I am happy to announce that I am the guest speaker on the most recent episode of the Tiny Blue Sky podcast. We discuss the basics of Google’s advertising platform, how nonprofits can use Google Ads, and how to apply for $10,000/month in free advertising through Google Ad Grants. We also cover Google’s recent policy changes that impact nonprofits and how to remain compliant.
To listen to the podcast and access helpful resources, visit this page.
Over the last few weeks, AdWords has been slowly rolling out campaign drafts and several of the accounts I manage now have that feature as an option. AdWords campaign drafts will enable you to test the impact of changes you are considering with a traffic split in experiment mode, so that you can easily view the impact on your data before fully committing to a change that could have a negative implication.
To locate drafts, click into one of your campaigns and you’ll see a new “Drafts” button next to the date range widget.
Click on the drop-down and choose to create a new draft.
Once you have named your draft, you’ll be taken to a mirror campaign mode, where you can make changes you’re looking to test just like you would in a regular campaign. For example, you may want to switch from manual bidding to Conversion Optimizer CPA bidding or you could test the impact of raising mobile bids.
Once you’ve edited your draft campaign, click on the “Apply” button on the top right of the screen next to the dates and choose the run this as an experiment.
Choose your experiment settings, including experiment split, which is the percentage of your campaign’s budget that’s allocated to your experiment.
You’ll be able to check in on this experiment and how it’s performing in your campaign management page by clicking on “All experiments” just above the shared library link on the bottom left.
Here’s a snapshot of what it looks like when you have an experiment in progress.
Not only can you see the differences between performances in your original campaign and experiment mode (indicated with up or down arrows), but Google also shows you if a difference is statistically significant or likely not due to chance.
If the changes you have been testing are having a positive impact, you can apply them and choose to either update your original campaign or create a new campaign.
Happy Testing!
Text ads have come a long way from the 3 lines of text you used to have to communicate what makes your business stand apart. Ad extensions have been a feature savvy advertisers take advantage of to showcase additional information, such as their business location, phone number, or links to additional pages of their website. The most recent ad extension Google added to their portfolio of extensions are “Callout extensions,” which allow you to highlight your unique features and selling points through an extra line of text.
This extension, like some other extensions, may not always appear and will only show in top ranked ads. However, when callouts do show, they instantly give you more ad real estate and make your ad pop.
To set up callout extensions, go to the Campaigns tab in your AdWords account, navigate to Ad extensions, and select Callout extensions from the drop down menu.
Click on +EXTENSION and then select + New callout and write your new callout text. Click Save once you have written a new callout.
The character limit is 25, so choose short, compelling messages. You have to be careful to not duplicate text you have in your text ads already, as that is against policy. Here are some ideas:
– Lowest Price Guarantee
– Serving NYC Since 1982
– 24/7 Service
– Free Estimate
– Same Day Shipping
If you want a specific callout to be given preference on mobile devices, you can check the mobile device preference box as you create each callout.
You can even schedule your callouts to only show during certain days or hours. This feature could be useful for special promotions that run only during a specific date range. Or, if you are planning to run a “Call for a free estimate” callout, you may not want to show it in the evenings, when you don’t have customer support available.
You can have multiple callouts, but typically only 2-3 will show. If you only have 1 callout, the extension will likely not show.
As with any copy, plan to test and refine. Experiment with campaign and ad group specific callouts to make sure your callouts as relevant as possible to your different sets of keywords and ads. Create several callouts, then analyze performance after a couple of weeks, and refine the callouts with lower CTR and conversion rates.
There is a new “Parental status” target option that rolled out in AdWords, which helps you target parents versus those who are not. This is a useful feature for advertisers who have demographic data on their customers and already know that their audience falls into a clear bucket. For example, those selling baby products or children’s clothes would benefit from it, as the majority of their customers are parents.
Google determines parental status by monitoring browsing activity of sites you visit as as well as demographic data you may have shared in your Google profile or with similar sites. For example, if you browse mommy blog posts and read child development articles, Google may classify you in the “Parent” group.
To see this option, navigate to your Display Network tab and select the Parental status sub-tab. Parental status is only available in display campaigns, and of course for a good number of users the information will be unknown.
One way you can use this option is to exclude non-parents, for example. Be careful to review your performance metrics first before completely excluding an entire subset of your visitors. Because parental status is unknown for a large number of visitors, you may be excluding some valuable traffic.
Another way to utilize this feature is with bid adjustments to increase or decrease bids. For example, if you already know that a good number of your converting customers are parents, bid more on that group, and decrease your bids on non-parents.
Parental status started by being rolled out to US advertisers, and it may not be available in all countries just yet.
A lot of my clients who get great results from their AdWords PPC campaigns ask me how they can increase AdWords traffic and get more of these quality clicks. This is a great question to get, however the solution to getting the same high quality traffic may not be as simple as simply turning up the dials.
As you make changes to your campaigns, especially if you add new products and services, your results might change as well, and the ROI you were previously getting might start to look very different with a new, more broad set of keywords for example.
There are many ways and strategies to boost clicks and traffic, but this blog post will focus on 4 quick tips that help ensure that the profitable campaigns you are running already are showing as much as possible.
BUDGET
Check if your profitable campaigns are restricted by budget. Review lost impression share data and see if you are losing impressions due to limited funds. Customize your data columns in your AdWords campaign management page to see Search Lost IS (budget) and Display Lost IS (budget) metrics in your reports. Sort by one of those metrics to see campaigns that are losing impression share due to limited budget and consider increasing your budgets. Review your daily spend for the past couple of weeks and see if you are coming close to reaching your max budget each day. If that’s the case, even if you make no other changes to your campaigns, increasing the budget can help you bring more of the same quality clicks and conversions.
DELIVERY METHOD
The default ad delivery method when you create a campaign is “Standard” which means that Google will distribute when your ads are showing throughout the day in order to not go over your budget. This also means that your ads may not show every time a user is searching. Change the delivery method in your campaign settings page to “Accelerated” to make sure your ads show as soon as possible.
LOCATION AND LANGUAGE TARGETING
Check your location and language targets and consider broadening them. For example, if you are currently only targeting English speakers in the United States, you might want to consider targeting the Spanish language as well.
INCREASE BIDS
Raise bids on ad groups that are losing impressions share due to low ad rank. Focus on ad groups and keywords that are converting within your targets already. This will help you get a better ad rank, more competitive ad position, and more clicks.
Google’s new campaign type Search Network with Display Select is a new hybrid campaign format that aims to make display more effective. The idea is that changing your campaign type from just search to this new option could help you get more traffic from users browsing relevant content online, even if you don’t have the know-how to manage display.
Search continues to outperform display for most direct response advertisers, and display campaigns typically need to be managed separately with their own budgets, bids, targets, ads, and other custom settings for optimal performance. This is why many advertisers still choose not to run display campaigns, and Google might be looking to ease the entry into display for such advertisers as well as boost display revenues.
Search Network with Display Select uses Google’s new and improved algorithm that aims to drive results similar to search. It uses current performance metrics to find similar results on the Google Display Network. For example, if you’re getting search conversions at a profitable cost per conversion, upgrading to the new hybrid format should get you more such conversions from display.
Upgrading is extremely simple. In your campaign settings page, just change your campaign type to Search Network with Display Select. If you have image ads, add those to your ad groups as well.
One of my clients was interested in testing this new campaign type, and we decided to try it with a smaller campaign that was running on just search. We ran the test for 2 weeks and saw conversion decrease 75%, while cost to convert increased over 200%. I would have expected clicks to go up with opting into a new network, but even clicks decreased 18%.
Obviously, each industry, campaign, and website is different, so your results will vary. However, while Search Network with Display Select sounds compelling, I recommend doing a trial first, perhaps with one of your smaller campaigns. If you are considering switching, proceed cautiously with a lower priority campaign, and make sure you review performance before and after the switch.
Imagine you’re selling a fitness product that helps people lose weight and be healthy. Your target customers are probably already looking into fitness solutions and programs. Many of them are using mobile apps to log their calories or track daily activity, or apps that help with nutrition. Now imagine being able to promote your product to someone who’s logging their daily food intake on their mobile app. You can do that easily through Google AdWords with a “Mobile apps” campaign type.
Mobile apps is a strategy that allows you to show text and image ads on the Display Network to mobile device users. Your ads show within an app as potential customers use apps on their mobile devices. You can select app categories to show ads on, or you can research and choose specific apps that you already have in mind.
To get started, create a new campaign, choosing “Display Network only” as your campaign type.
Choose your target countries, languages, set a budget, bids, and customize your other campaign settings.
Next, you’ll get to choose your targeting. You’ll have the option to select specific “Mobile app categories” or “Search all apps” to choose specific apps.
You can narrow your targeting further by age or gender to only show ads to specific age groups or only to women, for example, if that is your target audience.
Or, you can refine targeting with interests and remarketing categories. For example, you can show ads to customers using apps that have been to your website before but did not convert.
Once you have chosen your targets, create ads and your campaign is ready to run!
If you’re running display campaigns through your Google AdWords account, you may have noticed a new targeting option called Display- In-market Buyers (ROI) in your interest categories section.
In-market segmentation is a new audience targeting method that allows advertisers to target users who are actively looking to buy certain products or services in the near future or have high propensity to buy if they find the right product or offer.
Google classifies users being in-market by:
– Identifying content that indicates user-intent to purchase an item. For example, someone browsing consumer reviews and price comparison sites.
– Considering how often and how recently a user visited these pages.
– Identifying contexts where users have previously clicked on ads related to the product or service of interest and have converted.
– Considering common search keywords that led users to the page.
– Looking at display impression data or 3rd party data or both.
The set it up, I recommend creating a separate display only campaign dedicated to this targeting method, so you can use a different budget for this test. You’ll find Display In-Market Buyers in your Interests & remarketing section as you create an ad group and choose how to target ads.
The current available targets include categories such as “Autos & Vehicles” and “Education” and many others, as well as sub-categories if you’d like to make your audience more specific. If you do not see a category that’s relevant to you, make sure to check back as Google has been adding new categories since the launch of this feature.
I suggest keeping the bids more conservative than search, since you’ll be reaching a much more wide pool of users.
Make sure that you add image ads, and if you’re planning on using text ads, create separate ad groups for the text and banners, so you can use different bids.
As with any campaigns, check in on this campaign to make sure it’s bringing you the right types of visitors, and optimize by adjusting bids, excluding placements, and trying different ads.
So far, I am seeing a large amount of traffic from this strategy, but conversions have not been even close to search. It will likely convert worse than your remarketing campaigns, but could be a nice source of additional traffic for those who are looking to brand or reach new pools of users.
My publisher Packt is running a Buy One, Get One free offer to celebrate their 2000th title. You can buy my Google AdWords book “Advertising on Google: The High Performance Cookbook” and other tech books via this link http://bit.ly/1j26nPN. Learn how to run effective AdWords campaigns, build your website, and more using Packt’s library of practical tech guides.
With Google’s recent announcement that ad rank is now factoring ad extensions, it is now more than ever vital to incorporate any relevant enhancements to your ads, such as sitelinks and call extensions. One of the more recent additions to the ad extensions menu are Review Extensions, which allow you to highlight reputable third party reviews and accolades. They can help you entice users to clicks on your ads by highlighting an endorsement and help expand your ad with additional real estate. If you’ve got some praise, why not flaunt it?
Reviews appear below your ad description in top ranked ads and link to the review source, such as a magazine article. If a user clicks on your review extension, you won’t be charged for a click that’s going to your review source, unless this user clicks on your ad as well.
Just like with sitelinks, you can set-up review extensions at the campaign or at the ad group level. When you’re choosing your review extension text, make sure that it is not too similar to your ad copy and potentially redundant. Use that space to communicate what someone else raved about and make sure you are accurately representing the original source.
To get started with review extensions, log-in to your AdWords account and go to tab Campaigns. Go into a specific campaign, click on tab Ad Extensions and choose Review Extensions from the drop down.
Click on +Extension to create a new review extension. You can either use an exact quote from your source or you can paraphrase text. Make sure to state your source in the Source field and link to the third-party URL — your review source cannot be your own website.
Here are some additional guidelines and restrictions:
-Your review should not be about a specific product or service, but about your business as whole. It should also not be just a description of your business.
-The review also needs to be less than a year old.
-Individual customer reviews and testimonials are not accepted.
-Aggregate reviews and rating from websites like Yelp.com are not allowed.
-Press releases cannot be used.
-Currently, review extensions are only available in English.
-Do not repeat your business name in the review – one review extension I created was disapproved for this reason.
-Use … ellipses to show missing words or phrases.
You can find the full list of requirements and restrictions here. There has been quite a bit of confusion with what counts are “reputable” with some seemingly prominent websites getting disapproved. Make sure to check on your review extensions to see if it’s been approved. If you notice that it’s been disapproved, get in touch with AdWords support to find out why, as no disapproval reason is currently listed in the AdWords interface.
Just like with other ad extensions, your review extensions won’t show every time a user is searching. You can review impressions and other performance metrics in the Ad Extensions tab by choosing the Review Extensions drop down.
