Recently, Google had an absolutely normal day.

It shared a fun Doodle for a day. It was used in millions of “I told you so!” moments. It learned more intimate details about individuals than they share with doctors or partners. It also announced some “major” change that scared a niche group of people – paid search marketers.

Google’s New AdWords Enhanced Campaigns

The announcement of Google AdWords Enhanced Campaigns is being talked about with such hype that you’d think the Pope just quit or something. On the surface, this is huge. While this change to AdWords could be the most significant thing to happen to advertising in the last five years, it really isn’t changing anything.

For me, this whole fiasco initially shows one thing: change will always scare us.

Some people are throwing flags and calling foul, but the only people doing so are people like me, paid media managers, a.k.a. PPC fiends.  You can read many blog posts that cover varying opinions on Enhanced Campaigns.

To the rest of the world, the people who didn’t know they needed this, the update could change their lives. Steve Jobs didn’t believe in market research and held the mentality that “… customers don’t know what they want until we’ve shown them.” Isn’t that exactly what Google is doing?

People who manage AdWords budgets are not Google’s customer, it is the client of that person who is Google’s customer — or more appropriately said — it was the client.

If Google asked business owners what they wanted, they would say, “I want the funds to be able to hire an agency to handle my AdWords campaigns.” Google solved the problem by giving control, simple control, to that business owner without all the jargon and complexity offered by an agency.

They did it before the customers asked for it, before market research told to do it, and that is why us PPC fiends have our panties in a bunch. Relax.

The Enhanced Campaigns update is not going to shipwreck things for you and digital agencies are not going to die away.  With that winded preface aside, here are my main four takeaways on Google Enhanced Campaigns.

1. Context-Based Ads & Bidding

The revolution for Google’s customer – remember it’s not us PPC folks – is housing what used to be dozens of campaigns and their subsequent details into one idealistic beast. It’s the time to throw out that day-parted iPhone-specific campaign targeted to the 20-mile radius of Minneapolis and the several other sort-of-similar-sort-of-not campaigns that compliment it, and wrap that mess into one nice bow-tied piece of context capability.

Sure, I still need to migrate and recreate my campaigns, but the essence of the idea is amazing. Yes, I love the idea. I’m going to have so much fun recreating campaigns and re-strategizing things. Why wouldn’t we all love the idea of making simple changes that have large impact?

Having parameters in place to change the percent of a flat bid based on time of day, location, and device is amazing, especially considering how easy it’s going to be.

The capability of being able to adjust bids based on the numerous parameters I set in place is going to a wonderful tool, especially as I guide, consult and grab drinks with clients and explain things to them. The clients are going to see enthusiasm in the details surrounding their investments. They are going to learn more about their business and customers. We are going to build a better relationship. See where I’m going with this?

2. Focused Ad Extensions for Ad Groups

Gone are the days where ad extensions and sitelinks had to be generic enough to comply with all following ad groups. Go ahead and argue I didn’t have things broken out enough, but campaign-level extensions always bothered me.

I’m all about granular details. This change creates even more opportunity to provide the searcher exactly what they are looking for with less effort.

Ad group level ad extensions is a win so large it can’t be brushed aside. My mind has been buzzing with ideas on how to leverage this for my clients. It has started some fun conversations. It brought up very legit concerns about landing adjustments. That has in turn led to further fun discussions. I hope it does for you, too.

3. Clear AdWords Sitelink Performance

Clarity is an exciting thing.  Now you will have something more specific to say than, “This tells me we need to update the URL copy for the site links.”  Sitelinks offer great shortcuts for users to get to the content they need faster.  Locations, directions, popular filters, categories and more are great uses for sitelinks.

Testing copy and destinations is going to be truly backed by meaningful data. You are going to know exactly which site links are working and need changing. This is a small change, but the data now being available is huge! Geeks get ready!

4. Mobile, Local, MOBILE!

As Google throws desktop to the curb and rebrands “mobile” as a catchall device term, mobile must be a significant priority to your clients — all of your clients. The merging of mobile and desktop campaigns is infuriating if you look through the wrong lens. Yes, it’s going to derail specific efforts.

Yes, your CPCs are going to be higher. Yes, the CPA could go up, but only for those who don’t have sites that are ready for mobile.

The sheer number of people who are still not ready for mobile users to hit their site shocks me. It pains me. With this epic merger, an m-dot site, or better yet, a responsive website is a must-have! You owe it to your clients to take them down this road. Sure, you have already told them that, but that was your salesperson saying it. Cut them a deal and preserve the relationship out of their best interests, make their site responsive, get their conversions back in order, and do even more business together.

Pro Tip: If you need help in this, I work with some pretty cool people who are keen on mobile web design. Wink face, nerds, wink face.

Keep Calm

Google has done what they always do, freak out internet nerds with some new updates.  We’ll see if all of them stay or if a few get tweaked a bit.

You are going to be OK. Your clients are going to be OK. The diligent PPC manager is going to tackle the ideas with ease, after all, the strategy isn’t changing at all, just the tactics.

In the highly competitive world of online retail marketing and e-commerce, the smallest advantage can translate into a big difference maker.  I recently launched a Google AdWords campaign for online retailer L & M Supply who originally built their e-commerce platform with Google’s shopping filter in mind.

Combining the use of Google Merchant Center (Shopping for users) with Google’s Product Extension can help your paid search campaign garner some serious attention.

The screenshot above shows how the use of these two Google search services together can help you dominate the search result page.  In our example, our client’s ad displays photos and information on four different products, above all other shopping sites and the manufacturer.

Google Product Extensions Increase Clicks

Some advertisers have claimed a 10% or greater improvement in click-through-rate when using the Google Product Extension feature.  Again, even the slightest advantage can make all the difference in this competitive search marketing environment.

Adding visual elements to the search results pages is an attention getter and also bleeds into the user’s trust level.  Both of these are needed elements for a successful e-commerce search marketing campaign.

If you’d like to learn more about how Google Shopping or AdWords Product Extensions can improve your e-commerce website, give us a shout.

I recently attended an AdWords Advanced seminar conducted by search industry leader, author and certified Google AdWords trainer Brad Geddes.  The seminar section I attended was geared towards search marketing professionals and put an emphasis on advanced conversion techniques.

Some of the information was reinforcement of paid search campaign best practices, but Brad also discussed a few detailed strategies, as well as overarching commonalities of the best run Google AdWords search campaigns worldwide.

Here are five of my key takeaways from the day:

1. Apply the same principles for evaluating any ad campaign to evaluating online ad campaigns.  Setting specific goals for each online campaign is essential to evaluating it’s success.

2. Consider the lifetime value of a customer when determining your cost-per-acquisition goals.

3. Conversion rates for ads in the top three positions are NOT significantly better than other first page positions.

4. Scheduling is underutilized as a way to maximize return on investment.  When are your customers shopping?  When are they buying?  What time of month are they buying?  What time of week are they buying?  What time of day are they buying?

5. Test, test, and test again.  Test your ads.  Test your landing pages.  Test your ecommerce funnels.  Test.

My overall takeaway is that there is no limit to the amount of time that can be spent tweaking Google AdWords campaigns to move closer to your goals or improving your margins, though at some point it becomes an issue of diminishing returns.  However, if you or your agency has reached its goals, consider updating them.

It’s a matter of leading or falling behind.

Spyder Trap Online Marketing is pleased to announce that we’ve recently achieved Google AdWords Certified Partner status.  According to Google’s Partner Search, we join a select group of only 13 partners (currently) in the entire state of Minnesota.

Google’s AdWords Certified Partner status recognizes our search expertise and knowledge of best practices and the latest tools to effectively manage search campaigns.

Spyder Trap’s search marketing services include paid search, search engine optimization (SEO) and search marketing analytics.

This partnership and certification includes exclusive benefits that we’ll be able to share with our clients.

The Google AdWords Certified Partnership represents just a part Spyder Trap’s ongoing mission to learn, innovate, and lead in the ever-changing world of search engine marketing and online marketing.

When engaging in paid search marketing using Google AdWords, a number of components contribute to maximizing your marketing investment.

This post takes a look at your AdWords Quality Score and how a variety of factors combine to measure how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user’s search query.  A keyword’s Quality Score updates frequently and is closely related to its performance.

In general, a high Quality Score means that your keyword will trigger ads in a higher position and at a lower cost-per-click (CPC). That’s what we’re after, the best possible position/ranking with the lowest possible cost.

Google AdWords Quality Score Factors

When creating a new ad, the most important Quality Score factors are:

1. The relevance of the keyword to the ads in it’s ad group
2. The relevance of the ad text/keyword to the search query
3. Other factors like the URL relevance and landing page relevance

Having all of these factors match the query as closely as possible will increase the ad’s initial opportunity to appear on the search engine results first page.  If the ad was written well, then searchers will click on it resulting in even more quality score benefits like:

1. A high ad click-through rate
2. A high display URL click-through rate
3. A high account level click-through rate

Raising the quality score means you can lower your bid while maintaining strong traffic to your website.

Example: Quality Score Making A Difference

One of the primary accounts I manage has a cost-per-click (CPC) maximum bid limit of $1.00.  Unfortunately, they also have strong industry competition, so keywords for many of their services are priced at a premium, much higher than our $1.00 limit.

Focusing on long tail keywords will help, of course, but that alone won’t solve the volume issue.  By following generally well know practices for increasing Quality Score, I was able to reach the first page along side ads paying a much higher CPC.  Thanks to a solid Quality Score, my $1 ads were competing with $2 ads.

Does it take a significant time to accomplish this?  Yes, of course it does… but maybe not as much as you think.  And in this particular case, the efforts were well worth it.

Just as a refresher, let’s take a look at an example of the basic ways I was able to maximize my Quality Score.  I’ll use “widgets” as an example ad:

Keyword: Widgets

Example Ad To Maximize Quality Score

The Four Keys To A Higher Quality Score

In the above example the following adjustments to the ad to improve the Quality Score:

1. Make the headline match the ad exactly.  This will mean making at least two ads  (for testing) for EVERY high traffic keyword.

2. Repeat the keyword in the ad copy.

3. The display URL page should have the same title as your keyword.

4. Make sure the destination page has your keyword (and other ad copy) early in the body text.

If you’ve done this correctly, you’ll have twice as many ads as keywords.  You’ll also have a near 1:1 ratio of Ad Groups and keywords.   Let me give you another example:

Keyword: Black Widgets

Most search marketers would put the Black Widgets keyword in the Widgets Ad Group.  However, if Black Widgets is a $2.25 first page bid estimate, the ad above won’t stand a chance with a $1.00 max bid.

You’ll need to create a new ad group and a new ad like the one below.

Second Quality Score Example Ad

So yes, this can become a daunting project.  Imagine having to create 20,000 ad groups and 40,000 ads for a customer with 10,000 SKUs.  It might seem easier just to increase the bid, but is it the right thing to do?  For me it wasn’t even an option.

If you need help improving your ad’s Quality Score and Google AdWords performance, give us a shout.