Golden Key from Google Adwords - Campaign Memo

AdWords, the contextual advertising service from Google's imbalance corporation, is still not well-established in the Russian market. An ordinary user-holder of a small online store, stuffed like a grandmother's pie with blueberries at the regional station, immediately scares the interface. Yes, and problems with Russian morphology, as well as the inconvenience of calculating the monthly budget of an advertising campaign, for more or less medium-frequency queries, usually turning into an impossibility, often serve as a disappointment for a novice entrepreneur and a reason for ending the familiarity with the service at an early stage. Agencies treat AdWords more loyally and even with understanding, but they don’t complain very often. Here they are inconvenienced when calculating without VAT, paid API and, of course, the absence of agency fees from Google. But still, if you also take into account Google search partners (the same Mail.ru), a piece from the audience is offered decent enough to completely ignore.

Although customers who agree to advertise in AdWords are 3-4 times less than in Yandex.Direct, our advertising agency still learned to appreciate this contextual advertising system and we try to be aware of all its innovations. And thanks to a recent call from Google’s agency consultant, at least I was able to more structuredly determine the necessary basics for launching a new AdWords campaign and editing existing ones, which can significantly increase your CTR, conversions, and therefore profits.


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They called us from Dublin, where the main branch of Google is located, working with contextual advertising in a popular search engine. I called the AdWords agency consultant, who explained that they were interested in our success, they studied the campaigns we are running, and they want to give a number of recommendations for improving conversion. In support of a two-hour conversation and kindly coverage by the consultant of all the issues of concern to us, they sent a list of recommendations for campaigning. I want to bring them here. Of course, there is nothing difficult in them, most of the items are necessarily used by more or less professional agents, I just want to structure this information and create a reminder for those who start their campaigns in AdWords. I will also try to provide recommendations with more detailed comments and clarifications, often reflecting, of course, only my opinion.

Recommendations from Google AdWords to start an advertising campaign.

Account structure

Do not forget to create advertising campaigns with the right structure. If you have one product, one campaign and one ad group will be enough. If you want to advertise multiple products, services, or websites, you should create new campaigns and ad groups. Display Network campaigns must be conducted separately. Thus, for each advertised site you need to create 2 different campaigns (for search and for display
network).

Of course, it’s a little weird to read such words, when many people praise AdWords for its ability to structure their campaign, to divide requests-ads into an arbitrary number of groups. The reason is, as the consultant explained, that Google works on complex algorithms for the selection of relevant ad requests. As many people know, ads are displayed not only by selected keywords, but also by broad match requests (unless otherwise specified) and containing at least one word from the search phrase set by the advertiser. So it happens not anyhow, but based on the texts of your ads, adjacent phrases and previous user requests. And, accordingly, the more in one ad group and other phrases, the more accurately Google selects relevant queries, as if helping you to find exactly your client. Of course, subject to the relationship of this group to one subject (service / product).
Perhaps the appearance of a brow spasm reasonable spasm: "But what about the correspondence of this whole pile of ads in one group of search phrases?". As the consultant explained, those very powerful algorithms independently select the most relevant ad from all your heaps. That is, if everything works correctly, the CTR (clickability) should be even higher than before, with careful subdividing of keywords into groups.

Search partners

Try in all search campaigns to include impressions on search partners, since your client may lose relevant clicks on sites that use Google search (for example, mail.ru portal).

Search partners - search engines that use the same search engine and, accordingly, produce the same results as Google. Google has a lot of search partners - in the west. This including, distinguished Alexa, AOL, Amazon and others. We, of course, have a poorer business - this is only Mail.ru recently and, perhaps, soon there will be a Rambler. However, the Russian audience for these search engines is not so small as to be neglected.
Connecting the partner search network is done when creating or setting up the entire campaign in the item “Networks and devices”. It is necessary to put a tick on the "Search partners."

Contextual Media Network

With a new advertising campaign, we usually recommend launching a campaign on the Display Network, for branding purposes. Most advertisers who advertise in AdWords create campaigns on the Display Network, as CPC is lower than on search and it’s easier to find the right audience (age targeting, interest, etc.).

It is difficult to say whether advertising on the Display Network would really work. In AdWords, in my opinion, it is not too good yet, it produces a lot of “garbage” and is not so convenient for filtering it, and it’s not easy to reach its audience in automatic mode either.
But graphic banner ads on the Display Network can be useful. In fact, it is not so expensive. And many experts actually advise starting advertising campaigns for lesser-known brands from it. The main thing is to carefully filter the site, throwing out completely useless.
A display campaign is launched almost as well as a regular one, but when selecting networks for rotation in the “Networks and devices” section, the daw is clicked on the “Contextual Display Network”. Filter the site should be in the "Networks" after a couple of days from the beginning of the campaign.

Keywords

Try adding search queries as keywords every week using the search query feature. On the most effective inquiries, try to raise the rates as much as possible, since this will lead to a more competitive campaign and an increase in the quality score. Don't forget to add irrelevant search queries as negative keywords in the same report. All keywords that have a quality score of 4 or below are worth it right away.
remove.

A very useful recommendation that so many novice advertisers do not follow.
In the "Keywords" section, we can "View key queries" by selecting specific search phrases, groups, ads and assigning an arbitrary range of dates. Here we will see all the requests (except for the last couple of days) that users have seen and clicked on your ad. You can also see by what Google logic dared to show your ad. There are such options: broad match, in case of coincidence of at least one word from your phrase in the user's request; phrasal correspondence, if your phrase is included in the user's request and exact match, in case of complete coincidence of the query with your phrase. There is also an interesting option “broad (based on sessions)”, which marks the relevant user requests, in case if before that he was looking for something also relevant to your phrase.
All these requests must be strictly filtered and mercilessly cleaned. If you looked here for the first time, you will be unpleasantly surprised by what Google requests gave out your innocent ad, which your ad was even clicked on and planned to click further if you do not stop this outrage. To prevent such incidents in the future, you need to mark unnecessary requests and add them on the same page as negative keywords. Due to such simple actions, your CTR can increase significantly, and the cost of the campaign will be profitably reduced.
You should also add search queries to your phrases (“Add as a keyword”). Indeed, in principle, according to these requests, your ad is already displayed and you are already paying for it, but by adding them to your keywords you will help that very powerful Google mind to better select your ads and audience for them. You should not disdain requests with entries - this is not Direct. However, I would not recommend adding any relevant requests. First, filter out too low frequencies, which the “original” users asked only a couple of times and there are no more unique ones, secondly, you can safely add queries with phrase matching to your keywords. But inquiries on broad match should be added very carefully, and having thought well, you should at least take them before quotation in quotes (phrase matching), or even in square brackets (exact matching).
We should also mention the quality indicator. This parameter estimates the value of your keyword on a ten-point scale. Calculated by a variety of parameters, including CTR, relevance to the ad, website, and even takes into account your account history. From him, simply speaking, depends on the position of your ad (better quality-higher ad) and cost per click. A quality score of less than four is a bad one. Such a keyword will not only be disadvantageous to you, but may also be reflected in the evaluation of other phrases. Therefore, it is recommended to remove them.
Usually, the quality score is not visible in the "Keywords" section and the display of this column must be turned on separately.

Bet per Click

When creating a new campaign or when you are trying to optimize your keyword list, try to raise your bids per click as much as possible to ensure the competitiveness of your advertising campaign. When increasing the CTR of the campaign, the quality of the advertising campaign increases and the actual price per click decreases.

An interesting recommendation, of course, which can save substantial funds by first ruining it. But it is difficult to immediately determine the optimal price per click in order to quickly gain a CTR and, preferably, not overpaying for it. Therefore, for those who wish, there is an option to start a campaign with automatic bidding, and after dialing an acceptable CTR - to restart manual control.

Budget

It is important to remember that the frequency of your ad depends on the budget. I recommend that you raise the budget as needed, so as not to interrupt the show. In this way, you ensure the competitiveness of the campaign and you will prevent a decline in the quality score.

The most important thing that you can learn here is that with an uneven display of your ads (for example, if you have a small daily budget), the campaign quality indicator decreases. And so the recommendation from the series “spent more, got better”. It may be worth it if there is a shortage of budget to temporarily remove some search phrases that are not so important and for which there is still not enough money, but the rest will spin reliably and efficiently.

Additional links

This AdWords feature allows you to include in your ads on the search network up to 10 additional links to other pages on your site than the target. This feature can improve ad performance up to 30%.

Among all the other councils, probably the leader in neglect. Nevertheless, the specified campaign extensions may not increase the CTR by 30%, but they certainly will not be redundant and make your ads more visible and useful in issuing.
Google allows you to add additional links to your site (relevant campaigns), a single phone number and addresses. Making other links appear is actually very difficult. To do this, you need to have a very high keyword quality score, as well as an ad insanely relevant to the user's request and carefully selected links to your site. As a result, if and when it is worth trying to see them, it is in the case of advertising by brand name. The phone number is displayed on mobile phones and thanks to this extension, users can immediately call you directly from the search engine. By the way, when you click on the phone number, you will pay as per click on the ad itself. But the addresses add to the ad in the usual search results a reference with a cross, issuing a mini-map with your address. It looks like this:

Agree that such an ad is already getting bigger, therefore it is a little more noticeable and outperforms competitors. In general, it will not be useless.
This is done in the section "Ad extensions", the display of which is initially disabled. You can enable it by clicking on the arrow on the right of the list of all sections.

Conversion tracking

To show your customer how effective advertising is, you can set up conversion tracking in your account. The system will show you the value of the conversion and you will be able to show your client how great the return on advertising in AdWords is. This usually leads to an increase in advertising budget. When using conversions, you can enable the conversion optimizer in your account settings.

AdWords has a special feature for those who want to estimate their profits, but do not want to get involved with Google Analytics. You can specify the conversion pages of your site, assign the approximate profit that this conversion brings to you on average, install the resulting code on the site and admire the result: it seems like how much money you actually received by hitting such funds on this entire advertising campaign.
In practice, the numbers are very relative, and it would be necessary to assign target pages and the average conversion value very meticulously. However, if you put more figures, then the client can really be surprised by a huge “real return” from advertising.
Assigned to conversion in the tab "Reports and Tools" - "Conversions".
Conversion Optimizer is a more interesting thing and, with a careful approach, can help advantageously. Its essence is that you charge Google to adjust the assigned rates at its discretion, on the basis of pre-configured conversions. He will try to set the rates higher in cases where the user and his request best fit the conversion scenario and lower otherwise. In general, will help get the most return.
The optimizer is enabled in the campaign settings in the “Bids” item. To be included, you must have at least 15 completed conversions in the last 30 days.

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On this, in principle, that's all. Of course, more of these recommendations are similar to luring Google money from advertisers, but the “more paid-received more” logic works here. I hope these tips will be useful for beginners and will help refresh and structure the knowledge of professional agents.