Unpopular opinion: I think higher ad bids actually hurt small businesses more than they help
I was reading through a report from WordStream last night about average CPC costs by industry, and I saw something that kind of blew my mind. For home improvement, the average CPC is like $6.50 now? I remember when it was closer to $3 just a couple years ago. On one hand, you gotta bid high to even show up in the top spots these days, especially in competitive markets like mine here in Phoenix. But on the other hand, I've had clients who throw $50 a day at a campaign and get maybe one or two conversions because their budget gets eaten up by high bids and they never get enough data. So which is it? Are we all just chasing position and losing money, or is the high bid the only way to survive without getting buried on page 2? Has anyone else seen a weird tipping point where raising your bid actually killed your ROAS?