313.29.

There really is no way that I know of ot determine how many of the 531 people who visited our site actually booked.

Digger, how many calls daily do you attribute to adwords on average? I don't mind paying as long as I see some results!

Adwords... a good and bad thing, depending on how you look at it.

When you first start using Adwords it is going to cost you, especially in a heavy market. Until your rating gets up, your price won't go down. When I started using it my CPC was almost 3.00 but now is under 1.00 per click. (some are as low as .05 cents)

Your keywords also play a big part in your CPC. Choosing the wrong words will cost you more. For instance, if I use the word "airport" in my keywords I'm going to pay a high price because the taxi market has driven that word up. But, if I use the word "air" or "port" I still get the impressions but at a lower rate.

Over the past year I've studied Adwords pretty deep, have learned many little tricks to it but can't go in detail due to local competition on this site.

I've been playing with Adwords for almost a year, some months it's under 100 bucks, other months it's as high as 300.

If ya wanna play, yer gonna pay.