Google AdWords and Ron Paul

[tangent4ronpaul]

I got a letter from Google today offering me $100 worth of free AdWords click throughs today. Before I talk about AdWords, I wanted to mention the packaging. Both the card and the envelope was printed on recycled paper with embedded wildflower seeds and came with planting instructions. I thought that was pretty neat, left an impression on the recipients mind and encouraged them to hold onto it and probably show it to others for the pure novelty value. Think fliers.

Unfortunately, a brief web search looks like this is rather expensive paper - at least the first several distributors I found, but It might be on par with a 4 color slim jim on glossy stock. If anyone can find this in bulk or at more reasonable prices, please post!

As to AdWords, has anyone used it? It looks like you bid for your ad to be displayed, so I put in Ron Paul, 1 cent a click through and 10 a day budget. It returned zero click troughs a day.

So I tried 5 cents a click through and it said 58 click troughs a day.

Next I let it "optimize" the rate by leaving the $ a click through blank and just put down $10 a day budget. It returned 18 click throughs a day at 50 cents each! WTF???

Any sugestion on this?

As to their find keyword tool, this is useful. It returns average monthly traffic both globally and locally (USA). Some results:

Ron Paul 246,000 / 201,000
Ron Paul Forums 6,600 / 5,400
Daily Paul 27,100 / 18,100
Ron Paul 2012 9,900 / 9,900

They also have competition graphs. RP bumper stickers and T-Shirts have the most. This presumably means a higher bid to get clicks.

https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__u=1000000000&__c=1000000000&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS#search.none

Doesn't RPF's use Google AdWords? - that kind of defeats the purpose - like dangling your hook in the bucket of fish you already caught. Ditto for matches on gmail. Now matches on the Google search engine - that would be useful!

Anyway, has anyone used this and how did it work for you?

-t

[Kludge]

Ron Paul is worth big money. You're competing with a lot of people hitting the same target you are, who are also bidding for relevant ad space.

Aside from clicks, you should take note of how many impressions the ad had, which is how many times the ad showed on a person's page. I know I fairly frequently just copy and paste the URL in the ad if the ad is for something I think I'll like so I don't cost the advertiser money.

I gotta be very frank, though -- between the people who use Adblock, and the people who click ads just to support the website they're on, I'm very skeptical of the actual benefits of Adwords, especially when you're paying $.50 a click (not that it's stopped me from having three separate accounts running). I've found $.18-$.34 to be a decent range for most political projects. They'd probably be more effective in a state/local race since Google lets you target fairly specific demographics.

Also keep in mind the FEC rules on using Adwords for political campaigns is a gray zone.

Someone like Jordan could help you out way more than I can.

[sevin]

As to AdWords, has anyone used it? It looks like you bid for your ad to be displayed, so I put in Ron Paul, 1 cent a click through and 10 a day budget. It returned zero click troughs a day.

So I tried 5 cents a click through and it said 58 click troughs a day.

Next I let it "optimize" the rate by leaving the $ a click through blank and just put down $10 a day budget. It returned 18 click throughs a day at 50 cents each! WTF???

Any sugestion on this?



DO NOT use their optimization tool. It makes clicks ridiculously expensive.

What site is your ad linking to? Just curious.

I would bid manually and just keep checking it everyday until you find a bid that gets you a cost per click you can afford. Longer keywords are usually cheaper and there are a lot of them if you spend some time searching with the keyword tool.

Unfortunately, Adwords can be pretty expensive if you're not careful.

Also, make sure your ads aren't in the content network (adsense). I've found that people who click those are usually just browsing and not really interested anyway so it's just not worth the money.

[trey4sports]

with regards to the quality of clicks you get, adwords is definitely the best platform. i would use your ad now before campaign season heats up and clicks get more expensive

[tangent4ronpaul]

What site is your ad linking to? Just curious.


Don't have one yet - they sent me this free $100 worth of clicks today and I was thinking maybe I could use that to send people to Meetups and sign up for a RP group after he announces. Might toss in another $100 - $200 and just do a short term ad run to build supporters.

I did recently buy a domain name and was thinking of getting a vbulletin license to pick up some of the of the more dynamic content that OCH handled last time, like the grassroots classifieds and skills bank. Maybe direct user contact with the graphics artist pool and to bands also.

-t

[Elwar]

When I first brought garyjohnson2012.com online I had about $50 worth of Adsense ads.

This was back in 2009 so there was no buzz about Johnson at all so the clicks were cheap. But instead of doing a nationwide search I specified a narrowed down audience of people in Iowa.

And I did the ads for more generalized things like president, 2012, libertarian, marijuana, etc.


For Ron Paul, the best way to do it might be to use the adwords to pull people who are searching for other things relating to the 2012 election trying to focus on Republicans in Iowa or New Hampshire, and point them to an informative site that gives some quick information for people new to Ron Paul.
And have the ad state something about Ron Paul so that even if someone doesn't click on it, they get the message stuck in their head like "Ron Paul, champion of the Constitution" or "Ron Paul, Tea Party candidate" or whichever slogans are good for a one liner.

I was paying about $1 per click through on the Iowa focussed clicks, but I figured that Iowa voters are fairly key. Another Gary Johnson site was focussing on New Hampshire. I wasn't getting a lot of click throughs but I was getting a thousands of views on "Gary Johnson 2012, your next president".