Anybody here advertise on google where the boxes come up on the sides? If so, has it been succesfull for you?

a company i previously worked for did while it brought a lot more visits to the site it did not convert many into sales
in fact i believe sign ups stayed the same if not went down a bit for the 3 months they did the google adword advertising

=(

We did that once.. It did work a little, got some hits etc. and turned a few of those into sales. My guess would be around maybe .5% sales from all the hits we received..

are you telling me that if you guys got 10,000 hits for one month that you converted 2% meaning 200 people into a sale?

Changed my post a little. We didn't get 10,000 hits from them first of all :bawling: we didn't get that many but maybe .5%?

Doubt advertizing on Google would work. probably not targetted *enough* or something. Why not go for web hosting directories? Probably cheaper and have a better return.

I've been using Google's Adwords Select program for about 3 weeks and I like it alot. You target your ads to exact phrases or combinations of phrases etc. You pay by the click. The click cost depends on the keywords.

Overall I am running at about 2% clickthrough with 11% sales on the clickthroughs. Mind you this is for Domain Names, not web hosting.

We use google adwords and found after much trial and error that using the right keywords and description, we could generate about 5% click through, which made it worthwhile. Until we refined things we were getting about 1%, which ended up being very expensive form our perspective.

Google adwords did not work at all for me. I would not advise going with this. My campaign was not effective at all and with a high number of views I only receieved a few clicks. No Sales. Not worth it.

You are much better off advertising your business on places like tophosts.com

If you offer design services you can also advertise on desidev.net

Remember that now in addition to "old-fashioned" Adwords there's the new CPC Adwords Select program, which jmcmike mentioned. Some of the past trial and error and experiences of paying for lots of impressions with low click-thru rates wouldn't apply under that program.

Personally, while I love Google, I'm not a big fan of Adwords. I have seen it pay off, certainly, but I'd rather look for good placement on decent keywords in the regular Google listings -- for free.

Google can be good if your looking for straight up traffic. But for sales, your gonna need to look harder. Google has been know to have people just "click around" their site, not really looking for anything. If your looking at increasing people to your site, then go ahead and do it, but if your looking for sales, you may want to go another route.


Jim

It wouldn't really be accurate to make a blanket statement that Google referrals don't result in sales for anybody. In this thread (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=35900), for example, a couple of hosts report good results. Your conversion rate will depend on how effective you are at selecting keywords to target and at writing your ad. If you're getting a lot of visitors and few sales, you should change one of those elements.

I gained my first 20 customers using Google AdWords, I had about a 4% click through ratio. But since they have started the "Ad Word Select" program click throughs have dropped to less than 1%. Almost all of my business comes from referals now, which is really the best advertisement that you could ask for.

In my opinion

advertizing = branding <not=> sales

word of mouth + branding results = sales

That's my opinion and I could be dead wrong. What's everyone's thought on this?

Originally posted by Omni
In my opinion

advertizing = branding <not=> sales

word of mouth + branding results = sales

That's my opinion and I could be dead wrong. What's everyone's thought on this?

You can't have many customers that will do word of mouth if you don't spend money on ads and then provide excellent service :)

True, point taken :)

Alternatively, you could earn yourself (and your company) a good reputation by helping out around forums like WHT and giving professional advise and solutions.

We signed up for a 'test drive' with the Google Adwords this morning and so far got 92 hits and 9 sales from Google. Not bad if you ask me ...i'll see how it keeps up. :D

10% sales?? not bad!