There are several marked trends that we have seen across many business sectors in Google AdWords this past month. One has been an increase in advertising start up and the other has been a marked increase in conversion activity. Both trends bode well for a change in our economy and for increased business for the fourth quarter of 2009.
First, many clients who have moved out of AdWords due to budget restraints and the economy are moving back into AdWords this past month. We’ve had several new account set up and several paused clients re-start programs. What is interesting to me is that with this flow back into AdWords, typically we see a rise in the cost per click as more competition drives the click cost up on AdWords, but we have not seen this activity yet. Possibly we will this next month, but not so far.
Second, we’ve seen a real jump in conversions across nearly every market sector. Conversion activity has been particularly strong in August with many clients having their best month ever or for the best month in the past six months. Now not all conversions are sales in “AdWords language”. For some accounts a conversion does mean a true online purchase, but for other clients a conversion actually means a lead. A conversion lead really should called a micro-conversion, but AdWords calls it a conversion in their tracking and control panel. Whatever you call it, increased leads and increased sales is good news for our economy and our own personal clients.
So based on these trends should you be moving back into AdWords or should you wait out the economy a bit longer? The decision may be in part based on what you sell. Most of the activity we are seeing is still for products under $1,000 or so and not the big ticket purchases of $2,000 and more, but based on the activity we are seeing, the prospects for a strong economy for the fall are looking pretty good.