Last night, I launched my five Google Adwords ads for 3 Dumplings. I'm trying to maintain a $4 per day budget, $2 per day for my text ads (the ads that you always see when you search something in google), and $2 per day for my image ad (which shows up on google's display network...other sites that make money by showing google ads on their pages)...but I'm maxing out the budget everyday, and they seem to be very relevant and optimal clicks that we're receiving, so I may consider increasing my budget, or trying to get rid of keywords that are wasting our money. I'm definitely no expert with online advertising, so I'm still tweaking things as the days roll on.
Here are the stats from day one of my ads:
- Image Ad | 4 total clicks, 3,678 impressions, and an average cost of $0.43 per click. Total cost is $1.74. Average ad position is 1.1 (which means my ad is showing before other competitors'...that's good)
- Nightlife Tours Text Ad | 3 total clicks, 376 impressions, and an average cost of $0.55 per click. Total cost is $1.64. Average ad position is 1.4
- Market Excursions Text Ad | 1 total click, 275 impressions, and an average cost of $0.18 per click. Total cost is $0.18. Average ad position is 1.9
- Cuisine Tours Text Ad | 0 total clicks, 46 impressions, and no cost. Average ad position is 1.7
- Cooking Classes Text Ad | 0 total clicks, 17 impressions, and no cost. Average ad position is 2.1
Out of 8 total clicks, 7 of those are coming from Google's Display Network, so they're being triggered by content on websites that display Google Ads, and they're not actually being sought out by people on Google.com.
Clearly, our image ad is driving the most traffic, because it is an impression campaign, and we pay for ever 1,000 impressions. With about 4,000 impressions, that means that people are seeing our name and our brand is getting some recognition, which is nice because it's brand spanking new. I need more people to click on it and then actually buy our tours ;-) Nightlife seems to be the most popular available offering that we have, which was expected, but that's not really what 3 Dumplings is about...we're trying to attract a more 'foodie' type of audience, people who want to know about Shanghainese and Chinese foods. I guess you never really think to go to google and type in, "Cuisine Tours" so I've got to figure out how I can attract people who would be interested in taking a tour of the city to learn about the various food offerings of Shanghai. I've got some evaluating to do, that's for sure. If you stumble upon a 3 Dumplings text ad on google or another website, please DO NOT click on the ad! (That costs me money when you do) If you come across the image ad, that's totally cool to click on, because it doesn't cost me $ when you do ;-)
Lots to think about...people make livings setting up Google Ads for businesses. There's a lot that goes into it, hopefully I'm doing alright so far.
--
PMM
Hey Pat,
ReplyDeleteYou are going to have to teach me about Google Ads and how they work. I have been breifly introduced to them in a couple of my Marketing classes, but the class that offers more insight to Google Ads does not fit into my schedule this fall. I will need you to teach me all you know about it when you get back. How are the other Marketing projects going? This internship is really great experience that will be so beneficial for you in graduate school.
Talk to you soon,
Lyndsay
p.s. Have you seen anyone there exercising by hitting themselfes with weird looking sticks? My friend at school says this is how she exercises to keep the blood flowing.
Hey Lynds!
ReplyDeleteYea, I'd definitely love to sit down with you to go over all this Adwords stuff. I'm no expert, but I took a class last semester and I've run three pretty successful campaigns, so I'm somewhat experienced. As far as other marketing stuff, we're working on creating a cool dumpling shaped leaflet that will fold out into three dumplings all connected and will explain all of our tour offerings. Then we're also gonna do a big booklet which will explain all of our tours in great detail, to give to hotels and other organizations that will promote us. I just met with some hotel marketing directors in downtown shanghai, and they provided me with a lot of helpful knowledge regarding hotels and tourism, so that was nice. I'm also working on building out the tour guide training booklets and pulling together all the details on our tours, as well as trying to hook up with a good car rental company to provide us with our transportation.
The marketing stuff that I did for Closed Door was good, but it didn't end up being very successful. We just closed down Closed Door (ironic, right) because the whole 'private social club restaurant' thing wasn't exactly catching on well with customers. And the government licensing problem couldn't be overcome, so shutting down was the only option. Not a huge deal I guess, but it's a bummer. My boss has a lot of other ideas in mind, so it'll just give her/us more time to focus on those.
In fact I have seen people hitting themselves with sticks. I have seen a total of two old couples whacking themselves as they walked, AND they were walking backwards! It was one of the most obscure things I've ever witnessed, haha.
Best,
Pat