"Thanksgiving Flowers" Search Value on 11/14/08

How much are the Sponsored Ads running for the search term “Thanksgiving Flowers”?

Well, I decided to see for myself just what the big boys are willing to pay to be on that first page so I went to my Adwords Account and created a campaign for my website thanksgivingflowers.net to find out first hand.

Right off the bat when I set what I consider a decent dollar amount of $1.50 a click a notice popped up and told me that I need to change that amount to $1.75 a click to have my ad appear at the very bottom of the 1^st page. So I went ahead and did that, and sure enough, the ad appeared at the bottom of the page.

From there, I decided to see what placement Google would put my ad if I raised my bid by a dollar to $2.75 a click. Sure enough after I did that, my ad moved up a few spots to the 5^th position.

Ok, I said, let’s raise it another dollar to $3.75 a click. So I did, and the ad moved to the 4^th position.

From there, I raised it by yet another dollar to $4.75 a click. I waited 20 minutes for my ad to move up in the Sponsored ads but nothing happened.

All righty, I said, let’s crank it up even more by another dollar to $5.75 a click: but still, after another 20 minutes, no movement.

I now set the bid at $6.75 a click: but still, after another 20 minutes, no movement.

We are now at a bid of $7.75 a click and still stuck at the 4^th position.

Raising to $8.75 a click and still stuck at the 4^th position.

I then went for the gusto and raised it up to $10.50 a click and success!! 

Finally, my ad moved into the third position which now puts it directly over my 1^st place organic ranking.

Wanting to know just how much value Teleflora.com & and 1800flowers.com has put on the search term "Thanksgiving flowers" I upped my bid to a whopping $10.75 and presto, my ad moved into the top spot. What that means is that up until I performed my experiment, 1800flowers.com was willing to pay just few cents less than my top bid of $10.75 a click.

Now that we have that figure, I'm going to pull my ad since I don't want pay that ridiculous cost per click. However, since my thanksgivingflowers.net website currently holds the number 1 spot organically for that same search term...I think we can get a pretty good picture of what the big boys are willing to spend right now.

If you look at my tracking for the last 3 days below for just the key-phrase "Thanksgiving flowers" and calculate out that 1800flowers.com is willing to shell-out just pennies below the $10.75 dollar figure....that translates out to about a $1698.50 expense for just a three day period.

Thanksgivingflowers.net organically ranking 1st. Number of clicks for a three day period: Keyword
1.	thanksgiving flowers 158 clicks

Is that a lot? Well, if you are a giant company like 1800flowers.com, Teleflora.com, Proflowers.com, or FTD.com the answer is “no.” But if you are a real-florist the answer is “yes” as a real-florist can NOT keep pace with burning money at that rate (remember, this is just for one search term). 

The only option for a real-florist is to level the playing with organic SEO and all real-florists have this capability. In other words, if you are a real-florist and own a website, you too can compete with the big boys with local search queries, seasonal search terms, or even queries on occasions that are niche’ but popular floral terms.

The big boys are so focused on beating each other out with ranking for “flowers,” “flower delivery,” and “send flowers,” that when it comes to other popular search terms they are stretched too thin and are considerably WEAK. They can be beat!!