Retargeter

6 Things You Didn’t Know About AdWords

AdWords is an incredibly popular advertising tool. While it’ s easy to get a PPC campaign going, there are numerous features within AdWords that you may not know about. AdWords can be used for lead generation, to drive traffic, promote content, and even for branding. As you work to optimize your AdWords campaigns to meet your goals, the following 6 features may help you be more successful:

1. Ad Extensions can help you capture more leads Ad Extensions append your ad with additional information such as your address and phone number, more page links, or product information. In addition to increasing CTR by an average of 30%, a top position ad with ad extensions will give you more prime real estate in Google search results and can help you drive traffic. Some ad include the option to have a user request a call or an email. Most recently, AdWords has rolled out a newsletter subscription form ad extension. This form allows any user to sign up for your newsletter directly from the ad unit. Note that the newsletter extension is still in beta and only available to certain advertisers. When a user engages with one of these extensions, you pay as you would for a click.

If you?re in the business of inbound marketing, this lead generation courtesy of AdWords is not to be missed. If you do happen to win the first position for a particular keyword and you haven?t included ad extensions, you?ll be missing out on valuable traffic and potential conversions. Additionally, If the winner of the second position has taken the time to include ad extensions and you haven?t, you risk going unnoticed, even in the first position. Take this opportunity to put all of the relevant information right in front of the user with ad extensions.

2. The Search Terms Report will save you money You?re probably looking at the performance of your keywords on a regular basis, but what about the actual search terms that are driving traffic to your site? The Search Terms Report provides you with a complete report on the search terms that actually triggered your ads and how they performed, as opposed to keywords, which are the terms you have selected for your ad groups. Based on this data, you can determine which terms should be added to your keywords for a particular ad or ad group. If you?re finding a particular search term is driving a lot of traffic, but is too general or resulting in a high bounce rate, add it to your negative keyword list. That way, you won?t waste valuable impressions or pay for clicks on terms for which your ad is irrelevant. For example, ReTargeter provides a service that helps you ?drive traffic? to your site. Thanks to the data in the search terms report, we no longer serve ads when people search for ?mapquest driving directions.?

3. You can tell AdWords when to serve your ads Unless you have customers around the globe, you probably don?t need to be serving your ads 24 hours a day. AdWords allows you to set time frames for when to serve, or not serve, your ads. Of course, your ads are only shown when relevant searches are taking place, but that doesn?t necessarily mean serving ads at all hours is necessarily optimal for your campaign or your budget. AdWords reports give you the option to break down the performance of your ads all the way down to the hour of day it was served. When running your campaigns, take note of when you?re experiencing the highest and lowest number of conversions. Once you?ve determined when your ads are most successful, you can set ?blackout? time frames accordingly. Do regular audits to ensure the times you have selected to serve ads are still optimal. Another reason to pay attention to time?you can adjust your bids depending on the time of day. Increase your bids during competitive times and lower your bids when traffic slows to maximize your budget while maintaining a top position. 4. You can use labels for more than campaign elements Typically, labels are used within AdWords to help you organize keywords, campaigns, ad groups, and ads. This is an extremely useful way to organize and track your AdWords activity, but another great use case for labels is the ability to accommodate multiple administrators within a single AdWords account. If you have more than one person managing your AdWords account, labels come in handy to keep track of who is doing what. Create a label for each user and track any changes that user has made in the account for greater visibility into efficiency, reporting, accountability, and testing. For example, who has the best performing copy? Who exceeds at managing bids and placement? Once you gain a sense of your team?s strengths within AdWords, they can specialize for a highly optimized campaign. Labels are an effective tool in accomplishing better organization around multiple admins within an AdWords account.

5. Dynamic Keyword Insertion will increase the relevancy of your ads Dynamic keyword insertion is an advanced AdWords feature that will dynamically update ad text to include the keyword a user has searched for. This feature has numerous use cases. For example, imagine you run a chain of laundromats. When a user searches for ?laundromats San Francisco,? Google can dynamically insert ?San Francisco? into your ad. Your ad will now be directly relevant and useful for the user. As another example, if you run a store with various specialty products, you are an excellent candidate for dynamic keyword insertion. Your ads can highlight the exact product a user has searched. Dynamic keyword insertion can make your ads more relevant and increase CTR. When a user performs a search, they?re more likely to click on the ads that reflect the exact search terms over a generic ad. This feature is not always applicable to your business, however. If you?re wanting to try dynamic keyword insertion, make sure your ads are organized into efficient keyword categories and double and triple check your ad copy to ensure all of the keywords will work. 6. Rich Snippets can increase your SEO Rich snippets are the few lines of text from your website placed under your ad. Rich snippets serve as an effective tool for enhancing your SEO and increasing ad relevancy. The better your site content actually reflects your ads, the more effective rich snippets will be for you. As described on ProBlogger, rich snippets will elevate pages with high quality content over those that are experts at keyword stuffing, which can result in increased click-through rates, overall traffic, and conversions for you. When implementing rich snippets, this is your opportunity to provide useful information about your business before a user clicks. Rich snippets can help ensure you?re not paying for wasted click-throughs and allows for whoever does click to already have a sense of whether or not you match their needs. For example, the rich snippet can feature a product description, price, and even user reviews. Google offers this guide for setting up rich snippets.

Consider these advanced tools to further optimize your AdWords campaign. When used properly, these tools can help you effectively reach the right audience and ultimately increase your ROI. It’s important to note, however, that just because these tools exist, it doesn’t mean you have to use them. Blackout periods and dynamic keyword insertion can be valuable, but may not be right for your business. If you want to gain a bigger understanding of the service, AdWords Training is always available with online courses as well as with physical talks. Always make sure to have a clear idea of your marketing objectives before adding any advanced functionality to your AdWords campaigns.