Correctly Testing A Campaign
A problem that many new search/affiliate marketers have is the way they test their campaigns. I hope this post helps you get a grasp of how I like to test out offers. My testing methods always change a little bit depending on the campaign and you will learn that as you become more experienced search marketer your methods of testing will change and adapt to the markets at that time.
When I decide I want to ‘test’ a campaign before blasting the campaign it usually means that I feel the campaign has room for tremendous growth but holds a slightly higher risk than other campaigns or is an offer that I feel will perform different than other offers of its kind (this can make my research trends data 100% worthless sometimes).
Basically this is a quick overview and step by step on how you can really test a campaign and not come to the conclusion that a campaigns a 100% failure if you lose money your first day, Don’t give up guys, Please!
1. Budget: I like to test my campaigns by spending like 10% of my goal spend. Although 10% sounds like a low number it can be a pretty nice number when your spending mad money on ppc ;). If your starting out small i recommend you either make your budget 50% of your goal or by putting your goal as the daily budget and lowering your bids in order to decrease volume or get some cheaper clicks. When I just started messing around with AdWords I had an experience where I started testing with my goal as my budget but made my bids about 30% lower than what they should be. To my surprise i spent my whole daily budget the next day and saw a decent consistent ROI after that, that was kind of a fluke and probably doesn’t happen all the time but you might find yourself on a luck streak and start making more than you could imagine on your FIRST STAGES of a campaign!
2. Ads - My friend Jeff says that I am a little over the top when it comes to writing multiple ad variations. I disagree with him because in this business to many ads shouldn’t really be a problem. The whole point of testing is to find out what works and what doesn’t, once you test a campaign you can delete the ads which you didn’t make any money on and keep using the ads which worked. When you start a campaign I suggest you write up like 3-4 different ads. I love to do 10-20 ads for a new campaign and than narrow down the ads that I’ll actually use when going full power on a campaign.
3. Quality Score - Generally it’s a good thing to get your quality score’s all to the “OK” and “GOOD” score before you start going full power on a campaign. Although sometimes I say fuck it and just bid higher; one issue that I get e-mailed about quite a bit is issues with the quality score therefore new affiliates should really take it seriously and be concerned with original content, relevancy, etc. As you learn how to Affiliate market you will adapt to the quality score and form your own little strategies on dealing with quality score.
4. Last But Not Least, When To Stop etc - Determining weather a campaign is a good one (+) or a (-) on your income sheets is pretty important when testing a campaign as its pretty much the whole purpose. Before you start testing be sure to come up with a goal on how many leads per day and how much profit to earn, regardless of if you hit your goal or not having a ‘goal’ set in stone can make it a lot easier to determine if a campaign is working for you. HINT: If you have a campaign and its making .01% profit it’s still profitable, why pause it? Some people think that affiliate marketing is only worth it if you make 2x your money when doing it on a little scale and i disagree because most people doing search engine marketing hope to make A LOT OF MONEY and not do it on a small scale for a long time, you’ll get their soon.. i promise
Since I just re-read this post and I think it’s missing something feel free to contact me via email @ GevirtzMedia@gmail.com and I’ll gladly answer any questions you have about scaling a campaign
Goodnight Guys (2 40 am)
-Harrison
