How did it work for you?

I am also curious about this one! I havent done it yet, wondering if it works!

Sooooo I'm testing it out now. I'll update in a couple of months.

ETA: If you're interested 57% of my web traffic comes from google. Which means all of my wedding clients are coming from google. Party cake referrals have been from friends.

I just joined adwords last night...and google traffic increased 10% so I'll let you know how that translates into clients in a couple of months.

is this where you have to pay everytime someone clicks on your ad?

We ran a test using AdWords and probably will not continue. Here were our stats which cost us about $40:

- We had 25,000 impressions (this is when you ad appears on the right side of the google page)
- 180 clicks on the ad (taking people to our site)
- one order that I know of for $250

We placed a max bid per click of $.30 and our average rating was '4' - meaning we were on average the fourth ad down on the right-side of the page. Our max to spend per day was $3.00 and we usually reached the max by mid-afternoon, meaning our ad was no longer active for the day. We focused our ads for our area and chose a lot of key words.

Good luck if you go for it!

Ok...Here is an update.

I'm trying AdWords and Facebook Ads at the same time.

It looks like Facebook will be the winner of my experiment, BUT I am only 2.5 days in, so it's too early to tell anything. I'm doing it for a month or two since Valentine's day is around the corner...so proposals are on the brain!

So far I've spent a little under $9.00 (that's nine dollars) on the campaign so far and I have FIVE appointments booked for consults this weekend. My previous stats show that one of those appointments will most likely cancel. This is just from my two year history of doing weddings. But for now....there are five confirmed appointments.

One of my consults was already scheduled, and she's a friend. So the campaign has added four.

This is just a coincidence as my ad experiment in only targeting people that are engaged...but I've also booked two party cakes through facebook, but those were also distant friends (people I talk to maybe once a year in person*). So that was zero dollars spent there, but the facebook connection is the reason for those two orders, since that is the only way I communicate with those friends.

I pray that all five show up and book! I'm ready for this to take off! I'll update again after the weekend.

eta - in person

CakeForte-- Out of curiosity, how do you know that the ad programs are the reason for the appointments being booked? Are you asking every customer where they found out about you? I just wonder because when I ask people where they heard about me they always say something vague like "uh...I don't know. The internet."

I ask them how they found me, and I can also track in my web stats and the ad program stats.

When I say track, I have a list of everywhere that's been linked for bridal stuff paid ads and free listings (it's hard to track the cross links and such).

I haven't done any bridal shows because I just can't afford them right now, so I'm looking for other ways to market. Right now I'm the same age as my target clients, so if they're anything like me (which I know they are since that's what I researched in grad school).....they're on facebook at least once an hour.

This new experiment is the only thing that I have changed in six months....and I can focus in on a specific target client, and I'm also promoting a special, so that's how I also know, because they're referring to the promo special when they email.