In some way, Google AdWords is like Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Excel. It is simple for basic use, but it can be very complex if you want to enter into the deeper study and learn more about AdWords. Lately, a lot of people are interested in Google AdWords and that’s why I’ve decided to show you some tips that will greatly improve your AdWords campaign. Let’s start:
Have you ever experienced a sharp increase in ad spend or clicks? And you want to know which campaign is responsible for that increase. Rather than checking every campaign individually, you can just use Top Movers report. In this report, you can see which campaigns have been responsible for sharp increase in spend or clicks. Top movers report also shows you some other metrics, like Click trough Rate, so you can understand what is the reason for spend and clicks increase.
To see Top movers report, go to Dimensions tab, and in “View” drop down menu choose ‘Top movers’. Also, you can select the time intervals you want to compare (7, 14, 28 days).
If you perform the same daily routine tasks, AdWords Scripts are just the thing you need! This feature is very good for automating processes and time saving. AdWords Scripts are really great for sending notifications and gathering information. That way you will spend less time reviewing campaigns and more time in its optimization. Practically there are no limits for application of the Google AdWords Scripts. To use AdWords Scripts it would be good if you knew something about coding in order to create your own script. But don’t worry; if you are not skilled at coding, there are lots of free pre-made scripts online.
Do you have lots of campaigns each with a small amount of budget, and some days certain campaigns are limited by budget but on other days the other campaigns might be limited by budget instead? This daily change in search demand can be tricky for managing campaign budget allocations, but with a shared budget you can allocate the total daily budget to all of them so that they can all spend out of the same pot. This means that the campaigns with the most search demand on that particular day will get the biggest share of your budget so you can be confident you will be spending your clients ad spend where there is greatest search demand. My only warning about this is to be careful that large search demand campaigns don’t eat up the budget for smaller search demand campaigns that might convert better. If you think this might happen for your account then I’d recommend creating several shared budgets so you can allocate one budget to the generic lower converting campaigns and one shared budget to the higher converting more niche campaigns. You should also be careful if you switch to shared budgets half way through the day, as they will wipe your ad spend back to zero and start spending the new daily shared budget from scratch, regardless of what has already been spent that day prior to the shared budget being allocated.
Setting up this feature is simple, just go to “Shared Library” tab, than “Budgets” and click on “+Budget”. There you can define how you wish to spend budget.
If your main goal is beating your competition, you will love Auction Insights report. This report comperes you and your competitors who are eligible to show for the same search terms as you, and it will give you nice indication of your performance in ad auction.
The biggest drawback of Auction Insights is that the data is obtained from terms with lots of search demands and impressions, and not from terms with low search volume (which could be more important for you).
Don’t use this report as an exact science, rather use it as an indication of performance and you will have great use of it.
To see Auction Insights report go to Keywords tab, and click on “Details” drop down menu.
Automation can be used in a million ways, but most often it is used to increase or decrease the budget on specific days. Automation Campaign can really improve your campaign, especially if you are tracking conversions. Let's take a look at some examples:
I would advise you to check the check box for email notifications, so that you can track changes and avoid unwanted anomalies.
Also, you should always limit the maximum cost per click (Max. bid), so that the actual cost can’t go unexpectedly high due to repetition of automated changes.
This Google AdWords feature will help you to test changes you wish to make on ads, bids, keywords, ad groups and landing pages. So you can test if increasing of bids will result in larger number of conversions or if changing of landing page will result in increasing number of conversions.
Someone will say: „Why should’t I simply compare results before and after change?“. This option is possible, but problem is that this option will give us less relevant results because there are factors on which we can’t affect because testing will be in different period of time which we compare (cost per click, competition, seasonality...). On the other hand, with AdWords experiments you will be confident that testing of both options executing at the same time.
Experiments ensure the tests are simultaneous, with 50% of auctions experiencing the standard ad / bid / landing page, and the other 50% experiencing the new adjustment. You can then review the results after the experiment ends and AdWords will even tell you whether the data is statistically significant enough to make a decision on. Be aware that if you don’t revert the experiment when it’s over the changes will go live in your account.
Time Lag Report is one of the features imported from Google Analytics. It is very useful when you need to decide how long should someone be on your Remarketing list. Also, it is useful when you have to explain to client why Remarketing is important and why to using it. Basically, this feature lets you see how much time has passed since the initial visit (or since the first Ad impression) to the moment when the user performs conversion.
To reach this feature, click "Tools" in the top menu and then in the drop down menu choose "Attribution" and select "Time Lag".
It should be clear that the ratio of total number of conversions and total cost is great indicator of keyword contribution. That’s why Google implemented "Cost / Converted Clicks" column.
Thanks to this column, you can determine precisely how much each keyword contribute and pause keywords that are not cost-effective or increase bids for most profitable keywords.
To add this column click "Columns", and in the drop-down menu choose "Conversions" and then "Cost / Converted Clicks". If you awarded monetary value to the conversions, you should also try "Conversion Value / Cost" column.
Most businesses have more than one IP address, but if you can get ahold of your competitors IP address (either from their website doing a domain look-up, or from their email) then you can block them from viewing your ads. This is great if you are trying new offers in your ad text or just want to stop competitors from seeing exactly what you’re bidding on. You can exclude IP addresses under the main settings tab for each campaign. You need to add them for every campaign you want to block them from, and you can only block up to 12 IP addresses per campaign. If you have lots of people in your business who might be actively searching for terms which trigger your ads, you could consider blocking your own internal IP addresses so you don’t generate unnecessary impressions which could damage your Quality Score.
Google offers an incredible number of options and there are few who have tried them all. Therefore, continue to follow our blog and learn firsthand how to run a successful Google AdWords campaigns.
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