Month: October 2010

You may say this never happens, but as I review all AdWords accounts that are running when a new prospect comes to me looking for a new account manager, this happens fairly frequently. Personally, I do not recommend this action.

What I am speaking of is when an AdWords account is in trouble and an account manager cannot get clicks for the client. The account manager sometimes gets desperate and tries to force clicks. Here is the common scenario. The actual client wants to spend $1,000 in clicks a month. They typically will be in a business that has a high click cost auction. The acting account manager has decided not to set the cost per click in the account to a level that Google will consider the account in the AdWords auction and so as a result AdWords serves the ads infrequently. The client may be then spending only $200 or so of a $1,000 click budget.

The account manager panics as the client is pressing for click performance and so the account manager sets the 30 day budget to $7,800 or $260 per day instead of $33.33 per day. The account manager is banking on the fact that the client’ cost per click is really too low to be in the auction and that AdWords won’t deliver the $7,800 in clicks in a 30 day period.

This is an actual scenario that I have seen just last week and not infrequently. I consider it is a very dangerous one. Google could, if something changed in the auction, actually deliver the $7,800 for the month in clicks and legitimately bill the client’s credit card for this activity. The client would have absolutely no recourse in regards to getting a refund.

Scary, isn’t that scenario? But, I have seen it twice in the last three weeks and many times over the last eight years I have been managing AdWords accounts. I do not believe in putting any of my clients in this type of possible jeopardy.

A better scenario is to bid to be in the auction or drop some of the ad groups and just run ad groups that have the possibility of performing within the client’s “true” budget. In each case that I have seen this scary set up used, the actual client had no idea of what the acting account manager was doing with their account and that they had taken this tactic. I personally will never manage an account in this fashion.

How can you see if your AdWords account manager is playing this dangerous game with your money and credit card? Go into your account and review on the campaign summary page your daily budget. It will be just below the campaign names. If the number there times 30 does not match the dollar figure you told your account manager you have authorized them to spend on your behalf with AdWords, you need to make a quick phone call to them to challenge their tactics. Remember, if Google could deliver the clicks to this inflated budget – and there may be a possibility they could – you would be billed and you would have to pay.

If you are looking for a honest and savvy Google AdWords account manager, I invite you to check out our AdWords services. My firm, McCord Web Services, is a Google AdWords Certified Partner and I am personally also a Google AdWords Certified Individual.

Don’t set up ad groups that target location names making it difficult to manage your ad groups. Consider using Google AdWords dynamic keyword insertion to do the work for you and keep all your location names in just one ad group.

The key to using Google AdWords dynamic keyword insertion is to carefully structure your account so that your keywords make sense with your ad text. For me if I am targeting 10 to 50 city locations say for a plumber and my keywords would be things like Waldorf plumber, Clinton plumber, Ft Washington plumber, etc. I would make sure that my ad group only contains variations as I have noted. Then in my ad text I would craft an ad that would look like this:

{KeyWord: Local Plumber}
Call for fast plumbing services for clogged
drains, sinks, toilets and bathtubs

Let’s dissect the ad text above a bit. Note that Keyword is spelled KeyWord in the curly brackets. This tells Google to make the keyword they are inserting with each letter of the beginning of each word as a capital. If I had entered keyword instead of KeyWord then the letters would all have been lower case. Note I also added default text after the : in the ad title. This text will be used if my keywords that would have been inserted makes the title go over the character count.

The great thing about dynamic keyword insertion is that Google takes the keyword phrase in your ad group and puts it in the spot where you have the curly brackets when the keyword matches a search query. This is very powerful for creating user centric ads which typically will lead to increased converions. Additionally as the keyword in the title now matches the user’s search query, Google will bold the  text drawing the readers eye to your ad.

All ad groups can’t use dynamic keyword insertion, but in many cases with properly crafted ad groups you can really move your AdWords program to the next level in regards to performance.

If you don’t have savvy AdWords management now, I invite you to visit our AdWords services page. McCord Web Services is a Google AdWords Certified Partner.