Google, the well-respected search engine, has also been making waves for it's advertising program. Google's program, called AdWords, is a cost-per-click program that lets you buy search terms. When a user types in a term (like "outlook"), your ad box appears on the right side of the screen. Claiming to provide advertisers the ability to choose their own price and only billing on click-through, this appeared to offer the marketer's holy grail: cheap, sure-thing marketing.
Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, we decided to try it out. First, we'd be gaining some competitive intelligence on a new marketing model, and second, if it really worked, maybe we'd sell some stuff.
The test
We decided to promote our eBook, OutlookPower's Big Book of Tips & Tricks for Outlook & Exchange. It's a broad-interest book that always sells well from our own Web site and mailings, so we figured that it'd have a nice, little run on Google.
You can see the ad below:
It's short, but it tells you what we're selling. The little bar marked "interest" is Google's way of telling you how interesting (based on clicks) your ad is compared to others in the category. The more interesting, the higher up you go on the page and the bigger your bar.
While size doesn't necessarily matter, you can see our bar was pretty big. During our run, we were always in the first or second slot. After two days of running, our ad was apparently pretty interesting.
Your position is also determined based on how much you're willing to bid per click. Google has a long explaination, but final placement boils down to some factor of how clickable your ad is and how much you spend. You also can determine how much you're willing to spend per day, and how long your ad will run.
We decided to be cautious and budget $100 for a two day run, or $50 per day. We also decided to go for a whopping $0.25 per click. As competitors of Google, this was our biggest concern. After factoring price and response together, our average price per click is a whole lot more than Google's. We wanted to see if they were going to blow us out of the water, price-wise.
The results
We were amazingly disappointed (and relieved) by the results. Google's performance was, for want of a better word, crap. In the image below, you can see the Google result chart for our ad run.
Reading from left to right, the first column is "Max CPC" or the maximum cost-per-click we were willing to pay. In our case, a whopping (said sarcastically) $0.25.
Next is the number of clicks our ad received. In this case, it was 183...not bad, but considering how "big" Google's supposed to be, it was surprisingly low.
We asked Google to deliver our ad to anyone searching for "outlook", "microsoft outlook", "outlook tips", and "outlook help". The total number of impressions (or times people searched for these terms over a two-day period) was 19,926. This was the real disappointment for us. We'd always thought that Google was huge in terms of traffic it generated. It startled us to see that Google delivered way less traffic for Outlook-related search terms than our own, vertically targeted Web pages.
If you divide 19,926 by 183, you get a 0.9% click-through-ratio. That's the first result that's not unexpected. In effect, about 1% of the folks who looked for Outlook-related information clicked on our ad.
The last three columns were quite telling as well. Google doesn't take your bid price and just use it. It factors it in with other bidders to come up with a price. In our case, even though we were willing to pay $0.25 per click, Google only valued the clicks at $0.12 and charged us accordingly. Our entire two-day run cost a minimal $21.40, less than a quarter of what we'd budgeted to spend.
Finally, the ad averaged position 1.9, which means we were sometimes in position 1, but mostly in position 2.
The return on investment
So far, you might think this was a good, if somewhat low-key deal. After all, at only $0.12 a click, you can't go wrong, even if not a whole lot of folks were Googling for Outlook during our test.
You'd be wrong.
Even though 183 people landed on our store's buy page, we didn't get a single order attributable to Google. Not one.
Zip. Zero. Nada. Not a one.
This was shocking. When we promote products through our own advertising channels, our "Big Book of Outlook Tips & Tricks" is a brisk seller. It's priced reasonably, has tons of content, explains itself in a second, and always, always sells.
And yet, Google didn't deliver a single sale.
On one hand, we were encouraged. After all, it's always somewhat gratifying to see a competitor crash and burn. On the other hand, it would have been nice to have an additional, inexpensive marketing channel for our e-books.
But the real question had to be "why?" Why would products sell well through the ZATZ channel, and not through Google? After all, Google reaches everyone and we just reach the inner-circle of enthusiasts, developers, network engineers, and decision-makers. We reach a much narrower class of reader.
Yeah, that's it. We reach a much narrower class of reader.
We reach folks who've voluntarily opted-in and by doing so, have told us they want this information. Not just once, when searching, but they want weekly updates, tips, information, and, yes, ads.
Our readers are serious, and when they see an ad they like, they often buy -- or at least bookmark the resource for later evaluation.
Apparently, Google searchers aren't quite as serious.
Bummer.
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