Ok we love AdWords, it’s awesome. It’s targeted, flexible and highly measurable. It’s really quick and simple to get ads up and running and start promoting your business.
However, this lack of barrier to entry can be a problem, as almost anyone can create an account and get going using AdWords’ default settings within minutes. This disguises the fact that there is a complexity to getting the set-up of a new account or campaign right to ensure you are not wasting money straight from kick off.
So, in an effort to save the world from lining Google’s pockets unnecessarily, we thought we would write a series of blogs based on the (very) common mistakes that are basically burning £5 notes instead of earning leads.
Part 1: Network Settings
Our top 3 tips for avoiding wasting money due to poor network settings.
1. Make sure each network is covered by a separate campaign. Do NOT run Display and Search ads in the same campaign.
2. Ensure you know what you are trying to achieve from each network (awareness, direct action etc.)
3. Monitor performance of each network and ensure you are spending your money on the channel that is working best for you and delivering the best value results you have defined in point 2.
Google Network Settings explained
One of the main benefits of Google is its reach and the diversity of the networks it covers. This includes the search network itself, display, search partners and YouTube. It is very easy to get over excited and choose to run your ads everywhere. But each network has its own audience behaviour and your goals and targets must be tailored to each. Think about this, what is your own mind-set when using Google’s search bar as against when you are looking at content on YouTube?
The default setting ‘Search and Display select’ is a definite no-no! AdWords even tempts you by making this choice top of the list and labelling it as ‘best way to reach the most customers’. Whilst this is not exactly untrue, it is certainly not the most efficient strategy. These are completely different networks with vastly different results. You need to keep them separate so you can allocate the correct proportion of budget to each and easily monitor and compare performance.
Search Partners is also ON by default – NO NO NO! Search partners can be great but need to be carefully monitored and tested. Otherwise you get what we found below when picking up a client’s account – precious budget being wasted on junk traffic with non-existent conversions and lower CTR. This client was spending 10% of their budget on search partners and receiving absolutely no leads! If they had spent this on the regular search network instead, based on the CPA, there was a potential for 5 extra leads for exactly the same spend.
If you have the budget, a cohesive marketing strategy would make use of the different networks to help deliver your goals. For example, Display and You Tube could be used to raise brand awareness, Search could then target people actively looking for your goods / services and Remarketing could bring people back who had not converted from their first visit. Even then each of these would require separate campaigns to enable them to be targeted, optimised and budgeted for efficiently.
If you would like someone to audit your existing campaign or assist you in setting up for the first time then please give us a call.
Next time we cover keyword match types.
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