It’s Time To Get Enhanced…

So, the time that we all get to ‘enhance’ our PPC campaigns is finally upon us. All campaigns with Google Adwords that haven’t already upgraded to Enhanced Campaigns, will be automatically updated by Google today. Like everyone in the industry, Enhanced Campaigns have been a big talking point for me and a huge change for us all.

I’ve written a few blogs since the big announcement in February – The Good, Bad and Ugly Of Google’s ‘Enhanced Campaigns’ and The Winners and Losers Of Enhanced Campaigns and Dealing With Life With Enhanced Campaigns and my thoughts haven’t changed that much since rolling out all of my clients campaigns within the last few months.

Bad Points

• Still far too less control over mobile bid adjustments. It should still remain at keyword level in my opinion
• No control over tablet bidding – Tablet and mobile do not behave the same so this is rubbish
• CPC’s have seen increases of between 20-30%

Good Points

• Sitelink extensions available at ad group level, rather than campaign
• Sitelink scheduling
• Time of the day and geographic location bid adjustments
• More focus on being able to target the right person at the right time in display campaigns
• Bing isn’t rolling out the same changes

Less control over mobile bidding and zero control over tablet bids are naturally going to see an increase in CPC’s and in most cases conversion rates. Depending on the industry the results so far are varying. For some of my clients I have stayed clear of mobile bidding altogether and tablet hasn’t had as much impact as I’d expected on most.

There are ways to make the best use out of mobile bid adjustments just at ad group level, such as:

• Splitting keywords into ad groups which perform at different levels for mobile and apply different bid adjustments for each ad group
• Use single keyword ad groups so you have more control over bid adjustments – not the most ideal solution, but works in some campaigns

Neither of these solutions are ideal, but without any control over the decisions Google make, it’s just about making the best use out of the changes.

How have you found the rollover to enhanced campaigns? Will we finally start calling our campaigns just campaigns, rather than enhanced campaigns?

Search Engine Marketing News – February 2013

Well, what can we say about search engine marketing news this month…. you may have heard a thing or two about this little thing called ‘Enhanced Campaigns’. Enhanced campaigns has been the main talking point in the industry and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. I’ll recap on the main changes of Google’s Enhanced Campaigns and other changes that have happened in SEM this month (yes, there has been other news).

Google are giving us more control in our ‘multi-device world’? Brilliant…. oh no, wait!

I’ll admit when I first got the call from Google I was almost convinced (almost!) that the Enhanced Campaign change was a good thing. For some companies/agencies it may be, but not for the majority. Yes, there are some benefits but Google have gone about it the wrong way by ultimately giving us a lot less control.

• Separate device bidding no longer possible (boo)
• Tablet and desktop devices are now treated as one with no way of having separate bids for tablet (boo)
• Mobile bid adjustments are available as multipliers from -100% to +300% at a campaign level (double boo)
• Ad scheduling possible (woo)
• Better call tracking (woo)
• Data on individual site link extensions are available (finally!)

Enhanced Campaign changes have now been rolled out to Adwords Editor, making it easier for us to start making dreaded changes in our accounts.

Other News

Search Funnel Data

Finally some good news! Search funnel data is now available in the Adwords interface. We can now see data on assisting keywords directly in Adwords. It’s a good move by Google as we can see the number of assisting clicks, impressions and conversions without having to go to Analytics. It looks like this is one of the first steps in providing more attribution data, that most of us go somewhere else to find.

Google Penalising Inteflora

Google sent out a big message to advertisers this month by giving Interflora big SEO penalties. Although Google haven’t officially confirmed the penalty, there natural search results took a drastic turn for the worst… This great post by David Naylor shows how dramatic the shift was.

Free Shopping Comes to An End

Google shopping is no longer free to advertisers in the UK (and many other countries). It was good while it lasted here in the UK, but free shopping listings is no more, instead we have to set up product listing ads.

Google’s Unique Searches Drops

Google’s share of unique searches has dipped under 20%. Okay, so it’s still got the majority of searches but it’s slowly losing ground has Baidu, Bing, Yandex and Yahoo are seeing slightly increased global searches. Check out this post from Search Engine Land

Google Removes Not Provided From Webmaster Tools

The next place to not be able to get data on not provided terms was in Google Webmaster Tools. Just another update making it even harder for SEO agencies to explain to clients where there traffic is actually coming from.

So, it’s been a busy month for SEM in February…. roll on March!

Laura

Dealing With Life With Enhanced Campaigns

Now we’ve all had time to take in the changes from the Enhanced Campaigns, the reaction has shifted from disappointment/anger to acceptance and trying to work out the best plan of action to make the most out of the change. I’ve even stopped writing Enhanced Campaigns as “Enhanced Campaigns” – that’s acceptance for you, right there! For most of us the change is huge and will require hours of work on a lot of accounts and a change in strategy, leaving us with some very important questions to answer:

Should We Roll Out Now or Wait Until June?

The advantage of not waiting until June is that you can get a really good idea of how to make the change work. Rolling out a small number of campaigns to enhanced can teach us some valuable learnings before rolling out to all campaigns. Campaigns which target just mobile will be in no rush to upgrade, while those who could benefit from geographical bidding and site link extension scheduling will be more inclined to upgrade now.

Do We/How Do We Change Our Structure?

For accounts that split out mobile, tablet and desktop are naturally the ones who are left with a lot of questions on how to adapt the structure. Split high performing mobile keywords into their own campaigns and increase the bid modifiers by 300%? Take poor performing mobile keywords and bundle together to turn bids down/off? What to do with the keywords that convert on mobile but not desktop? Keep the curent structure and adjust mobile bids by a campaign average? The list of questions goes on!

What Bidding Strategy Shall We Use?

While we are no longer able to have separate bids for tablet and are really restricted to mobile bidding at just a campaign level, there are some benefits to enhanced campaigns in geographical bidding. How do you change your bidding strategy to best target people in your location? Turn down bids in locations where you don’t have a physical presence, or increase bids when people are near a store/dealership or try target areas where you see better conversion rates?

The Winners and Losers Of Enhanced Campaigns

Okay, so it’s still a little too early to be declaring the winners and losers from the recent Enhanced Campaigns announcement by Google but it’s still clear to see who will benefit from this change, who will lose out and who will have to work extremely hard in the next months to find a campaign structure(s) which works best with the changes.

Winners

• Businesses who have never bothered to target mobile devices and create mobile friendly landing page – They’ll now be able to automatically opt in to targeting mobile without ever spending the time to build an account which is optimised for mobile performance
• Marketing agencies and PPC specialists – One thing that this change has highlighted is that you need the best PPC experts handling accounts to be able to adapt to these changes best.
• Businesses with lots of physical locations – Arguably one of the best parts of this update is that you can now adjust bids based on geographic location. So if you own a retail store in the city centre you can raise bids to people on mobile devices within a few miles of your store. Free call tracking is also a bonus. Call extensions and phone numbers can be automatically replaced by sitelink extensions out of office hours.
• And the biggest winners?….. Google! There might be a nice video and explanation on all the Google blogs to make it seem that Enhanced Campaigns are the best things since slice bread, but it’s pretty transparent to see their intentions. CPC’s on mobile devices were around 50% lower than desktop ones and with an ever increasing volume of mobile searches, how do Google increase revenue from mobile? Make everyone opt into mobile and make it more difficult to adjust mobile bids, easy!