By Charlie Cummins – bbmm.ie
Google continued with their 2015 programme of breakfast briefings today. This was the 4th in the series and looked at advanced strategies for AdWords – strategies all designed to improve the effectiveness of Google AdWords for clients. The key areas covered were:
1. How to Bid Across Location, Time and/or Devices
When a client has some knowledge and history of how their AdWords campaigns are performing, it is possible to improve that performance by making adjustments based on this history. A review of when clicks are peaking throughout the day will allow clients to adjust their bid strategy to focus on these peak hours. This is done by setting parameters around the time of day they want their ads to show. Similarly, knowing that traffic from one region delivers better results than another again lets an advertiser fine tune geographically where ads should display. This is equally true of devices: if mobiles deliver better than desktop, then adjust the bid strategy to focus there.
2. Creative Stand Out
Using ad extensions in an AdWords campaign is a very effective means of increasing click through rates (CTR’s) on AdWords. There are three primary extensions: Site Links, Location and Call extensions. These are free to use in that there is no charge to include them as part of the ad text. Costs only come into play when the extensions are clicked on, at which point standard CPC kicks in.
Site extensions are the most important, as they drive traffic to an especially relevant landing page in your website. Google research has shown that adding two lines of extensions increases CTR’s by 20%, while 3 lines generate an extra 30%.
Location extensions help users pick ads relevant to their locality. These deliver an extra 10% in average CTR’s. A caveat on location extensions is that the business must have a “Google My Business” page set up.
The call extension is just that: a facility that lets users click on a phone number and connect with the business. CPC applies when the phone number is clicked.
Apart from the improved click through rate, a further advantage of using extensions on AdWords is that it increases the size of the ad. It therefore takes up more space on the search results page – pushing your competitors further down the page.
3. New From Google – Call Forwarding
An important announcement today was that Google are introducing a product called Call Forwarding Phone Number. In essence, Google will provide a unique phone number for display on your ad, which will in turn connect with your business number. This will allow Google to track call duration, start/end times, caller area code and if the call was connected. Calls can even be tracked as a conversion in analytics.
4. Auction Insights
This tool within your AdWords account will allow advertisers to examine various metrics resulting from their AdWords activity. Metrics such as Impression Share and Average Position, or Overlap Rates with your competitors to show how often both of you appeared in the same search results. Further insights available including Keyword Planner, the Opportunities Centre and Search Query Report.
All the above refinements can be completed within Google AdWords accounts. For clients needing more information on using these effective planning tools, the Google AdWords help centre https://support.google.com/adwords/ can provide more insight. Or contact us at BMM ([email protected]) to discuss how we can improve your AdWords spends using these strategies.
