Tag: Google AdWords

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AdWords Recommends Separate Mobile Targeted Campaigns

I sat through a seminar this past week that I found very interesting. It was done by Jason Woods from Google AdWords on Mobile Specific Programs.

Here are a few important points that I gleaned from the seminar that I wanted to share with you:

  1. Google AdWords is recommending that businesses do breakout campaigns to target just high end mobile phones and tablets. Although Jason Woods recommend that tablets be put into the desktop and laptop campaigns I don’t agree with that focus just yet. I’ll expound on that issue later.
  2. Google AdWords is recommending more general keywords in this program due to the types of keywords mobile users will type in.

Here are some of my comments and recommendations that I have seen from client accounts we are already managing that have separate mobile/tablet campaigns.

1. The click cost is typically less, but so are the conversions and activity. But don’t think you shouldn’t do a separate mobile program for these reasons, just alter your budget and click cost accordingly and watch your cost per conversion. So far we’ve have good results for clients in the mobile and tablet arena.

2. I don’t necessarily agree with putting tablets into the desktop campaign. I base this on my observation of tablet users. Most tablet users I’ve seen are using cell phone access to the web, meaning that they are out and about and are using access to the web via Sprint, Verizon or some other service. Although most tablets will connect to wireless networks, the fun of a tablet is to access information anywhere not just where you find a hot spot. Now this may change as more and more mobile service providers reign in big data users, but at this time make your own decision based on what you and your client see. For you, you may want to put tablets in with your desktop program.

It is easy to see if you should try a mobile specific program now by logging in to AdWords, go to your campaign tab, select the segment drop down, then click network. Google will show you the number of clicks and conversions that have come from mobile devices with full browsers and tablets with full browsers. Base your decision to do a breakout program from this data.

If you are looking for a savvy Google AdWords account manager, I would be glad to chat with you about your Google AdWords needs (301-705-7303) or I invite you to visit our AdWords account management services page for our programs and pricing.

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Get the AdWords Time Machine Cranked Up Again

If you are in this business, you’ve heard it too… “I used to have such great results on Google AdWords back in 2006. Why can’t you just roll my account back to those settings. Surely I will get more clicks and activity at a cheaper price!” There is no time machine that can turn back the clock to give you clicks and performance that you used to have in the past on Google AdWords.

Here are a few changes that I have seen in the last eight or so  years that have impacted advertisers on AdWords. I will only list ten, but you can leave a comment with the ones you have seen too.

  1. Introduction of the quality score based on your keywords, ad text and landing page.
  2. Highly competitive bidding from new advertisers bidding on your keywords pushing up the market price per click. In one year I saw a 33% increase in click costs.
  3. Increased use of technology to manage bidding from specialized programmer interfaces. AdWords now has many of these tools available to use as rules in accounts, but before only the big companies with special programming staff had access.
  4. Tremendous variety of ad choices from text ads to video ads. We used to only have one choice text ads on Google.com.
  5. Proliferation of the publisher network through AdSense. There has been an improvement in the publisher network, but it has been pretty awful and rife with fraud previously before Google wised up to the issue of robot ad clicking.
  6. Issues of using trademarks in your ad text and keyword list. It used to be you could use them and then trademark owners have gotten very testy of even demanding you remove them from your keyword list in the US even when Google says you don’t need to go that far. In some cases, it has made it impossible for some legitimate businesses to promote their product and service on AdWords. I know of several specific cases.
  7. Google AdWords providing account set up and management services directly to businesses and putting themselves in direct competition with firms such as my own. Remember when they did this in the early days of certification.
  8. Instituted a program to certify account managers. I managed AdWords before there even was a certification program. I’ve seen the tests be tough, easy, and they are tough again. I’ve even had people ask to pay me to take the test for them. No I haven’t done that, I am offended to be asked to do so, as it hurts the professional credential I work so hard to keep.
  9. Introduction of TV, newspaper, and telephone into AdWords. We don’t have the option to buy AdWords ads in print newspapers, but we used to. Telephone started out as a totally different beast and only to a few select advertisers. Remember the green click to call phone icon. I like the new phone integration much better and am getting great success using it for my clients.
  10. Remember the early days you could create AdWords ads and target your Google Places page all from within the control panel. I liked that much better than AdWords Express. There was better control, but we cannot do that anymore.

These are just a few of the changes that I personally have seen. Each one has had an impact of advertisers as AdWords has matured into the vibrant ad platform that it is today. So sorry, there simply is no going back what AdWords used to be it has morphed over the years into a very cool, high tech valuable tool that will drive sales and website traffic. It is much more complicated but more powerful than it was before. With this power comes significant market acceptance and competition for the available clicks, sorry, but that’s progress.

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Reviewing Ad Profitability: ROAS – Metrics Part One

ROI also known as ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is just one important metric to monitor to make sure your AdWords advertising plan is working for you. The formula for ROAS is shown below:

((Sales less AdWords Spend) divided by AdWords Spend) times 100

This yields a percentage that is an important figure to keep in mind when you evaluate if a Google AdWords budget is working properly to yield a return for your business.

If your ROAS is above 1% you are creating more sales than your expense to advertise. Here’s and example. A typical sale generates $4,800 of income. You spent $400 on AdWords to generate the sale, your ROAS is 11%. If your typical sale generates $4,800 of income but you spent $1,400 on AdWords to generate the sale your ROAS is 2.42%.

The subjective part comes when you try to analyze what is a satisfactory number for your ROAS figure. This varies for each business. For most businesses you really should be at a number higher than 1%.

For businesses selling products online, the ROAS is fairly straight forward, but how about when you sell a service or are looking to add a new patient to your practice. In this case, a review of Cost Per Acquisition may be more valuable tempered with a review of ROAS as well. The key is to generate more sales than it costs to advertise to get them. This takes much more analysis than just running reports in Google AdWords,;you really need to measure your AdWords ad spend against reports on your company’s overall profitability to determine if AdWords is really working for you.

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Even Google Itself Says Turn Off AdSense for Mobile

I have been working with the agency team at Google.com in the AdWords division. It seems that we got recognized not for being a Google AdWords Certified Partner, or for being a Google Engage for Agencies Member, but for managing so many accounts with a big ad spend. Yeah, maybe Google will send me a “token” Christmas present again this year.

Really kidding aside, I did want to share one very important point that Suzanne L. at the Google AdWords Agency shared with me.

“We recommend turning off AdSense for mobile in your content campaign. Our customers have found that the conversion rate is very low.”

Interesting! We don’t have too many clients advertising in content, but we do have a few. Of one that she and I looked at together a full one half of the clicks was being delivered in the mobile network. So, take it from the mouth of Google, turn off AdSense for Mobile if you are in the content network; save yourself some cash.