AdWords – Page 9 – The Web Authority

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.

May 30, 2016May 27, 2016

What’s Google Got in Store for the Rest of 2016?

I watched the Google Live Stream this past week with curiosity. What was Google going to cook up next to wow us with and when would it launch? I was not disappointed.

Here’s what’s in store from Google for the rest of 2016 and early 2017

Longer AdWords Ad Text
AdWords will be moving to a title and ONE line of descriptive text not two 35 characters each long lines. This single longer line will be 80 characters long. Doesn’t sound like much, but in the world of AdWords this is huge!

AdWords Bid by Device
This is a really big one and one I have wanted for a while. Now I will be able to bid by device, not just do a bid adjustment. This will allow me to fine-tune my strategies for mobile and give me more flexibility as an AdWords account manager.

AdWords Google Display Network (GDN)
The AdWords display ad builder will now take your image and make it device responsive in the GDN. Excellent news!

Google Maps is Now Ad Inventory
Promoted Pins are in the queue, expanding AdWords more fully into Google Maps. Google Maps is now part of the search network. This will be very important for mobile advertising. But be ready to see these as you use Google’s driving directions.

Local Search Ads are Coming
In an effort to increase store foot traffic Google AdWords is revamping location extensions. Google will use beacon signals to record local store visits and these will now be recorded as conversions in AdWords.

RLSA – Remarketing for Search Improvements
Google AdWords is continuing to refine and revise RLSA ads and expanding your reach in this product by offering similar audiences now for RLSA and search ads.

Demographics for Search Ads
This one is pretty big, but Bing Ads has been doing it for a while. Google AdWords will now offer demographic targeting for search ads. Just another way to refine your targeting by age, gender, and potentially income.

It’s a Mobile First World
Google stated that search activity is now a “mobile first” world compared to just one year ago a “desktop first” world.

Google Analytics Updated for Mobile
Tying in with a mobile first world, Google Analytics is undergoing a major platform update and redesign. Many of the best features are in the paid model, but expect to see some nice changes even in the free version.

Google Data Studio
Interesting, this new application could be very good. It connects all your data together and let’s you build dynamic reports that are very visual. They are allowing some free reports in the trial beta.

What interesting plans and great new improvements. I am looking forward to each one of them.

May 18, 2016May 14, 2016

AdWords Bidding Changes Impact Performance

Does a negative review have you feeling like sharks are circling?

Google AdWords made some changes to their automated bidding programs and has disabled the ability to use automated bidding with enhanced auto bid features.

What Exactly Changed?

Previous eCPC bidding as a strategy has been altered by Google. Previously Google would auto bid and adjust the bids automatically based on historical performance data. Sometimes as much as 30% more than your maximum cost per click setting.

Current eCPC is now a manual keyword or ad group bid with no automatic bid adjustment. Google will now simply raise or lower Your Own bid by historic conversion performance. We are finding that this new automatic bidding approach is more expensive for clients and requires a greater level of oversight. Setting a bid by ad group instead of by keyword is driving up client bid costs even on non-converting keywords.

Max Clicks, Google says that this is the previous auto bid setting that the old eCPC bidding was, but now unfortunately does not contain a component for a review of historical conversion data. This bid strategy simply tries to get the most clicks, not the most potentially converting clicks.

These bidding automation changes have certainly impacted the performance for clients. Although in some case they may give greater control to some accounts over the cost per click for others they are negatively impacting results.

We work to mitigate performance issues caused by these changes by using bid automation rules, greater analysis and oversight. Rewarding our managed accounts with improved performance metrics. Find out how McCord Web Services can help your AdWords account achieve profitability.