Since August of 2020 Wonderful Machine has been using Google Ads to promote our member photographers. During December, we saw the number of clicks and impressions decrease in relation to the preceding month. This is not surprising because December is a month where business seems to enter a kind of lull. Our December site analytics report showed the same slowdown so these numbers are not a cause for concern.
As you may know, there are several different flavors of Google Ads campaign types, including search, display, video, shopping, and apps (this list is not exhaustive). Wonderful Machine does not use video, shopping, or app ads because none of these seem apposite to our goals. To name just one, we don’t have shopping products that we could list! (Although we do have some mugs and t-shirts …)
Only search and display ads are actually appropriate for our goals. Display ads appear on different websites among the content on that site. Display ads, according to Google, are useful for establishing name recognition or awareness (the top of the marketing or “purchase funnel“).
The most basic type of ad is a search campaign, and this is what most people think of when they think of Google Ads. These are the advertisements that appear at the top of search results.
During that period we have maintained a constant budget, but we have changed certain keywords, fiddled with the ad copy, and even employed images. These are the kinds of basic maintenance that are required when you have a Google Ads campaign.
Our campaign has two different ad groups.
At Wonderful Machine, our standard ad group is called “Specialties” and includes 26 of the 41 keywords that we use to identify the different specialties in which our photographers specialize: i.e., food photography, lifestyle photography, adventure photography, etc.
During December the standard ad group was seen 80,585 times (impressions) and received 2,103 clicks, which is a 2.61% CTR (click-through rate, or impressions divided by clicks). The number of impressions dropped by -27.1%, with clicks dropping by 46.9%. Ouch. The CTR only decreased less than 1 percent (.97% and we’re counting those hundredths place decimals!).
The CPC, or cost per click, went from $.08 in November to $.09, which is not much, but still a +12% increase. No increase is preferable here.
We also run a dynamic ad group. A dynamic ad group creates advertisements based on pages from your website. So instead of making your advertisement based on keywords, you provide Google with a series of pages that you want to draw traffic.
During December our dynamic ad campaign had 4,200 impressions and received 104 clicks, which is a CTR of 2.5%. As it happens, the number of impressions is +75.9% greater than that of November; clicks also saw improvements over November of +60%.
The CTR actually decreased by -.25%, which meant that it went from 2.72 to 2.48%. The CPC went from $.16 in November to $.027 in December, which is a +63.7% increase.
Thank goodness 2021 is over.
Check in next month to hear how our web ads campaigns have fared.
Interested in starting a campaign for your own site? Reach out and let us help.