Internet marketing: click prices in Thailand

[tgw]

Although I manage internet marketing campaigns in Europe, I have never done that in Thailand.

 

I'd like to ask for information about common prices for clicks on Google Ads and Facebook/Instagram ads in Thailand.

Can some members provide some information based on their experience please?

[Chaichara]

If you already manage internet marketing campaigns, you'll know there is no such thing as 'common prices for clicks', and the same applies here in Thailand. The choice of options for the exposure of the ads is so highly granular, that coupled with Google's complex algorythms for calculating the PPC, it's impossible to predict a monthly cost. Most companies with a product or service to sell will set a monthly expenditure ceiling, which when reached, the ads will stop displaying. They will then reset their ad budget after an empirical study of several month's results.

 

That granularity however, can be extremely useful when targeting the expat community here in Thailand and I assume that's why you posted your question here. That said, not all expats here have an even passable knowledge of English, and not all of them read Thai Visa regularly. There are a lot of expats in Thailand, but whatever product or service you are offering, it is always a niche market, and in some sectors, so highly competitive that many firms are struggling to maintain a living profit margin.

 

Besides all the other tasks involved in bringing a product to the end user, one needs to be a dedicated, full-time Internet marketing person to fully understand how search engine pay-for ads work, and to constantly administering and adjusting them for best impact. So not only the cost of the ads, but also your own time should be taken into consideration. It depends on the size of your (or your client's) company and your general PR/advertising budget.

 

Times and technologies have changed since waiting for a search engine spider to find your website, index and reference it, getting backlinks, and then waiting for your ranking (display result and page position) to improve. Nowadays, the only way to guarantee a listing here in Thailand, and one in a good position, is to pay for it - see how huge E-commerce platforms here such as Lazada do it. For an SME, the cost can either be disproportionately high for the price and sales potential of your product or service, or it can even be practically the only solution for a company that exists solely as an online store. That's why, for example, many small to medium sized hotels and resorts here don't even bother with a website; they prefer to pay booking commission to hotels.com, agoda, and booking.com etc.,  instead.

 

An SME here with an annual gross turnover of 6 to 12mio baht on a retail operation, might be able to benefit from spending 10 to 30K baht a month on Google. It all depends on the GP ratio. For the traditional services for expats, such as for example, law and real estate,  with their very aggressive marketing, the GP ratio could be very much higher and the advertising conversions more profitable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[tgw]

3 hours ago, Chaichara said:

If you already manage internet marketing campaigns, you'll know there is no such thing as 'common prices for clicks', and the same applies here in Thailand. The choice of options for the exposure of the ads is so highly granular, that coupled with Google's complex algorythms for calculating the PPC, it's impossible to predict a monthly cost. Most companies with a product or service to sell will set a monthly expenditure ceiling, which when reached, the ads will stop displaying. They will then reset their ad budget after an empirical study of several month's results.

 

That granularity however, can be extremely useful when targeting the expat community here in Thailand and I assume that's why you posted your question here. That said, not all expats here have an even passable knowledge of English, and not all of them read Thai Visa regularly. There are a lot of expats in Thailand, but whatever product or service you are offering, it is always a niche market, and in some sectors, so highly competitive that many firms are struggling to maintain a living profit margin.

 

Besides all the other tasks involved in bringing a product to the end user, one needs to be a dedicated, full-time Internet marketing person to fully understand how search engine pay-for ads work, and to constantly administering and adjusting them for best impact. So not only the cost of the ads, but also your own time should be taken into consideration. It depends on the size of your (or your client's) company and your general PR/advertising budget.

 

Times and technologies have changed since waiting for a search engine spider to find your website, index and reference it, getting backlinks, and then waiting for your ranking (display result and page position) to improve. Nowadays, the only way to guarantee a listing here in Thailand, and one in a good position, is to pay for it - see how huge E-commerce platforms here such as Lazada do it. For an SME, the cost can either be disproportionately high for the price and sales potential of your product or service, or it can even be practically the only solution for a company that exists solely as an online store. That's why, for example, many small to medium sized hotels and resorts here don't even bother with a website; they prefer to pay booking commission to hotels.com, agoda, and booking.com etc.,  instead.

 

An SME here with an annual gross turnover of 6 to 12mio baht on a retail operation, might be able to benefit from spending 10 to 30K baht a month on Google. It all depends on the GP ratio. For the traditional services for expats, such as for example, law and real estate,  with their very aggressive marketing, the GP ratio could be very much higher and the advertising conversions more profitable.

 

okay... I'll give an example then:

 

Google Ads bids in Switzerland are around 0.8 to 1 CHF per click for highly competitive keywords using optimized ads and landing pages in high-margin industries. Or try to advertise a medical clinic in Zurich and it will be 2 to 2.5 CHF per click.

Keywords with low competition are around 0.20 to 0.30 CHF.

 

the above has drastically changed over the years, 15 years ago it was possible to be successful by sometimes bidding as low as 0.01

Google has changed that and introduced minimum bids of 0.05

 

so it is possible to give an idea of click prices. supposing one has been managing internet marketing campaigns of course.
I'm not interested in monthly costs, just other professionals' experiences with click costs in the Thai market.

Edited June 29, 2021 by tgw

[Chaichara]

฿

On 6/29/2021 at 11:20 AM, tgw said:

...so it is possible to give an idea of click prices. supposing one has been managing internet marketing campaigns of course.

I'm not interested in monthly costs, just other professionals' experiences with click costs in the Thai market.

I manage GoogleAd accounts  in Thailand in low to medium-margin retail SME branches where the use of GoogleAds is commonplace. I do not use Facebook or Instagram. The Google results are considered by some to be satisfactory. Based on that experience over the past  5 years, using around 400 keywords in English for one of the campaigns, Google Ad 'bids' in Thailand start from around THB 1.05 for some keywords, up to  THB 134.00 per click for others. 

My campaigns use highly granular demographics (which are not difficult to establish in the expat market here and the various industry sectors of interest to them). The campaigns also exploit highly optimised ads, and specific landing pages.

 

That said, I have always failed to fully understand what Google appears to interpret  as highly competitive keywords, because in my experience some of the high cost ones are not necessarily highly sought after and do not always attract a particularly high number of clicks, whereas some of the least expensive ones are more common search terms,  invite more clicks, and possibly also more likely to be used by competitors.

 

Obviously Google spends a lot of money researching different regions, demographics, and industries for setting its own CPC algorithms and developing the plethora of stats and analysis for their customers, and that's obviously why business that  rely  heavily  on their Internet  presence are a captive market for monopolistic Google, and its cash cows. Google can set its own prices as high (or as low) as it likes; nowadays such businesses must either pay up, or get lost in the undergrowth. However,  much of that information offered by Google, apart from the ad display rate and clicks per word, are not necessarily helpful and the small(ish) sample rate for a niche operation for expats in Thailand does not permit the drawing of really useful stats.

More important  is the testing and comparison of the number enquiries and/or sales during periods of active campaign, and times when the ads and/or various keywords are paused.

 

The CPC depends on what you want web ads for: a specific product, a service, a hospitality business, a brick-and-mortar retail outlet,  an e-commerce, a non-profit, a forum or blog that generates revenue from advertising, or pure branding. Due to the many factors involved, your quest therefore seems to beg a rhetorical answer more like: 'How long is a piece of string?' 

Hence unless you intend to enter the Thai market as a marketing consultant, or are considering using GoogleAds for your company or service,  I fail to see how much my (or anyone else's) feedback can/could be of help to you.

 

Maybe you are indeed far more clued up than I am on Internet marketing, which is very possible (at  least  in  Switzerland) - I didn't get fully involved in the market/ing potential of websites until around two years after the Internet hit France in 1995-6. Now I'm old, an expat in Thailand for 20 years, and no longer working full-time either as a web developer or in my specific branches of commerce. Nevertheless, your thread is intriguing and as we say in English: "Be careful what you ask for" ????

Edited July 1, 2021 by Chaichara
rm dups

[tgw]

2 hours ago, Chaichara said:

฿

I manage GoogleAd accounts  in Thailand in low to medium-margin retail SME branches where the use of GoogleAds is commonplace. I do not use Facebook or Instagram. The Google results are considered by some to be satisfactory. Based on that experience over the past  5 years, using around 400 keywords in English for one of the campaigns, Google Ad 'bids' in Thailand start from around THB 1.05 for some keywords, up to  THB 134.00 per click for others. 

My campaigns use highly granular demographics (which are not difficult to establish in the expat market here and the various industry sectors of interest to them). The campaigns also exploit highly optimised ads, and specific landing pages.

 

That said, I have always failed to fully understand what Google appears to interpret  as highly competitive keywords, because in my experience some of the high cost ones are not necessarily highly sought after and do not always attract a particularly high number of clicks, whereas some of the least expensive ones are more common search terms,  invite more clicks, and possibly also more likely to be used by competitors.

 

Obviously Google spends a lot of money researching different regions, demographics, and industries for setting its own CPC algorithms and developing the plethora of stats and analysis for their customers, and that's obviously why business that  rely  heavily  on their Internet  presence are a captive market for monopolistic Google, and its cash cows. Google can set its own prices as high (or as low) as it likes; nowadays such businesses must either pay up, or get lost in the undergrowth. However,  much of that information offered by Google, apart from the ad display rate and clicks per word, are not necessarily helpful and the small(ish) sample rate for a niche operation for expats in Thailand does not permit the drawing of really useful stats.

More important  is the testing and comparison of the number enquiries and/or sales during periods of active campaign, and times when the ads and/or various keywords are paused.

 

The CPC depends on what you want web ads for: a specific product, a service, a hospitality business, a brick-and-mortar retail outlet,  an e-commerce, a non-profit, a forum or blog that generates revenue from advertising, or pure branding. Due to the many factors involved, your quest therefore seems to beg a rhetorical answer more like: 'How long is a piece of string?' 

Hence unless you intend to enter the Thai market as a marketing consultant, or are considering using GoogleAds for your company or service,  I fail to see how much my (or anyone else's) feedback can/could be of help to you.

 

Maybe you are indeed far more clued up than I am on Internet marketing, which is very possible (at  least  in  Switzerland) - I didn't get fully involved in the market/ing potential of websites until around two years after the Internet hit France in 1995-6. Now I'm old, an expat in Thailand for 20 years, and no longer working full-time either as a web developer or in my specific branches of commerce. Nevertheless, your thread is intriguing and as we say in English: "Be careful what you ask for" ????

 

Thanks for that more detailed answer.

 

Do you have any insights on what keywords in Thai script cost?

 

I would describe myself as a web-allrounder, fullstack sitebuilder and internet marketer, although I consider social media to be a weakspot of mine.

 

Regarding Google Ads I consider myself to be an expert, the last couple of zoom meetings with my personal Google Ads advisor yielded no other result than him trying to get me into advertising on the "display network", lol.

I manage campaigns up to 50.000 EUR/year in highly competitive local markets in Switzerland.

Click rate average is around 12-15%, some high traffic keywords 25%, and by optimizing ads and landing pages I got the cost per conversion down to 4 CHF, which is absolutely stellar for that market, considering 20+ competitors for bidding on ads.

 

Regarding your question about click prices, the ad quality is of UTTERMOST importance. I can't stress this enough.

Google has hidden the metrics it uses behind its ad quality score, but this is the single most important thing to get right in Google Ads, because Google uses that metric for deciding which ads it displays in which position.

You think Google's advanced semantics analyzer would work flawlessly for synonyms or periphrases? Nope.

Be sure to include the same exact keywords in the text of the google ad itself, include it in the URL, in the title of the landing page and of course the content.

 

Regarding competition there is a tool within Google Ads called "auction insights" or something, that shows your competition and respective market share in displays, top positions and clicks.

[Chaichara]

On 7/1/2021 at 11:38 AM, tgw said:

Thanks for that more detailed answer.

Do you have any insights on what keywords in Thai script cost?

Google luck with your Google Ads advisor. Ours (apparently based in the Philippines) is only of any help for finding one's way around the pages of the highly confusing Google Ads website.

 

The sectors where I operate mainly target  the expat community (over 98% of the customer base) -  most are native English speakers and and others (z.B. Francophone and Germanophone) with  a fairly  high level of English at least for searching the Internet in Thailand.  Expats naturally do not always expect their Google searches for products or services in Thailand to return websites here that  are available in their languages, any more than I would expect a local SME in Genève, Lugano, or St Gallen to have pages in  Danish or Welsh.

The exceptions are again services that specifically target expats: International schools and hospitals, health insurance, legal, and hospitality. The advertisers on LAZADA, southeast Asia's huge e-commerce platform, are notoriously bad at providing linguistic alternatives for non Thai speaking consumers, as are home supplies centres which would probably benefit enormously from providing their pages in English (and certainly have a budget for it), but they don't bother.

 

That said, we do use a limited number of  Thai keywords for some of the most common web searches, because expats often believe that  only  searches in Thai language will bring  results and they therefore delegate web searching to  their Thai wives or partners.

 

Much depends on your client's product  or service and his/her target demographic.,  consumer or B2B, single product/service (Google Ads for online stores offering 100s of products are probably the most difficult to administer).  Here in Thailand with  its much lower general cost of living and prices of hospitality services,  the cost of employing  the services of Western consultants and web services is often prohibitive - particularly  for SMEs.

 

The cost of the Thai language keywords we use is high, around ฿15.00 or more - even for niche industries. Possibly  because there are a lot  of Thai competitors that  use them. But they do bring enquiries even if the number of conversions might not justify the expense. The branding it brings is nevertheless important. Thai consumers are very brand-aware.

Edited July 3, 2021 by Chaichara
layout

[CartagenaWarlock]

On 6/28/2021 at 2:55 AM, tgw said:

I'd like to ask for information about common prices for clicks on Google Ads and Facebook/Instagram ads in Thailand.

Can some members provide some information based on their experience please?

Instead of running your own test for a few weeks, you are asking in this forum. Your internet marketing skill is of questionable quality.