Pay Per Click Costs Skyrocketing - What do we do?

[SGBrad]

Hi all. I'm new here and I hope to gain some insight into the world of PPC and how we can be more efficient.

We're a franchised service based business that has franchises in 27 states. We run our pay per click campaigns (and SEO) through a nationally known digital marketing company. For the past few years, our bid prices have skyrocketed and we're at the point where PPC is no longer profitable to our organization. I assume this is largely related to more and more national and local competitors coming into the space and driving up costs. I have to imagine that many of our competitors our experiencing the same cost increases and reaching the same tipping point.

Are similar things happening in other industries and throughout Google? We're really struggling to make the campaigns more efficient to offset the additional bid costs. The vendor we work with continues to search for new ideas and efficiencies, but our cost per lead has still climbed dramatically the past 3 years. Part of our problem could be that we have many territory "islands" across the country and can't just push ads through the country. We lose leads that are out of territory even though we geocode aggressively.

Thanks for your responses and assistance.

[DaveSpencer]

I was managing $0.13 per click on average on affiliated related keywords within Google Adwords, which is not exactly a low cost keyword. It's alway about your landing page and how you write your compaign ads when it comes to using Adwords.

Not sure about other PPC sites.

[lambpie]

Do you have access to the Adwords account?

Do you have access to the Google Analytics account?

I'd start by checking a few key metrics first, I.e whats the bounce rate like? Are they using a lot of broad matches? how much junks filtering through?

Drop me a PM if you need me to talk you through anything

[lambpie]

Do you have access to the Adwords and Google Analytics accounts?

I'd run through a few basic checks first, I.e whats the bounce rate like? are they using a lot of broad matches which is resulting in a lot of junk etc?

Drop me a PM if you need me to talk you through anything..

[Allen_adv]

I would like to use this topic to my advantage a bit. If a similar situation occurs and the bids are getting a bit steep, besides finding other keywords with lower bids, is there any solution to keep yourself in the top ?

[arthur]

according to me, you first have to increase your keyword organic value,, than after go with ppc,,