AdWords Account Management – Page 7

June 22, 2016June 19, 2016

How to Determine Your AdWords Account Budget – Part Two

Continued from Monday June 20.

Google Partner Badge — McCord Web Services is a Google Partner.

One of the biggest issues with the setting of the maximum cost per click and daily budget is that the daily budget will not be set high enough for Google to properly serve an account.

Many times a client will have a high click cost, relatively low daily budget, see that the average position on the page for their keyword is high, but impressions are very low. The erroneous assumption is that there is simply not enough click traffic to spend the daily budget.

In reality the daily budget is too low and cannot support the ability for Google to deliver the ads. With a high click cost and low daily budget, Google simply tries too hard to meter out clicks throughout the day, the result is the program is hardly served.

Typically I will see this type of issue when in a 30 day period only $100 of clicks are served in a $900 budget. The disconnect is that the daily budget needs to be raised if the maximum click cost is set appropriately. I will also see this scenario when the account is also out of the ad auction, meaning that the daily budget may be right but the click cost is too low.

A careful review of the account and testing of various cost per click settings and daily budget settings will isolate which is the correct problem that needs to be addressed further.

In all cases, it is important for the account manager or account owner to assure that conversion tracking is enabled and being used in an AdWords account before you simply start to raise ad spend budgets and click costs. Decisions must be made on statistical documentation.

There is nothing worse for an account that to simply throw money at Google without having conversion tracking in place to assure accountability. Google will gobble up every penny you give it if you allow unfettered access to your wallet.

For savvy AdWords account management and AdWords optimizations, I invite you to visit my website to learn more about the services we provide.

June 20, 2016June 19, 2016

How to Determine Your AdWords Starting Budget – Part One

One of the most difficult things for a new AdWords account manager is to determine the best initial budget for an account. Here are a few of my tips that will help get you thinking.

1. Start with the highest budget initially that you can. It is easier to ramp down than to ramp up in a brand new AdWords account due to the way that Google AdWords will serve a brand new account in the first week.

2. Use the AdWords Keyword Planner. This tool is found in your account in the drop down under tools. Typically I will sit at my computer with this tool open and run numbers for a brand new client before we even go to contract for management services to help set an appropriate budget. There is nothing worse than taking on a new client only to find that you cannot get performance for them due to an unrealistic expectation of what they need to pay to get into the AdWords auction.

3. Know that the AdWords Keyword Planner dollar figures for keywords are estimates only. In the real auction you will typically pay about 20%. The tool estimates are on the low side.

4. A good rule of thumb is to remember that the higher the final sale the higher the click cost will be and so the budget should be higher. For example if a client is selling $10 widgets, you will want to have your click cost be low. It the sale is a $50,000 software platform, your click cost will be high. Surprisingly you will find many who do not understand this and will expect to pay $1 or so for clicks when their cost of sale is high.

5. Once you have roughed in a typical high/low click cost using sample keywords using the Keyword Planner with the client, then work backwards to ascertain how high the daily budget should be. If the Keyword Planner says the typical click cost is $2.50 to $3.50 know that you will most likely be using a maximum cost per click setting of $4.00 to $4.50 in the control panel on set up. Make sure that you and the client set a high enough daily budget to accommodate the ability for Google to serve the ad during the day. At this click cost the best daily budget would be $30 and up or a 30 day ad spend of $912, to start.

Check back on Wednesday June 22 to find out how your click cost and daily budget setting will set you up for success or failure.

June 15, 2016June 11, 2016

AdWords Tips – Understanding the Targeting Setting

Expect the unexpected. — Changing settings in AdWords when you really don’t understand the ramifications will impact performance.

Do-It-Yourself AdWords account managers, meaning business owners that manage AdWords themselves, frequently change the recommended settings for targeting thinking that they will get better performance.

Here’s what to know about targeting settings in the campaign tab.

You’ll find the settings that I am talking about by accessing the Campaign tab, then Settings and then looking for Locations, and Location Options.

Open up the Location Options settings by clicking the -. Inside you will see two settings, Target and Exclude.

Google does mark two as recommended, but for a diy AdWords managed account I will typically see that a business owner has changed one or both of these.

Target

I have found that many diy account owners feel that by clicking Target and selecting “people in my targeted area” or “people searching for or showing interest in my targeted area” that they will get better performance than using the recommended setting which is “people in, searching for, or showing interest”.

I have found that this is not the case. In many cases Internet Service providers will show a different location for a user than the area you are targeting. Or your prospective customer may be working outside, yet living in, the area that you are targeting. I have found that you will drop traffic using this setting and negatively impact performance.

Exclude

The recommended setting here is “people in, searching for or showing interesting in my excluded locations”. I will however see many diy AdWords account managers select to exclude “people in my excluded location” instead. This change from recommended may also in many cases limit your AdWords account or allow ads to show when you really would not want them to show.

Changing both settings for an AdWords account may impact impressions, clicks, click through, and lower the quality of lead conversions.

If you are a diy AdWords manager, you may be missing opportunities to boost AdWords performance. Find out how McCord Web Services, a Google Partner and certified by Google in AdWords Management, can make a significant difference in your AdWords’ account performance by visiting our website today.

June 1, 2016May 27, 2016

AdWords Changes Its Bidding Algorithms

Clear Strategy — Get Results on Google AdWords When You Use a Google Partner Like McCord Web Services.

Just a few month ago, Google AdWords quietly retired the old auto bidding with a built-in enhanced CPC algorithm. If you change out of this old bidding model, you can’t get back in.

Here are the new/revised bidding models for Google AdWords and my thoughts on each.

eCPC Manual Not the Old Auto
This bidding model uses the enhance click setting algorithm from AdWords but now starts not with an auto bid and bid cap but rather a manual bid. I have found that the traffic results are lower with this bidding model than the old eCPC auto bid model, but the ability to control costs is a big plus. For some accounts we are seeing roughly a 5% drop in costs. But the downside is that you really need to watch bids more carefully to boost them to the first page bid or set up bid automation rules. Traffic is lower as much as 20% less for some accounts. With eCPC Google is restrained in how much more than you max CPC bid it can set in the auction. That number is up to only 30% more. CPA bidding is unlimited.

Maximum Clicks
Google says that this bidding algorithm is the old auto bid with eCPC component, but I say it is not. This model is good to get maximum clicks and traffic, but does not take any conversion history into account when setting your bid. It is great to start a program out with when you are not sure what the click cost should be. You cannot set individual keyword bids unless you opt those specific keywords out of the Maximum Clicks algorithm, but you can using a bidding portfolio strategy. If you need traffic and have a low budget this is a good choice to get strong traffic.

CPA Bidding
This bidding strategy and algorithm have been around for a while. It works well for some clients and crashes the account for others. Google says that it is improved and now in the Bidding section of the shared library you can see how the algorithm is learning to serve your bids. Remember with this one there is no bid cap. Google can automatically bid as high as it wants to win you the click auction. So far I have several clients that are really getting excellent results with CPA bidding with increased conversions at a significantly lower cost.

Google has spent significant resources on making these bidding tools valuable and many use your account history to keep you well placed in the AdWords auction.

To learn more about Google AdWords, I invite you to review our website and services.