AdWords Manager – Page 18 – The Web Authority

May 2, 2018April 27, 2018

How to Know When It’s Time to Fire Your AdWords Manager Part Two

Continued from Monday.

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When is it time to fire your AdWords manager? When you see things in your account that do not jive with what you have told your account manager to do.

Budget
This is a huge issue. Look at your account from the campaign tab. Look to the bottom to see what your AdWords manager has set your account to spend by day. Multiply that number by 30 and that is your scheduled 30 day ad spend.

In the case of the review I was doing for a client to evaluate the performance of their AdWords account manager, the daily budget was $2,000. That means the client was scheduled to spend $60,000 per 30 day period. I asked the client did they want to spend $60,000? The client said NO, their budget was $30,000 a month and they considered that a scary number already.

Based on a last 30 day review of the account the client had already been billed by Google for $54,000. Well over the $30,000 cap the client thought they had.

This is a huge issue and one I see frequently taken by so called professional AdWords managers. When they do not get performance in an account, they increase the budget hoping that in reality Google will not spend that amount thinking that poor performance is an issue of ad serving. Instead the action to optimize the account should be taken. In some cases a total revamp of keywords, landing pages, and ad text should be done and a new bidding strategy taken. If the issue is budget then buy-in from the client for a limited time period test with statistical evaluation provided at the end of the test period should be done. I never advocate creating a “fake” budget for AdWords.

In my experience AdWords can spend all that you have scheduled it to spend. If your account manager is fooling around with your budget hoping Google won’t charge you, I consider that grounds for firing.

If you need professional help with your AdWords program from an experienced AdWords manager, certified professional and member of the Google Partner team at McCord Web Services, I encourage you to call now!

April 30, 2018April 29, 2018

How to Know When It’s Time to Fire Your AdWords Manager Part One

When is it time to fire your AdWords manager and find a new one? It’s time to fire them when you have lost trust and performance has significantly changed, and you do not get good answers as to why.

As a paid AdWords consultant that troubleshoots problematic AdWords accounts, here are the items I review when I recommend to a client that they need to fire their current AdWords manager.

Evaluate the Change History
You can actually see what your account manager does by reviewing items in the change history. Just keep in mind that sometimes a good account manager will be in on the account reviewing data and may not make a change as they evaluate strategies every day. However, if your account manager is not in the account making updates at least once a week in a high spend account, you may need to ask why.

My firm has very specific things we do for all account monthly. We pause low search volume keywords, we build out new ad text, we review previously paused keywords to evaluate if they should be on and so on. We have a schedule and we work all our accounts large and small for performance. The change history allows you to see and evaluate what your account manager is doing.

Cost per Conversion
This is a big litmus test for clients and for me. If the cost per conversion is way high for what you are selling, something is not working and that problem may just be your AdWords manager.

I was just in an account yesterday doing an evaluation and the cost per conversion in 30 days was $1,500 for a product. Based on what the client is selling, this was very, very high. As a professional account manager sometimes things can get wacked out when you are in an auction setting, but a good account manager would be in reviewing, changing up, and working to remediate a problem like this not just letting it run. The change history proved that no action was being taken.

When I see too high of a cost per conversion, I will typically move out of any automated bidding strategies or change my selection based on what is happening, and then target that program for a careful review and rework. It is not good account management to not dig in and try to fix issues like this. Doing so shows that an AdWords manager is inexperienced.

Keyword Activity
Take a look at your keyword activity. If you have one keyword or several keywords that are one word phrases and have high costs, you should be asking questions. In the case of the review I did yesterday, one keyword that was a three letter term spent $14,000 in a 30 day period. Google hates single word terms as they are not considered targeted. In this case, this term did generate conversions but further research on activity is really warranted as this term may be bleeding off cash in the account and draining off resources for the visibility of better keywords.

Visit our blog on Wednesday to get more insights on when is it time to fire your AdWords manager.

Remember, if you need help, a reality check, a professional recommendation and analysis of what is happening in your AdWords account we are AdWords experts!

April 18, 2018April 13, 2018

Why Do Click Costs Increase Sometimes in AdWords?

Have you noticed conversions dropping in your AdWords account? Is this followed by an increase in cost per click to appear on the first page of search results? Why would this happen?

First, it is very important to remember that Google AdWords is an auction. The highest bidder does not get the top position, but each time a search is done an Ad Rank number using the cost per click bid and the Quality Score as well as the extensions that are used in the account is run and advertisers are racked and stacked.

In times when sales in a marketplace are slow, I will typically see a large jump in cost per click as advertisers, just like you, scramble to get leads. It may be that customers are just not buying and in an effort to get leads, other advertisers will drive up the price of the auction by their bidding; boosting your first page bid.

In other times when sales are hot in a marketplace, more advertisers who had been sitting on the sidelines move into the marketplace driving up the cost again.

As an AdWords Manager, I see these scenarios frequently. Sometimes it is seasonal and click costs will stay high during the high traffic peak buying season. Pest control firms are a good example of a seasonal business where traffic and conversions are hot from March all the way to November, but peter out from December to February.

So, before you just push your own AdWords cost per click up, take some time to evaluate what is happening in your account, in your marketplace, and region. In many cases your local reps can help you to understand if this is a situation that is a marketplace and consumer trend versus something that you are doing wrong that needs adjustment in your advertising account.

Get real help with AdWords with our professional account management services. Visit our website to learn more.

April 11, 2018April 6, 2018

AdWords – Low Search Volume Keywords Explained

Nancy McCord a Google Partner and Bing Partner

As a Google Partner and long time professionally certified AdWords account manager I would like to demystify what is happening when AdWords marks some of your keywords as “Low Search Volume”.

First, we routinely delete these keywords in an AdWords account, but only for mature accounts and only after we have done a reality check to assure that the keyword has not generated lead conversions in the past.

AdWords says this about Low Search Volume keywords:

Keywords marked as “Low search volume” are associated with very little search traffic on Google, an indication that they’re not very relevant to most customers’ searches. For this reason, Google temporarily makes these keywords inactive so that they don’t trigger your ads.

When we manage an AdWords account, we will typically remove these terms and then look to add other terms to your program using the AdWords keyword planner to find alternatives that cover the same meaning but may return higher search volume.

We remove the keywords from your account to allow for easier management and to focus on terms in your account that will drive traffic and conversions.

If most of your keywords are showing as Low Search Volume keywords, I would recommend doing additional keyword discovery, reviewing to see if your phrases are too restrictive, and if a change to match type may make a difference in getting Google to serve ads.

If you need an experienced account AdWords manager to whip your AdWords account into shape, please contact us to see if we might be a good match for your needs.