Client Profile

The client’s IESD product line is an electrical and wire harness design product targeted at electrical engineers in the automotive, aerospace, rail, and specialty vehicle industries.

The Challenge

Our goal is to drive trial downloads, webinar registrations, and white paper downloads via PPC. The campaign was generating conversions, but at high cost and low volume. We had no additional budget or ability to make changes to the site itself to improve conversion rate.

If you’re following along with any news in the last couple months with PPC you’ve at least heard of Enhanced Campaigns from Google Adwords. Ever since this announcement the PPC community has been buzzing with reaction to this change from Google. There are many enhanced changes to be aware of that we covered in Part I, but today we’re going to walk you through the process of upgrading a campaign from “Legacy” to “Enhanced”. Google is forcing the upgrade to Enhanced on July 22nd. Stay in control and complete the upgrade yourself.

There are a couple of options Google gives you to complete the upgrade. You can do this in Adwords Editor or take advantage of Google’s Upgrade Center. Today I’m going through the online Upgrade Center and I’d recommend this approach as it is the easiest and most seamless way to upgrade your campaigns.

1. The first thing you’ll want to do is visit the Upgrade Center, which you can find in the left hand menu in Adwords

2. After you’re in the Upgrade Center you’ll want to select your preferred method of upgrade. For this client and most of our clients we were not advertising on mobile and tablet devices. In this scenario you just select the first option outlined below. If you had mobile or tablet specific campaigns previously you’ll want to select the second option.

3. The next step is to select all campaigns that you would like to upgrade from the list and select “Choose Upgrade Settings” that I’ve pointed to. This will allow you to set your mobile bid multipliers.

4. The last step is to select your mobile bid multiplier. This will set a campaign level mobile bid multiplier. For this client we still don’t want to show ads on mobile devices so we set our mobile bid multiplier to -100%.

Early Results After Upgrading

There are a lot of useful features with Enhanced campaigns. The biggest negative is Google taking away device control from the advertiser. In the past Google recommended setting up device specific campaigns since these devices can have different strategies and tactics. Now Google is taking this option away with Enhanced campaigns. It’s hard not to be cynical and see a monetary motivation by Google in forcing this change. Most of our clients are B2B and we’ve tested tablet and mobile campaigns in the past and had high costs and little to no conversions. You’re able to opt out of advertising on mobile devices but to date Google has not given you the option to opt out of tablet devices.

We started upgrading multiple clients earlier this month and the results have been similar to what we saw in previous tests. Click spend on tablet devices has accounted for 2% of total click spend and has resulted in no conversions. Tablet click through rate is 109% higher than click through rate on computers but is not resulting in conversions. The data is not conclusive at this point but it’s not a good trend. We’re still hoping for Google to roll out features to give advertisers control over advertising on tablet devices.

Jeff over at PPC Hero worked with a much larger data set and is seeing similar patterns with rising CPA across campaigns as a result of upgrading campaigns to Enhanced.

What are you seeing with campaigns you’ve upgraded to Enhanced?

Types of placements on the Google AdWords display network

We’ve already covered ad copy and how to maximize your Google AdWords PPC budget. To round out the three part series, we’re capping off with 6 Tips on how to optimize your campaigns on Google’s Display Network. And I promise, this is the last time you’ll see me talk about cat nip!

Display campaigns are a critical part of online advertising and are often undervalued. They run as a great compliment to search campaigns and can be extremely effective when utilized properly.

Check out my slides below, which provide basic tips and best practices to increase the efficiency of your Display campaigns.

Download the PDF version and let us know if you have any questions in the comment section below!

Need help with your Display campaigns? Amplify Interactive offers PPC services for medium sized and enterprise businesses. Contact us today to chat about your strategy!

Client Profile

A client offering a self-serve version of a SAAS product that aggregated and displayed social media content on a website.

The Challenge

Our goal is to drive free trial sign ups via PPC. The campaign included Google AdWords, Bing Ads, Display & Retargeting. The problem? The campaign was under-performing. Turns out – we weren’t targeting the right people…

What does this mean? Well, the current structure of PPC campaigns as we know it is completely changing. Google recognizes that mobile searches continue to grow and wants to accommodate this change by eliminating device targeting and consolidating mobile, desktop, and tablet device options into one. Ultimately, this upgrade will provide the ability to properly utilize features across all devices without creating separate campaigns for each device. In the meantime, there are several new features and changes that you need to familiarize yourself with before making the switch.

Device Targeting Changes

Desktop / Tablets

Once campaigns have been transitioned to Enhanced, desktop campaigns will no longer exist. Google has automatically grouped tablet devices with desktops based on their findings that search behavior across both devices has become increasingly similar. With tablets becoming more popular, users are switching devices throughout their searching process, so it only makes sense to consolidate these devices together to simplify management and create consistency.

Mobile

It has previously been best practice to create separate campaigns for mobile devices. With Enhanced campaigns, mobile devices will be grouped in targeting along with desktop and tablets. However, Google is providing more flexibility  and customization with mobile devices, enabling the ability to set bid multipliers to a percentage of your default bid. Currently, the percentages range from -100% (ads won’t be shown to mobile users) and reach the ceiling at 300%. If you were previously bidding on mobile devices, you can use that historical data to determine an appropriate percentage for the bid multiplier, otherwise, you may have to experiment until you find the bid that is most successful.

Display

Display campaigns will be affected by this upgrade as well. The most noticeable change is a new bidding feature: custom bids. This will allow users to select which targeting level (audiences, keywords, or placements) receives the custom bid. Once that level is selected, the custom bid can be set. For the targeting methods that are not selected, a bid adjustment factor can be set, ranging from -90% to 900%.

This change will help advertisers serve ads to users that correspond to where they are at in the buying cycle. Each targeting level works very differently and can represent different stages of the process, so allowing customization at each level will increase efficiency for Display campaigns.

New Features

• Detailed call reporting
  • Google previously charged a dollar for phone calls and statistics were available in the ‘call details’ section in AdWords. Now, you won’t have to do that. Phone calls produced in Enhanced campaigns won’t incur a $1 cost, encouraging more users and smaller businesses to utilize mobile ads.
  • Measuring conversions in mobile campaigns has also been a challenge. A phone call doesn’t necessarily mean a conversion, they could be calling to check store hours, get driving directions, or possibly could have dialed by accident. With Enhanced campaigns, you can specify a conversion for mobile ads based on call duration. For example, if a phone call lasts longer than 120 seconds, you can designate that as a conversion.
• Smarter Ads
  • Enhanced campaigns also provide the ability to prioritize which ads in your account you want to show on each device. If you have ads that you have composed specifically for mobile, you can ensure that they will be shown just for mobile. The same is true for desktop or you can have the same ad run across multiple devices.
• Upgraded extensions
  • As is similar with ad copy, you can specify which sitelink(s) you want to appear on mobile or desktop, allowing for more customization for the user experience.
  • Another great feature with ad extensions is you can specify which campaign or adgroup you want your ad extension to show with. The ability to create unique ad extensions for each adgroup is a great addition, allowing for increased personalization.
  • Start and end dates can also be set for each ad extension, which can come in handy for seasonal products or promotions / sales.
  • My favorite new feature allows advertisers to receive performance data with each extension. This will make it much easier to manage this feature and determine what users are responding to. You can also edit extensions without resetting performance statistics.
• Geographic location and ad scheduling bid multipliers are another welcome edition with Enhanced campaigns, allowing advertisers to bid more depending on geographic location and time. For example, bids could be increased during store hours for a brick and mortar location, as well as for users searching within a certain radius of the location.

The transition from Legacy to Enhanced campaigns is initially a lot to take in and it is imperative to create a plan of attack for your own campaigns. See part 2 in this series that explains how you can map out a course of action and provide recommendations for the upgrade in our next post, The Insider’s Guide to Enhanced Campaigns: Part II.

Stay tuned and let us know if you have any questions in the comments!

Need help with your PPC campaigns? Amplify Interactive offers PPC services for medium sized and enterprise businesses. Contact us today to chat about your strategy!