Posts Tagged ‘Google AdWords’

How To Display Google Base Products In AdWords Ads

November 30th, 2009

backcountry[1]

Google has been testing product ads for some time now. As of last week they have turned on this featured called Ad Extenstions. By turning this feature on you will attract more eyeballs to your ads and in effect raise your click-through rate. Google stated on their blog post which announced this new feature that some advertisers have seen a 10% increase in their CTR.

Here is how to turn on AdWords Ad Extensions, it must be done for every campaign separately:

Go to Campaign –> Settings; under Networks, devices, and extensions; click on edit under Ad Extensions and check the box that says: Connect to my Google Merchant Center account. This should automatically bring up your Google Base (Product Search) account, once it finds it, just click Save.

AdWords-Ad-Extensions

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Cheatsheet: How To Create AdWords Campaigns Easily

November 4th, 2009

Here’s a quick tip that comes in handy when you are marketing a brand of products that has a similar name to other products or services on the web.

If you want to advertise Apple, Inc. products but are having a hard time coming up with a comprehensive list of keywords, this may work for you. Add the keyword Apple as a Broad Match term with an exact negative of [Apple]. At the same time add negative terms for anything that comes up on a Google search for the term Apple that you are not advertising. For example you may add these as Negative Keywords:

tablet
tv
new york city
bank
trailers
rumors
ipod
store locator
  • tablet
  • tv
  • new york city
  • bank
  • trailers
  • rumors
  • store

This accomplishes the same as building out a huge list of Phrase Match terms but with much less work. Google will look at the Broad Match terms you have listed and show ad for all of them after cross checking and excluding all your Negative keywords. Keep in mind that this may cost slightly more than running a long list of Phrase Match terms. Best thing to do is run your campaign this way for 2-4 weeks and then look at the keyword list that Google actually showed your ads for — now you can just check off the good ones and add to your campaign for a lower CPC.

Image Courtesy: zenera

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Display Search Term In Ad Creative With Dynamic Keyword Insertion

September 1st, 2009

Google AdWords Dynamic Keyword Insertion

When building your ad creatives, aside for using multiple ad copies, it is a good idea to include the search term that the consumer is using in your ad copy. This can be done quite easily with Dynamic Keyword Insertion.

Dynamic Keyword Insertion

With Dynamic Keyword Insertion you can use a placeholder text instead of an actual title or description which Google will then strip out and replace with the consumer’s search term. You can use it in a few different ways as well, here’s how:

{KeyWord:Default}

This keyword placeholder which Google calls Dynamic Keyword Insertion, is broken into two parts. The first option, ‘KeyWord’, defines how you display the search query casing, capital first letter of each word, capital first letter of sentence or lower case.

{KeyWord:Default} – First Letter Upper Case Of Each Word

{Keyword:Default} – Only first letter of sentence upper case

{keyword:Default} – full text will be lower case

The second half, after the colon, is the default text that will be used when the consumers search query does not fit in the space requirements.

The Dynamic Keyword Insertion tool can be used in all fields of an ad copy: Title, Description 1 & 2, Display URL and Destination URL. Samples as follows:

Query microsoft zune 8gb ipod nano green leather skin
Ad Copy Buy {KeyWord:Zune}
8GB Micrsoft Zune. Buy Now.
Free Shipping On All Orders.
www.ExampleSite.com		 Buy {keyword:ipod accessories}
8GB iPod Nano Accessories.
Free Shipping On All Orders.
www.ExampleSite.com
Output Buy Microsoft Zune
8GB Micrsoft Zune. Buy Now.
Free Shipping On All Orders.
www.ExampleSite.com		 Buy ipod accessories
8GB iPod Nano Accessories.
Free Shipping On All Orders.
www.ExampleSite.com
Notes Capitalized First Letter Of Each Word Space Restriction: Default Search Term

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How To Test Google AdWords Keyword Positions In Analytics

August 26th, 2009

Monopoly E-Commerce

Will your ad perform better on the top spot on the left or on the right? Sixth one up from the bottom?

When you link your Google AdWords and Google Analytics accounts, it will track performance of your ads with a lot of detail. One of the things it tracks, is performance by ad position.

Go to Traffic Sources » AdWords » Keyword Positions

In this report you can see all the familiar information such as impressions, clicks, CTR etc… The great thing about this report is the ability to segment by keyword and ad position. If you have Conversion Goals and E-Commerce Tracking set up you can see sales and revenue by ad position as well.

How Do I Know?

You will need to test your ad in a few positions for a couple of weeks each. Make sure you have enough representative data and then run the Ad Position report and see what has performed better.

Image Credit: danielbroche

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Maximize Your Productivity With Google AdWords Editor

August 23rd, 2009

Google AdWords Editor

If you are managing many campaigns with hundreds or thousands of keywords, then Google AdWords Editor is for you.

AdWords Editor is great for many things. It’s main function is to allow you to add/edit multiple campaigns/ad groups/ads/keywords in one shot. It is especially useful for creating new campaigns because your work will not be live until you are done and upload it.

In addition Google AdWords Editor is great for creating backups of specific campaigns or even your whole account. This is useful for times that you need to restructure your campaign but would like to have the ability to go back and reverse your changes at a later date. It can also be used to download campaigns for upload into Yahoo! Search Marketing or Microsoft adCenter.

Plug in to the power of AdWords Editor

AdWords Editor is a free Google application for managing your ad campaigns. Use it to download your account, update your campaigns with powerful editing tools, then upload your changes to AdWords.

  • Work offline, then upload your changes any time.
  • Make bulk changes (such as updating bids or adding keywords) in just a few steps.
  • Copy or move items between ad groups and campaigns.
  • Navigate through your account quickly and easily.
  • Circulate proposed changes and get feedback from other users.

Download Google AdWords Editor

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Track Goals In Google AdWords With Google Analytics Tracking Pixel

August 20th, 2009

As you probably know, you can link your Google Analytics account to your Google AdWords account. Doing this allows you to better track your campaign performance in Analytics with a whole slew of options that are not available in AdWords.

What I did not know, until now, was that you can link your Google Analytics Goals to Google AdWords. What this means is that you don’t need to have two tracking pixels on your order confirmation page. Just install the Google Analytics tracking pixel and it will feed Google AdWords the ecommerce and conversion data from Analytics.

Link Google Analytics & Google AdWords Goal Conversions

Link Google Analytics & Google AdWords Goal Conversions

Did you know you can do this?

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Using Google AdWords Cost Per Acquisition Campaigns

August 20th, 2009

Save Money

There are a few requirements to be eligible to use the Google AdWords Cost Per Acquisition model. First, you need to have the AdWords conversion tracking pixel installed on your site and you’ll need 15 conversions tracked through the conversion tracking over the previous 30 days. If you are serious about marketing your site and products, this should be very easy for you to accomplish.

Once you fulfil all the requirements, you can edit your campaign by changing the settings under Bidding and budget > Bidding option from Manual bidding for clicks to Automatic bidding to try to maximize clicks for your target budget.

You will be asked to set a value to the conversions, in other words, how much you’re will to pay per sale. When you enable the Conversion Optimizer for a campaign, you set a maximum CPA bid for each ad group.

Ready, set, go. You’re pretty much done, make sure to check back on it.

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Should I Spend Time On Yahoo! Search Marketing & Microsoft adCenter?

August 13th, 2009

Judgement Day

It is a well known fact that Google AdWords commands more than 80% of the Paid Search market share. With that being the case, is worth the time managing campaigns on Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter? This question is even more important considering the somewhat recent news that Microsoft Bing will be merging with Yahoo! Search.

Cost vs Results

One thing is for sure, keywords on Yahoo and Bing will cost a fraction of what they cost on Google. The main reason for this is that there are much less advertisers on Yahoo and Bing. This can be a benefit to you though because of the keyword bidding competition, or lack thereof.

The Big Test

The easiest thing to do is download an export from your Google account using Google AdWords Editor and upload this into the Yahoo and Microsoft consoles. They both offer the ability to convert Google campaigns.

Once your campaigns are live in the second tier engines, lower your bids and daily budgets and let the ads roll. Keep your eye on keywords that are getting way too many clicks. I’ve seen keywords which didn’t perform too well on Google, get overclicked on Yahoo and Microsoft.

Day Of Judgement

After accumulating 3-4 weeks of data, check your return on investment (ROI), if it looks like your’re making a profit, then go for it. Make sure to calculate the cost of the extra time it takes to manage a triplicate set of campaigns.

What If Yahoo! & Bing Merge?

They have already finalized the deal on paper. However, they still need to get regulatory approval, which can take a while. Even when they do get approval, they will need to integrate their two systems, which can take even longer.

Can’t Handle It?

If you can’t handle managing three sets of campaigns for Google AdWords, Microsoft adCenter and Yahoo! Search Marketing, try a third party tool that gives you the ability to manage all three from within one interface. Some of the better ones are Kenshoo, Acquisio and Clickable.

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Use Google AdWords Opportunities To Broaden Your Campaign Reach

August 13th, 2009

Google Rubber Duckies

In the (relatively) new Google AdWords interface, there is a new tab called Opportunities, in here Google will periodically offer you campaign optimization tips.

The best idea is to go and review these suggestions on a monthly basis as these tips are constantly changing based on consumer search behavior and patterns.

Keyword Opportunities

On the left side, you can select a campaign the same as you would in the Campaigns tab. When you select a campaign it will show you a list of ad groups with suggestions. Click on each ad group and you will see a list of search terms that Google suggests you add to the ad group. You should always review before accepting because they will suggest many keywords that may be to generalized for your campaigns success.

By doing this monthly, you will keep growing your campaign target audience based on Google’s historical data and metrics.

Image Credit: Yodel Anecdotal

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Go For Break-Even In Google AdWords & Raise Your Budget

August 12th, 2009

Google Daily Budget

When you are first starting out with your Google AdWords campaigns you will tend to be concerned about your ROI. A good trick to help progress your campaigns performance in terms of ROI, is to aim for your break even point.

Break Even

First you will need to figure out what that point is, once you have the magic number — whether it is $25 per sale or 20% of the total sale amount — you will need to set up your campaigns budget to get a decent amount of traffic. As your campaign starts collecting data, keep optimizing and tweaking it until you reach the break even point.

Shot In The Arm

Once you come close, you should raise the daily budget as much as you can. This will do two things simultaneously: first, it will bring you more traffic which you can optimize better and second, it will help bring up your click through rate and conversion rate. This works by simple logic. If your conversion rate is 1.5% and you only have 100 visitors, you may miss out on the 1.5 sales you would have got. If you have 1,000 visitors, you have a better chance of finding the 1.5% of visitors that will convert into customers.

Image Courtesy: Danard Vincente

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