How to save a really bad AdWords account

I have a bad AdWords account, the conversion rate is low, the CTR is low, everything is low.

What would you do to try and salvage that AdWords account?

Notes:

• There are already different campaigns for different areas of the world and the content network is on a different campaign - I'm talking about the campaign targeting US+western Europe and Google search only.
• Please don't say "brainstorm new keywords" (or new ads, etc.) I already have all the keywords and ad copy I could think about (specific tips for for finding keywords or writing ads are welcome)
• I'm way too small to outsource AdWords management and wouldn't get near the minimum ad spend of the AdWords management companies I've seen (at least $1000) until I can see some significant ROI

I'm asking this here because I suspect I'm not alone in my fight to get AdWords working.

There are lots of possible reasons for your problem. For instance:

1. Your ad copy is poorly written
2. Your ad copy does not match your keywords
3. You bid is so low your ad shows up in positions 5 or lower
4. Your landing pages don't match your ad copy or keywords
5. Your landing pages are poorly written
6. There is no compelling reason to buy
7. You order process gets in the way of your potential customer's purchases

It's impossible to tell without a lot more information. I do have a really basic Adwords question for you- are you writing different ads for the same keyword and having Google switch between them? (Are you continually running A/B tests and discarding the poorer performing ads???) How similar are your ads to your competitors?

When you click on a competitor's ad and go to their landing page, how similar to that is your landing page?top

Keith,

Gary's advices are all good and you should look into them and try to see what you can do to improve.

I've been in your position. "You have a crappy account" was how a SEM specialist called it. And he was right. I was trying to follow all the best practices I had learned (add keywords, improve ad copy, add negative keywords...) but couldn't do it alone.

Although my budget was relatively small, I decided to hire an external marketing services company to get the account going, and it made all the difference.
They turned the account around, increased the clicks and actually started saving CPC budget.

They CPC budget + cost I have with the agency is actually lower that the budget I was spending before I started working with them. After I pay the agency fee, I still save money that I can now invest in other traffic building campaigns outside GoogleAds.

What I've learned is that, no matter how much you know about GoogleAds, an external agency is the best option to get your account performing and to free you up from the daily management of the ads (which is one of the most time-consuming tasks I've ever done!)

Hope this helps,
Michel

NOTE: I work for a software vendor, not a marketing agency. Feel free to DM me if you want to discuss this further.

Have you considered using Trada? I haven't used it but if I ever need to place search ads, I'm going to give it a try.