Tag Archive for: AdWords

Keys To Adwords Enhanced Campaigns

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KeysChances are you are already trying out AdWords Enhanced Campaigns. If not, you’ll likely be testing the new waters soon. So now seems like a good time to go through some basics to ensure you’re getting the most of your campaigns and enlisting the new features to work for you.

Lisa Raehsler has a checklist at Clickz for you to go over as you launch your new campaigns. Some of the advice is the same you would get with standard AdWords campaigns, but bears repeating. The rest is valuable insight into how to use Enhanced Campaigns new features to your full advantage, which can gain you more conversions and cost you less money.

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Familiarize Yourself With Enhanced Campaigns

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For the past couple of weeks, you may have been hearing a lot about AdWords newest endeavor, ‘Enhanced Campaigns’. They are reportedly starting as an added option but the idea is to make them a more integral part of AdWords in just a couple short months.

Daniel James wrote an article at Bit that explains a little about the added features of enhanced campaigns and how you might utilize them. Most exciting is the ability to link to different versions of your site based on what device a user is currently on when they click your ad and a function that identifies whether your store is open at the time an ad is clicked.

The new features seem to be geared toward directing customers to what they are searching for, while you spend less per conversion. These all seem like good things for everyone involved.

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Common Misconceptions About PPC Ads

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Pay-per-click advertising, such as Google AdWords, can offer a variety of benefits for your company, but you should also be aware of the things it cannot do. Unfortunately, there is a lot of chatter that creates myths about the capabilities of PPC advertising. Lisa Raehsler of Clickz recently set out to debunk some of these myths.

1. PPC and Instant Sales

Don’t expect to start your AdWords account, then kick back and watch your sales numbers soar. You’ll need time to tweak your campaigns and hone in on your target audience. This is especially true for niche markets.

2. PPC Isn’t A Cure All

There are times when pausing your PPC campaigns is actually the best option. Don’t rely on them to help sales rebound in all situations.

3. Consider More Than Conversions

Just because an ad doesn’t directly lead to a conversion doesn’t mean it isn’t doing its job. Many consumers need multiple interactions before they will turn into a conversion. Your ad may have just opened the door for a future conversion.

4. PPC and SEO

There are plenty of people who have pushed the rumor that companies who advertise with AdWords receive better position in Google search. It’s simply not true.

5. The Top Spot Isn’t Tops

Many times, the top spot will perform best in sales, but you’ll also be paying for that position. The conversion rate for lower positions can sometimes beat that number 1 spot and you’ll pay a much lower premium.

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Time Savers For Managing Your AdWords Account

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Wrist Watch

Your daily schedule is pretty tightly booked. Usually, trying to cram in some time to optimize your AdWords campaigns to get the most out of your online advertising budget is pretty low on the list of priorities. But, if you put in a little time upfront, you can run an efficient and effective campaign for just minutes a day.

That’s the premise that Ben Cohen works from in his article for Business2Community. He’ll tell you where to allocate your precious time and how to set up your account so you can manage it quickly and get on to your other duties. If you have an AdWords account already, you understand how valuable this information could be. If you’ve been hesitant to start an account because it is so time consuming, this could be just what you need to get started.

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AdWords Looks To Increase Mobile Revenue

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Smartphone

AdWords’ cost-per-click has fallen over the last five quarters. Perhaps that’s why there recent efforts have been to enhance their keyword advertising with respects to mobile users.

As Steven Musil reports for CNet, Google’s AdWords Enhanced Campaign seeks to simplify advertiser’s experience when dealing with multiple device platforms. As with most advertising platforms, there is still a mystery surrounding how to get mobile users, on tablets and smart phones, to click ads the way desktop and laptop users will.

The AdWords Enhanced Campaign also includes ad copy, links and extensions for mobile optimized ads. Ideally, this is an update that helps both advertisers and Google without sacrificing user experience, but that may be too idealistic to hope for.

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More Conversions For Less Money With AdWords

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The simple goal for your AdWords campaign should be to get the most conversions possible while spending the least money possible. If you have a good ratio here, you’re likely doing everything right. However, there are plenty of potential pitfalls to avoid in order to lose out on conversions or spend way too much in getting them.

Check out Patrick McDaniel’s tips at Business2Community and find out if you could be saving money somewhere or getting more out of your campaigns.

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AdWords for Video Gets An Analytics Make-Over

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AdWords for Video launched last August, but it took until earlier this month to tack on the much needed analytical tools that have become standard for regular, old AdWords for text.

As Katie Ingram reports for CMS Wire, AdWords for video has added 3 essential tools to help advertisers track who is experiencing their ads.

Reach and Frequency Reporting allows users to see how many unique viewers their ad has received, which seems like something that shouldn’t have taken 6-months to include.

Column Sets takes a company’s marketing goals and shows them relevant metrics to reach said goal. Users can use default columns, such as Website and Conversions or Views and Audience, or make their own out of the available metrics.

GeoMap simply shows where viewers of your ad are located. None of these are groundbreaking inventions, but rather relevant and useful tools to help make AdWords for Video as effective and popular as the original flavor.

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Money Saving Tips For Your Limited AdWords Budget

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Some companies can afford to just throw money at their online marketing campaigns and get results, but if you run a small business with an equally small advertising budget, you’ll want to look into these tips from Business2Community.

1. Google Search

Surprisingly, they suggest those with a limited budget limiting their options to search only. While it is likely the most efficient platform, I would argue that, depending on your business, you could yield great results with other options as well. But, it is a great place to start and if your budget is extremely limited, maybe also a great place to stop.

2. Keywords

You get a high conversion rate at a low cost-per-click. Keywords are a huge money saver and hone in on the users who are most likely to be looking for you. Also, be sure to learn about “long tail keywords” to get the most out of your ads.

3. Geotargeting

Chances are, if you have a small business and limited budget, you are only interested in those consumers living in your area. Use Google’s tools to only show ads to those in your vicinity. You can set parameters by city, zip code or even a mile radius around your physical address.

4. Day Parting

This one requires some legwork on your part. Check into your campaigns and find out when the peak hours are for conversions. You can then choose to either turn ads off during down times, or turn ads off during some of these peak hours when costs are at their highest. Either way, it is an opportunity to save some coin.

I do not endorse turning off ads simply because your business is closed for the day, however. Many consumers do conduct searches outside of normal business hours, which means you could be missing out on a large part of the market.

5. Device Targeting

The main reason to use this tool is to ensure ads ideal for mobile devices are shown only on mobile devices, while ads ideal for laptops, or not ideal for mobile, are only shown to laptops and tablets.

 

 

 

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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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