Let AdWords Do Some Work For You With Rules

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Google AdWords allows you to automate a great deal of your campaign management. One particularly helpful aspect to automate is keyword bidding. Joel Chudleigh has a great rundown at Business2Community of how to set rules in AdWords to ideally bid for and pause keywords, but I’ll give you a quick summary.

When setting your rules, simply consider what an optimal keyword performance for your campaign is. A keyword that gains clicks but no conversions would likely need to be paused, so set a rule that does so after a certain number of clicks without conversions.

What’s an acceptable average cost per conversion? Set up a rule that bids up any keyword that exceeds that average. You can also bid down keywords that are out of your price range and in less than optimal position.

I think the key here is to put some real thought into setting your rules and make sure to keep checking on the campaign’s progress, even after automation.

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Now Use AdWords Express To Promote Your Google+ Page

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There’s been an interesting development with Google’s AdWords Express, which is marketed as a headache-free alternative for small businesses. Recently, Google announced that you could use the ads Google sets up for you with your budget in AdWords Express to drive users to your Google+ page. However, Google+ itself is an ad-free zone and you are unable to even set parameters so only Google+ users will be shown the ads.

For small businesses with no website, this could still be a valuable tool to create some sort of web presence. Google had been offering AdWords Express users with no site of their own the ability to create a free site, but with the included option of using a company’s Google+ page, that may be a thing of the past.

However, there are also some obvious glitches in this AdWords Express, Google+ relationship. For one, Google is essentially allocating your AdWords budget to promote Google+. Read more about the sketchy side of this deal in Greg Finn’s article at Marketing Land.

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AdWords Most Important Changes of 2012

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2012 saw Google make a number of important changes and updates to AdWords. I’ve touched on most of these here, but for a nice summarized rundown you can head the iNeedHits blog.

These changes are all ways to improve your online marketing strategy and increase your audience. Plus, the article keeps it short and sweet so you won’t have to invest too much of your time.

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Using AdWords to Capitalize on the Holiday Season

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If you’re like me, you do as much of your holiday shopping online as possible. Juding by statistics, there are plenty of people out there like me. Google searches for retail products jump up as much as 500-percent during December.

Conversely, the service industry sees a major dip in activity through the holidays. Obviously, December is a different landscape than the other 11-months and what was previously working for your business may need to be tweaked for the holidays.

Jeremy Decker, of Search Engine Journal, has some suggestions to make the most of this changing terrain. By pulling the right strings, you can have a very, merry holiday season.

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New AdWords Tool Helps You Reach Tablet Users

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The reality of online marketing is that advertisers must find a way to reach users on a variety of different devices. AdWords recently made that difficult task a little easier with a new tool that allows you to convert ads using Flash to HTML5.

Since many tablets do not support Flash, this tool could help your business reach thousands of additional users. And converting takes just a couple of mouse clicks, no expert knowledge is needed.

To find out more, check out Chris Crum’s article at Web Pro News.

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A Closer Look At AdWords Express

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Google launched AdWords Express more than a year ago as a simple, no frills alternative for small business owners. Nearly all the bells and whistles have been taken out so users need only set a monthly budget and create an ad, then let Google automate the rest of the process.

Recently, Google has been pushing hard for more business owners to use AdWords Express and has even been offering free ad credits for signing up, as I mentioned last week.

Business2Community has a more in-depth article about the getting started with AdWords Express if you’re interested. But while a dumbed down version of AdWords seems like a time-saver, it also is robbing you of potential value from your online advertising. Without the ability to tweak and track your ads, you are putting a lot of faith in Google to run your campaigns properly. Sure, that saves you from putting time and money into your advertising budget, but it could also cost you sales and conversions.

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Properly Evaluating Ad Channel Performance

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It’s easy to get caught taking metrics at face value and not really interpreting what they mean. Benny Blum, for Search Engine Land, makes a valuable point about how time affects how you value your channels’ performances. You have to be wary of making changes too soon and effectively destroying what would have eventually been a great platform.

Obviously, there are difficult choices to make about where to allocate your ad budget across options like PPC, email, social media and organic search. However, if you looking at your click and conversion rates over an optimal amount of time, you might be overreacting to perceived underperformance.

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How You Can Get Free AdWords Credits

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Google is offering up to two months of free advertising, or up to a $250 total value, for signing up for AdWords Express before December 16th. Most likely, you’ve received emails, possibly many, informing you of the promotion but it might be worth looking into for small business owners.

Find out more from Peter Kafka’s article at All Things D.

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Cyber Monday Ruined By AdWords Bug

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For anyone using online advertising, the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend is a great opportunity to see a spike in your ads’ views. Search Engine Roundtable reports, however, that a “technical issue” on some AdWords accounts caused ads not to show over perhaps the biggest online shopping weekend of the year.

No word yet on the official cause of the problem or how Google plans to deal with the backlash. I think I would want to be compensated in some way for the inconvenience and possible loss of business. Wouldn’t you?

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AdWords’ Subtle Upsell

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To perform well in online marketing, you have to use Google. AdWords is far and away the best option available and you’re handicapping your efforts if you’re not using it. Unfortunately, Google understands this fact also. This means that as more and more advertisers rely on AdWords, Google can bleed more and more money from their budgets.

Joel Chudleigh has an in-depth look at the various ways Google encourages you to spend more for online advertising at Business2Community, but I’ll give you a quick synopsis.

Basically, Google has been able to develop innovative new ways for your ad to get noticed and ways for you to track how well your campaigns are performing, but has included in this innovations an urging to spend more to get more. This is not an indictment of Google, but rather a statement of fact.

Of course Google will readily show you click-through and conversion rates of ads that display at the top of search results as compared to your ads because they want you to bid up to capture those top spots. That’s just one example of AdWords’ service subtly prompting you to feed more into your ad budget.

Google has cleverly created a competitive landscape for advertisers where the highest bid receives the most views and clicks. For advertisers, there’s no choice but to play along.

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