In case you missed it:
Trada and Unbounce hosted a webinar recently, in which Trada’s Anna Sawyer and Oli Gardner from Unbounce delved into what Enhanced Campaigns mean for you as an AdWords advertiser, and how you can prepare for Enhanced Campaigns now.
But you don’t have to watch the whole webinar: we pulled the clip about Enhanced Campaigns so you can get right to the good stuff.
Want more webinar content? Visit our webinar videos on YouTube.
Let’s talk about the basics for a minute. We field a lot of questions about paid search, and today we’ll answer some of the most frequently asked questions about PPC.
Can I bid on my competitor’s brand name keywords?
The short answer is “Yes, you can.” In days past, it was considered taboo to bid on your competitor’s brand name. Companies would hire agencies to scour the Web searching for anyone who was bidding on their brand names and send them cease and desist letters. However, rules have changed and it is now considered best practice in most agencies to encourage their clients to bid against competitors. What companies cannot do, however, is include trademark names in their ads. Google and Bing will both disapprove your ads and penalize you if you try to use trademark names in your ads.
What are negative keywords and how do they help me in my campaign?
Negative keywords are keywords companies select to prevent their ads from showing up on searches that are irrelevant to their business. For example, a manufacturer of hiking boots that had “hiking boots” as either a phrase match or broad match keyword, would want a negative keyword of “snow” since they do not sell snow boots. What a company does not want to do is include a keyword that is part of their business. In this example, the company would not want a negative keyword of snow boots, since boots is a keyword they are bidding on. This not only is good business practice, it further qualifies your lead and prevents unwanted click costs.
Does quality score really matter?
Quality score is the search engine’s rank of how relevant your keyword is to the information on your website as well as how useful it is to a user searching for products and services online. Scores range from 0 to 10 with 10 out of 10 being the highest a keyword can receive. Quality score affects not only the cost per click a company will pay for a keyword but also how high your ads rank in the search engine. Your quality score is an important factor in your pay per click campaigns, and companies want to do what they can to make sure their quality score is as high as it can be. The more relevant your keywords are to your business, the higher the quality score will be. Companies should work closely with their web development team and their search engine marketing team, to make sure that keywords are on the site and the pay per click campaign that make the most sense to the products or services sold.
Want to learn more about Quality score? Trada hosted a webinar with the Google AdWords team very recently: it contains the most up-to-date information about how to understand quality score in 2013.
Google made a significant announcement today: starting in a few weeks and rolling out until the middle of the year, all AdWords mobile, desktop and tablet campaigns will be combined. You will no longer have the option of separating them, but you will be able to optimize multiple devices from a single platform. For you, Google Enhanced Campaigns will bring great advertising opportunity, but also complexity.
What else does it mean?
1. AdWords campaign managers will need to overhaul their strategies – fast
2. Platform solutions for PPC are scrambling to update their products
3. Trada’s human-powered solution is more adaptable, intuitive and groundbreaking than ever
From Google
According to Google, Enhanced Campaigns are designed to help advertisers promote marketing messages based on people’s context (location, the device they are using, the time of day), all within a single campaign. This change is meant to address the knowledge that the majority of search engine users are using multiple devices. Google promises that Enhanced Campaigns will streamline and optimize the way we bid, that we will be able to deliver more targeted ads to users across devices, and that advanced reporting metrics will be available in one place.
You should be concerned
If you’re concerned that you’ll need to change your strategy, you should be. We’ve all been trained to run ads for devices in separate campaigns, and the best PPC managers’ strategies for mobile and desktop have been established and tested. Google has released guidelines for users who want to embrace the switch right away, but all campaigns will be moved over to the new system by mid-2013.
That said, the update promises to bring great value to your campaigns. It is worth it to learn the rules now to take advantage of this opportunity.
Public outcry
Many PPC managers in the industry are frustrated. They’ve worked hard to optimize campaigns in a way they know works. Google’s Enhanced Campaigns switch suggests that mobile, tablet and desktop users search in similar ways, and we know this isn’t true. User behaviors and ROI are different for these types of users.
What we think
Sweeping, sudden changes to the way the networks function aren’t new. The Google Enhanced Campaigns update seems disruptive, and it will be—to the industry status quo and to the way PPC managers and platforms run their businesses. Google may backpedal or build additional functionality when they see how many advanced PPC players are frustrated.
In the meantime, we must adapt. Trada suggests you stay ahead of the curve and begin preparing for the change NOW by familiarizing yourself with the details of Enhanced Campaigns. The Google Enhanced Campaigns microsite and webinars are a good place to start.
And finally, we feel compelled to point out that Trada’s Expert Marketplace has a distinct advantage when it comes to embracing this and other big network changes. While bid management platforms are scrambling to overhaul their business models and their products to comply with Enhanced Campaigns, Trada’s expert workforce has been preparing to optimize in the new system since the moment we were told about the change by Google—and they will be ready when we begin rolling out this functionality in a few weeks. A great benefit of a human-powered model is the ability to leverage intuition and expertise to be nimble about strategic evolution.
Trada is ready
When you join Trada, we assign a team of highly specialized experts to perform the strategic buildout, daily optimization and constant curation of your AdWords and Bing campaigns. Their ability to intuitively optimize based on platform changes and conversion data means they’re ready to take on the opportunity Enhanced Campaigns presents.
How are you reacting to the Google Enhanced Campaign changes? How are you preparing? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
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