This document lists 42 reasons why an advertiser's AdWords campaign may not be performing as well as it could. It provides tips on issues like not using negative keywords, being too broad in targeting, having too small of a budget, not optimizing for mobile users, being too granular in targeting, having issues with pricing or ad copy, not using available ad extensions fully, and not analyzing user behavior and metrics closely enough. The goal is to help advertisers identify and address potential problems in their campaigns to improve results.

1. 42
REASONS
YOUR
ADWORDS
SUCK.
Sunday, 1 June 14

2. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
INTRODUCTION.
With over 9 years of hair pulling, keyboard smashing, coffee
spilling experiences with Adwords, we’ve seen (and been
guilty of) some great screw ups. Some were small and some
were simply gut wrenchingly huge (Google is the winner in
every case however!).
This was written as a guide to the foibles many of us are
guilty of, whether we like it, know it or not.
So here are 42 reasons why your
Adwords campaign sucks.
Jimmy,
JimmyData.com
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Sunday, 1 June 14

3. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
CONTENTS.
1. Negatives
2. Too Broad?
3. Budget Constraints
4. Mobile
5. Granularity
6. Pricing
7. Monday?
8. The Landing
9. Extensions
10/11. More Extensions
12. ...Extensions!
13. Adcopy
14. Mobile bid adjust
15. Mobile ads
16. Low imp Share
17. Ad delivery
18. Modified Match
19. Search Queries
20. Analytics
21. Search + Display
22. Conversions
23. The offer
24. Split Testing
25. Ad testing
26. Low CTR
27. Ignoring the long tail
28. Trends
29. Remarketing?
30. Remarketing #2
31. Automated Rules
32. Patience
33. Dynamic Insertion
34. Dynamic insertion #2
35. Lazy?
36. Calm Down
37. Trigger Happy
38. Scheduling
39. Geo Targeting
40. Ad Settings
41. Competitors
42. Reporting
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4. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
1. NO NEGATIVES
It never ceases to amaze me how many advertisers are
swimming in the PPC world without the aid of Negative
keywords.
I recently audited a major global account with a spend of
approximately $250k per month over 18 countries and the
total number of negative keywords was 220! That’s 220
negatives over thousands of adgroups and $250k of spend
per month! It’s like sending a capacity cruiseliner with
3000+ guests that is only fitted with 60 life jackets.
I calculated that for one adgroup alone, the spend for
irrelevant keywords for a month was close to $600. This was
for one adgroup out of thousands.
Put your negative keywords in. If you don’t then you are
wasting both money and time chasing your tail.
As an example you sell Watermelons. Yes Watermelons,
that’s what you do now. You sell the big fresh green ones
with the red filling that for some reason stains like nothing
else. (how does ‘water’ stain anyway?)
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5. Anyway, where was I. Yes Watermelons.
So you run a campaign advertising your watermelons. Your
keyword list looks something like this:
- watermelons
- water melons
- buy watermelons
Look ok right? Well not really, especially since these are
simply broad keywords. So Google will look for synonyms
and anything else it deems relevant.
What this means is that when someone looks for a
honeydew, cantaloupe and possibly even those horrid
rockmelons, your ad may show. If you are not selling these
other imitation melons then you need to add them as
negatives.
There are more tools in the Adwords arsenal such as match
types etc but get your negatives sorted first and foremost.
5 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
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6. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
2. TOO BROAD
You are too broad. You bid on generic terms and don’t
bother with modifiers.
What some advertisers don’t understand is that Google’s
definition of broad is well just that, very broad. The
synonyms they use can really send your campaign off on a
tangent and trigger some really random terms. Remember
the watermelons? Yeh well being too broad was your
problem. Think the terms ‘reseller’ and ‘whitelabel’ are
different? Google might not think so. Think the words
‘cheap’ and ‘budget’ are different? Google may not. I know I
do and the conversion rates for each term is completely
different.
That’s when the ‘modifier’ comes in. Some have called it the
‘phrase match killer’. Think of it as somewhere between
broad and phrase and what it does is essentially tell Google
to stay away from synonyms but include plurals. Kind of
sounds like what you would expect a normal broad to be! It
does not necessarily for all campaigns that using modified
broad terms are vital, but the majority of the time, I would
use them.
Don’t let Google do the guess work, take control.
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7. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
3. BUDGET CONSTRAINTS
Is your budget too small? If you are selling a product for
$500 and your monthly budget is $1000 then that is most
likely not enough to test a market.
Similarly if you have a keyword list of 1000 keywords and a
budget of $500 per month, you have spread yourself too
thin.
TIP: There are no hard and fast rules however there are
some ballpark figures to work towards. As a benchmark, use
Google’s keyword tool or an external tool like SEMrush to
work out what a click is going to cost you. Assume you can
manage to get 2% CTR on your keywords, you can then
work out a budget that will most likely work for you.
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8. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
4. NO MOBILE LANDING PAGE
Mobile is huge now, and Jimmy is not just talking about the
screens (yep.. I just went there). If you haven’t already
checked, you will find that mobile traffic makes up anywhere
between 30-50% (possibly more) of all the traffic coming
through Search. People will take action from their mobile,
especially in industries such as beauty, travel or auto.
So make sure you either offer a great mobile experience
and/or have a defined mobile strategy otherwise you will be
wasting your money. Understand your mobile traffic and
take the appropriate action. If you don’t have a strategy in
place and need time, set your mobile bid adjusters (for
enhanced campaigns) to -100% and come back to it once
you have decided on a strategy.
TIP: If your mobile experience isn’t up to scratch, then try
using ‘click only’ call extensions. This will ensure people using
mobiles only have the option of calling. Perfect for local
service based businesses.
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9. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
5. TOO GRANULAR
I like granularity. Love it in fact. However sometimes you
may be asking too much of your campaign if you stick
primarily to the long tail. Long tail keywords do, on average,
perform much better than general terms however the
downside to them is that they generate less volume.
The issue with being too specific is that if Google feels the
search demand or interest isn’t high enough, it simply won’t
show your ads, regardless whether the term is a proven
performer or not.
Another problem with being too granular is that the wrong
keywords start triggering the wrong ads. If a broad term
from one campaign can trigger multiple adgroups and their
associated ads.. well it will. In this case the highest
performing bid will win that auction. So you may need to
bite that granular bullet and start building out those
adgroups to clean up your broken campaign.
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10. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
6. PRICING
Don’t lie. Don’t say “Free” if it isn’t and don’t make a pricing
promise that you can’t easily and clearly deliver to your
Google traffic.
“None of my business” you say? Well think again, its not
about me, its Google who is going to penalize you (that’s
right Mr Acai Berry dude). That’s right, Google does actually
analyze (whether it be automatically or manually) the
landing page experience and if you don’t deliver on your
promise or your selling proposition then Google will either
charge you a fortune per click, or they simply won’t run
your ads at all.
TIP: An image won’t cut it. Google isn’t the best at reading
images so make sure your key selling drivers are clear and in
a readable text format.
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11. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
7. DAY OF THE WEEK
Have you studied user behaviour for different days of the
week? I guarantee you that most of the time there will be a
correlation and a skew towards certain days performing
better than others.
As an example, we have found for products selling physical
items that need to be shipped, Thursdays - Saturdays were
the worst performing days with CPA almost triple compared
to a Sunday -Wednesday. Why? Well.. people didn’t like to
wait 4 days to receive the item because generally no one
delivers or ships on the weekend. Makes sense right? There
is a good chance a lot of advertisers may not understand
user behavior and be spending top dollar on days where a
decent CPA was achievable. This will vary from Display to
Search, with display’s impulsive users less likely to care when
they get their product... as long as they get it.
Understand your day of the week reports and get yourself
thinking ‘why’ the behaviour varies as it does. Understanding
and asking yourself these questions is a great step towards
improving your campaign.
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12. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
8. LANDING PAGE
What do you know about your landing page? Have you
tested it? Does it have trigger elements that are sending
people off your website in an instant.. or possibly trigger
elements that are making people buy?
In the day of the week example mentioned previously, the
client’s Thursday to Saturday problem was rectified by
simply adding ‘Ships within 24hrs’ (which they did).
In another example, a client with a prominent dating site
focused around matching professional singles, found that
whenever their landing page features picture of people
under 30 conversion rates would plummet. Why? The
landing page didn’t ‘relate’ with the users coming to the site
(slightly older). Removing images of people and keeping the
site ‘neutral’ was the key to turning this campaign around
and driving website sign-ups.
TIP: Try using heat mapping tools like crazyegg.com to
understand the habits of visitors to your landing pages. Also
ensure you have linked your Adwords with Analytics to
better understand user behaviour from specific keyword
which provides great insight.
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13. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
9. AD EXTENSIONS
Since there isn’t enough complexity in Google’s Adwords
ranking system, towards the end of 2013, Google decided to
change how it calculates its Adrank (Ie the position you
appear on the search results page). Yes your bid is important.
Yes your quality score is important. But there is now another
factor in the mix and this third component is, quoting Google
directly, "the expected impact from your ad-extensions and
formats". And yes... it is truly as vague as how it sounds.
So if all things were equal and there are two competing ads
with the same bid and quality score, then the ad which is
deemed to have the most positive expected impact from
extensions will in most cases, appear higher. This all sounds a
bit here-say but Google does kind of make it easy in that they
will generally show the highest performing combination of ad
extensions and formats as it deems appropriate. Bottom line,
this means use the ad extensions, use them all and try to
incorporate them into every one of your campaigns. Don't do
it.. then your competitors are already one step ahead of you
(literally!).
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14. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
10. CALL EXTENSIONS
Do you simply need the phone to ring? Are you using call
extensions? Are you driving people to a non-mobile friendly
website instead of only giving them the option to call? Each
business is different, but if you need phone calls, then make
sure you are using call extensions. Any business needing
phone calls should utilize these and with today’s changing
Adrank algorithm, its never been more important.
11. SITELINKS
If you are generally ranked in the top 1-3 positions and are
not using sitelinks via ad extensions then your competitors
are doing a better job than you, simple as that. If they are
also not using them, please contact me and let me know
your industry, I want in! Again, like most ad-extensions,
remember to use site links wherever you can (there is very
little reason not to use them). Sitelinks allow you to take up
more real estate on the front page and enables you to
include more information about your business, giving
potential customers more choice and more targeted deep-
linked options. Use them. Full stop.
TIP: Use them
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15. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
12. LOCATION EXTENSIONS
Are you a local business and need people to find you?
Restaurants, Dry Cleaning services, beauty salons, dentists..
pretty much any business which requires someone to
physically go to your business and interact, then you should
consider using locations extensions.
Depending on the device you are targeting and what other
ad extensions you are utilizing you may not be showing in
the map 100% of the time. However due to Google’s new
Adrank formula, it simply doesn’t make sense to ignore it.
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16. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
13. GENERIC ADCOPY
I see this time and time again from advertisers whether it be a
lack of time or whether they have specific branding and copy
guidelines to stick to. But the truth is: generic adcopy is a killer
for campaigns.
Generic adcopy does several things to your campaign. If you are
running the same adcopy for all adgroups across all your
individual themes then you are not providing a relevant ad for
each theme right? And relevancy is at the forefront of great user
experience. The generic ads lead to two main problems:
1.The first being your CTR would almost always be lower
than it ideally should because your ads are not very relevant
to your user. For example if you are a beauty salon and you
have a generic headline that says “Local Beauty Salon’, that
might be fine if someone searches for ‘local beauty salon’.
However what happens when someone searches for ‘pedicure
in Camberwell’? They will of course, see the same headline. Is
that Relevant? Well kind of. If you were that user, would you
prefer to see the headline ‘Pedicures from $39’? That’s
relevancy..
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17. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
2. Google understands that your ad is generic and in turn, as
seen in the example above, is less relevant to your target
audience. Since Google rewards relevancy, such generic
adcopy will lead to a low quality score. A low quality score
will mean Google will push your Adrank lower, meaning an
even lower CTR and much higher CPCs. CTR is an element of
quality score so down it goes again, and again, and again.
When does this snowball end? When you have 0 impressions
and 0 traffic. Put some effort into your adcopy.
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TIPS
1. Use Price in your adcopy
2. Use Ad extensions.
3. Base your copy around ‘themes’
4. Only test one thing at a time so you know what works and
what doesn’t.
5.Test test test. Always test new copy and creative.
Throw in a Geo reference and you are all set.
Useful example can be found here
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18. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
14. MOBILE BID ADJUSTER
What performs better.. Mobile or desktop? If you can answer
this then you probably have a good idea of what bid adjuster
you should be using. Mobile performing through the roof? Up
the adjuster. Mobile tanking a little, reign it in or shut it off
completely. Use conversion data to understand where your
adjuster should be. Need the extremes? There are 2 numbers
you should remember, -100% and 300%.
15. MOBILE AD SELECTION
Mobile ads don’t look the same as desktop ones. Ads you
want to display on a mobile may not be what you want the
desktop users to see. Ads perform differently whether they
are on mobile, desktop or tablet... you get it.
Google actually allows
you to select which
ads you would prefer
to show on mobile. If
you don’t select
anything, then all ads
will be treated the same so it may be worth thinking about
differentiating mobile and desktop ads.
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19. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
16. LOW IMPRESSION SHARE
Low impression share tells you a great deal about your campaign as a
whole however many search marketers don’t actually know how to
use this info to make the most out of their campaigns. Most SEM’s,
PPCers or whatever they go by, still think that a low impression share
means your budget is not high enough so you are missing out on
impressions. It sounds pretty straight forward actually, you don’t have
enough of a budget, so Google is throttling or switching your ads on
and off so you don’t go over budget by the end of the day. Right?
Sorta.. but not 100% right. Or even close to 100% right.The more
telling statistics to look at are the other impression share data that
Google gives you.These include Search Exact Match IS, Search Lost IS
(rank) and Search Lost IS (budget). Little briefing:
Search Exact Match IS - Looks at % of impressions you
received for terms that matched exactly (or were close variants) your
keywords.
Search Lost IS (rank) - Search impression share that was lost
due to your Adrank.
Search Lost IS (budget) - Search impression share that was lost
due to budget.
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20. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
16. LOW IMPRESSION SHARE
(cont)
In fact the least important metric when it comes to analyzing
impression share is, in fact, search impression share!To get a better
idea we would use the other type of impression share data. In the
screenshot above, on face value, we are missing out on 10% of
impressions but that is only half of the story.
In regards to budgets causing lost impressions it is in fact, only 0.9%, so
increasing our budget will not lead to an increase in search impression
share. More telling is looking at the Search Lost IS (rank) which tells us
that a low Adrank has lead us to missing out on impressions. Even
more alarming, we are missing out on 19% of exact match IS.
So what shall we do here? Its all about Adrank, not budget.What can
we do to improve Adrank? 3 things: Bid, Quality Score and Ad
Extension usage.
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21. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
17. AD DELIVERY
Ad delivery is usually set to spread evenly over a day by
default. Check it and ensure you have the right settings.
Spending too quick? Then if could mean that you have it set to
‘accelerated’. Bit simple? You’d be surprised.
18. ONLY USING MODIFIED
MATCHES
Are you using modified broad matches only to find that you
are not generating enough traffic? Many PPC advertisers have
started to consider modified broad matches as the new
‘phrase match’.To some of these marketers, the modified
broad match has become a crutch. Probably not the best idea.
Remember, modified broad matches only allows for plurals
and close variants.. no synonyms.
The downside with the modified broad match is that it can
possibly hide invaluable data. Sometimes by only using
modified broad matches you could be missing out on some
valuable traffic or keyword data especially if its a new
campaign or an agency digging into a new industry. Modified
broad matches only allows for plurals and close variants.. no
synonyms.
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22. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
19. NOT USING SEARCH
QUERY DATA
Fitting that this comes right after using the broad modifier as a
crutch. Search queries can give you some of the most valuable
data available to improve your Adwords campaign. Many
marketers think the search query report is only really good
for finding negative keywords but that is only one part of it.
Understanding your search terms is also a great way to find
more keyword ideas to flesh out your campaign.
The truth is, how you search for a product, may not be how
they search for it. Getting the full story will allow you to
build a better keyword list, write better ads (more specific to
the actual terms coming in) as well as stop those rogue
keywords from coming through dragging your quality score
down and Avg CPC up.
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23. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
20. NOT MERGING ANALYTICS
WITH ADWORDS
I can’t say merging Google Adwords and Google Analytics is
the most intuitive thing to do , but its not very hard and the
rewards are high. Lately the new look and relatively user
friendly Analytics makes it quite easy to do.
All you need to ensure is that your Analytics account is shared
as an administrator with the MCC account you are using and
then it is pretty straight forward from there.
Merging Adwords and Analytics will ensure Analytics data can
be filtered among what is coming in through organic or paid
search. Note that there will usually be a variance between
what Adwords tells you and what Analytics tells you.
Once you have merged the two, you are given a ton of data
that Adwords alone doesn’t tell you. Once they are linked, log
into Analytics -> Acquisition -> Campaigns... and there is all
your data.
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24. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
TIP: Use Adwords for raw click data and Analytics for
behavioural analysis of your users. Don’t try to analyse exact
numbers in Analytics as it will simply lead to you chasing your
tail.. there will be a variance.. but analyse the data and use that
information to both improve your campaign and your website.
21. COMBINING SEARCH
WITH DISPLAY
I still can’t believe how many people and agencies are still
doing this. Never run display and search in the same
campaign. It makes zero sense to do so as both types of
campaigns work completely different and all you end up with
is a whole bunch of skewed data, a low CTR and a lot of
wasted money. Split them up and keep them separate, search
is not display and display is not search. Jimmy says no.
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25. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
22. NO CONVERSION
TESTING
Are you running conversion tracking? No? Leave. If you are
not measuring your campaign then there is no point running
it. Simple. As.That. It’s like writing an email without your
monitor plugged in.You are hitting buttons, you kind of know
stuff is happening, a few noises, groaning, ticking... but that’s
about it. Before you run anything, get your conversion
tracking sorted.
23. NO OFFER VISIBLE ON
LANDING PAGE
This goes in line with pricing (point 6) in that if you promise
something in your ad, then you should deliver on that promise
quickly and without too many roadblocks. Make it difficult
then you may notice higher CPCs, little traffic or no traffic at
all.
TIP: Ensure your ‘offer’ is in a readabe text form, otherwise it
may go unnoticed and your Quality score will remain low.
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26. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
24. NOT SPLIT TESTING
LANDING PAGES
If you don’t test then you don’t know what you are leaving on
the table. Always split test landing pages where you can. If you
don’t have an A/B testing platform or system, simply use
Google’s experiments and start analysing landing page data.
It’s almost fun in a way but remember to only test one thing
at a time.
TIP:Things to try and test: headlines, colours, positioning of
call to action, test prices. One test at a time is important to
understand the effect of each test.
25. NOT TESTING DIFFERENT
ADS
Have you decided that your current adcopy is good and
simply left it? Or have you tested any new adcopy at all?
Often PPC marketers and agencies either don’t test enough
adcopy or they don’t test at all.You could have the greatest
campaign potential, however have deemed its useless as a
result of simply not having good adcopy which can be
attributed to not testing variations.
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27. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
Good adcopy will mean not only higher CTR but also may
lead to: 1. More impressions 2. Higher Adrank 3. Lower CPCs
4. More conversions. No brainer really, test your adcopy!
26. IGNORING LOW CTRS
Low CTR’s can be painful.To see the full explanation visit
point 13. Generic adcopy above.
27. NOT USING THE LONG
TAIL
If you were buying a 2011 second hand Ford Fiesta how
would you go about searching for one? Would you type in
‘used cars’? Probably not. Would you type in Used Ford..
possibly not. What about 2011 Ford Fiesta? Bingo. 2011 Blue
Ford Fiesta.. even better.
Welcome to the long tail and if your adwords campaign is
performing badly then have a look at your long tail keywords,
if you have them at all.
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28. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
Long tail terms do not generate as much traffic as shorter,
broader terms, but their conversion rates and effectiveness is
a whole world better.
TIP: This is essential if you are in a competitive, high demand
industry.
Use your search query data for ideas
28. NOT USING TRENDS TO
ANTICIPATE DIPS
If your organic sun screen business did really well in
December, chances are April or May will be a big shock. Not
all products are ‘evergreen’ and some are affected (sometimes
significantly) by cyclical or seasonal trends. Understand where
the trends are an anticipate the ups and downs.
Just because your campaign was working well last month,
doesn’t necessarily mean it will work well in 2 months times.
Find the trends and adjust accordingly. Some interesting trends
we have noted (dog fleas, Gutter and Window cleaning,
Dating over Christmas)
TIP: Apart from search queries you could try using Google’s
trend tool - http://www.google.com.au/trends/
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29. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
29. NOT REMARKETING
What do you do with the traffic that has not converted on
your website? I’m concerned about that blank look your are
giving me which usually means ‘err.. nothing’.
If you are advertising on Adwords then there is no question
about it, not everyone will convert.You will most likely be
losing potential leads, new business, qualified traffic and sales
at some point, so why not try and bring these people back?
You’ve done all the hard work already.
Think of it this way.You have spent a small fortune to get the
traffic to your site and paid a premium CPC. We know not
everyone will convert that should have (ie those that will
benefit from your product.) This may not be your fault, some
people, depending on where they are on the buying cycle
need several touch points to take action, so don’t take
offense.
So why not pay a fraction of that CPC to bring them back
again? The conversion rates I have seen and the acquisition
costs from remarketing is truly remarkable in some instances.
Try it at least and forget the concern that ‘display doesn’t
work’.Trust me, try it.
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30. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
30. NOT REMARKETING
PROPERLY
Are you selling products and simply remarketing by sending
people back to your website? Then you are most likely not
remarketing properly and should be using some really cool
tools that Google gives you at your disposal.
You can remarket with product ads so if someone was looking
at that stunning black dress on your website, then you can
show them more stunning black dresses as they browse the
net. What could be more relevant?! Were they searching for
accommodation in Bali? Then chances are they are still
considering going to Bali so use your cookie pools effectively
to target the right people and most importantly, send them to
the right place.
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31. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
31. USING AUTOMATED RULES
Automated rules can be great and can save you lots of time
but its important to know what you are doing when you use
them.
A thing to note about automated rules is that they are exactly
that, automated. I have seen people run automated scripts
daily, trying to stay within the top 2 Adrank.This can be a true
disaster if your competitor is doing the same or you have a
quality score issue.
A common script to run is trying to keep a high adrank by
increasing bids automatically if the average position is
consistently below a certain number.The script does not
know that your profit margins are at $8 so it will happily bid
$15 a click.
Ensure you set your limits with automated rules. Even if you
are reluctant, set a max CPC ceiling so its doesn’t go over
board.
TIP: Add Quality score in your automated bid. Ensure you
dont increase bids where the quality score is under 5,There
are other factors you need to address and simply upping bids
with your automated rules won’t solve the issue.
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32. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
32. NOT BEING PATIENT
ENOUGH
Are you someone that checks your campaign daily and makes
major changes to it just as frequently? Chances are you may
be chasing your tail and overriding previously beneficial
changes before they’ve had a chance to take effect. Adwords
is about being statistically relevant.
33. NOT TESTING DYNAMIC
INSERTION
Getting really bad CTR’s but are convinced that your
keywords are driving in the right market? Well then maybe
your ads are simply not good enough or not relevant enough.
Using dynamic keyword insertion into your adcopy is one
super easy way to make your ads more relevant to the user.
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33. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
TIP: Simply add this to your Headline: {KEYWORD:Default
Headline}. In the section where it says ‘Default Headline’ put
in your default headline (please don’t leave it as is!).This
essentially tells Google that if the search term typed in by the
user is too long (over 25 characters) then replace it with the
default headline. Easy? Now go give it a shot.
34. RELYING ON DYNAMIC
INSERTION
Word of warning. Don’t rely on dynamic keyword insertion. I
have seen this reliance many times over ,and in many cases,
caused many issues for that advertiser.The risk with running
dynamic insertion ads is that it will mimic what the person has
typed in, which in some cases may be irrelevant.
Lets say you install solar systems and solar panels for
companies looking to save money on their energy bills.
Naturally you bid on terms such as ‘Solar systems’ and are
also using dynamic insertion. So you are happy and satisfied
that this is going to work brilliantly.
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34. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
Enter the inquisitive 9yr old who visits Google and searches
the term ‘Solar System Map’. Guess who’s ad shows up? Guess
what the ad headline said? You have not disappointed the 9yr
old, you have paid a fortune for that useless click and not one
got what they wanted. If on the other hand your ad said ‘Solar
Panel Installer’, would the child have bothered to click your
ad? Probably not. So don’t use dynamic keyword insertion as
your crutch, but a great testing tool.
35. NOT CHECKING AND
AMENDING ENOUGH
Thinking that after a month of a well running campaign that
you are set for life? That type of thinking has been the
downfall of many PPC managers.The entrance of 1-2
advertisers can completely change the dynamics of a whole
industry. Picture this, you are converting at 10% paying $2 a
click.That means your conversion cost is a cool $20. If your
margin is $10 then all is good. However now picture that CPC
being taken to $3 per click? Suddenly you are not making a
profit.Things can change drastically from week to week even
day to day.
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35. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
Even if your campaign is cranking along, check on it regularly.
Check your auction insights and what your competition are
doing and also any trends in your search query report that
will help you make your campaign even more profitable.
36. CHECKING TOO MUCH
Have a budget of $20 a day yet check your campaign daily?
This could in fact be more detrimental to your campaign than
doing it good.There are no hard and fast rules but the
number of times you should check and make changes all
depends on the data.
If you are running a very large campaign with lots of volume,
then checking it daily might be a good idea. However most
advertisers don’t fall into this category, and the daily checks
can often lead to you chasing your own tail. A Monday isn’t a
Tuesday and a Tuesday is definitely not a Wednesday (don’t
get me started on Fridays!). Be sensible with checking your
campaign and ensure you are getting the full scope of data
before you can conclude that changes based on good data.
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36. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
If you really are not sure, then maybe leaving it a little longer
is the way to go.
37. MAKING TOO MANY
CHANGES AT ONCE
Chicken or the egg? Don’t make your campaign subject to
such a debate. For example if you were to change up the
landing page as well as your adcopy and then suddenly you
witnessed an increase in conversions then you have yourself a
dilemma. Was it the adcopy? Was it the landing page? If you
had only changed your landing page, test it for a week, and
then re-evaluated then you would have a much better idea of
how that landing page performed. Same thing goes if you
were amending ONLY adcopy, gather some data, analyse and
then make a judgement.
Keeping a campaign stable while only tweaking one element at
a time will allow you to properly gather what leads to results,
and what doesn’t. Making several changes at a time will jumble
the good and the bad, leading to bad decisions on what has
proved effective and what didn’t.
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37. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
The less variables you introduce in your testing, the more
accurate the data will be.
38. DAY SCHEDULE SETTINGS
Hitting budget easily and getting decent results? Good. But
not great.. Right? Have you checked your hourly performance?
No? Well that could be your answer to a more efficient and
more profitable Adwords campaign.
Google allows you to run 'Hour of the Day' reports within
their segments and then based on the data from here, you can
choose when your budget should be spent during the day and
also increase the max CPC for certain times.
The more data you have, the more noticeable pattern you will
see. Hourly schedules can help improve efficiency and drive
conversions to the next level. Spend during proven converting
time periods and weed it off or shut it off during lull periods,
its your call.
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38. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
39. GEO TARGETING
For example mixing countries into your targeting may mean
you pay too much for some country traffic and not enough
for others. For example if you are selling software solutions
globally, does it make sense to bid $2 worldwide? $2 will see
you at position 1 all day for many countries and 9+ for
others.
A single bid will often lead to skewed country data and if you
don’t believe me, check your Dimensions tab in your previous
or current multi country campaign. Grouping countries into
‘segments’ is a way to avoid this and will allow you vary your
bid across multiple countries to ensure you get traffic and
data from all the applicable regions to determine what areas
are profitable, and which ones are not.
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39. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
40. AD ROTATION SETTING
Did you just let Google 'look after' this one? Bad choice.
Google's default setting is to optimise for clicks. Its probably
the best option if you are only running one ad :). But since
you are reading this, you are probably testing more than one
ad and therefore should move on from this default setting.You
should always 'evenly' test your ads because it is wrong to
think an Ad simply is a way to draw more clicks.
An ad starts the conversion process and different ads have
different conversion rates so choosing the ad that simply
generates more clicks means leaving conversions on table
without you even knowing it! In June 2012, Google forced all
advertisers to show ads evenly for 30 days (sometimes 90
days) for whatever reason I'm not sure... might have
something to do with wanting more click$. Anyway, Google
then backtracked in October 2012 giving advertisers and ad
managers the option to rotate ads indefinitely. Google doesn't
usually backtrack and is evidence that 'default settings' need
to be discarded in favour of a more measurable approach.
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40. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
41. IGNORE COMPETITORS
The reason you pay what you do, the reason you don’t get all
the clicks and the reason why you now pay $3.25 not $2.95
per click is because of the competition.
Want to know the strangest thing? It’s the people below you
are the ones driving your CPC higher and higher, not the guys
above. How does that work? Well, considering all things were
equal, in the Adwords bidding war, you only pay 1c more than
the guy below.
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41. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
42. Time Reporting
All 41 reasons prior to this mean absolutely nothing if you
don’t have the time to put best practices into action.
Reporting to clients is the real time sucker, the resource
drainer, the dread all PPC marketers feel that time of the
week, month or quarter. It’s time consuming nature means
many of us unfortunately spend our time reporting on client
campaigns, instead of optimising it for better performance.
This is why JimmyData was created, to save time, money and
that dreaded feeling on reporting day.
Streamline and automate your reporting process and use time
saved to work on building and running better campaigns.
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42. 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK
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