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AdWords has many features, too many if you were to do a little poll amongst AdWords users. So many, that it becomes difficult for some users to find the time and the appropriate training material to understand properly how every single one of these features works. This leads to frustration and a reluctance to find the time to understand how some of these features work. There is also the factor that some people are just afraid to try new things.
Taking this into consideration, we determined that it was a good idea for us to talk about some of the features that are usually overlooked but could help us be more efficient when managing campaigns.
1) Home Tab
To me, it has always seemed contradictory that there is a tab in AdWords called “Home” and that is not even the default tab that loads when you enter an AdWords account. The Home tab can help anyone get an easy overview of how the different elements of your account are performing.
There’s no way you can miss this tab. Is the very first one from the left to right:
Overview of your account performance
In the Home tab, you will be presented with an overview of how your account has performed in the date range that you have selected. This is an easy way for you to determine what are your top-performing ad groups and keywords. You will have a set of helpful pre-defined modules that will give you a glance at your account.
Ability to customize existing modules
You don’t have to stick to the default modules that AdWords presents with the sets of data that are provided on this tab. You can modify all existing modules to show different pieces of information according to your needs.
Customizing the modules is easy but not that straight forward, I say this because you will not be able to modify them from the Home tab. To create new modules, you will need to do so on the regular Campaigns tab. A module will be created for every filter that you save. So let’s say that you want to see keywords showing with a status of the low-quality score and low search volume, you can create a filter like this to enable such module:
2) Auction Insights
Auction insights is a helpful feature that will allow you to compare your current performance to those that are competing against you in the same auctions. You will be able to assess how well are you standing against those that are using similar, if not the same keywords as you are using at the moment.
Comparing your efforts against competitors
You will be able to see data and compare your keywords against your competitors for:
- Impression share
- Average position
- Overlap rate
- Position above rate
- Top of page rate
- Outranking share.
All these metrics will allow you to see if you are showing your ads on top of your competitors. It also allows you to know how often are you showing alongside these competitor’s ads and how much are you outranking competitors and how much they are outranking you.
Please note that if your keywords don’t have sufficient traffic, this insights report will not be generated in AdWords.
Taking competitors in consideration for improving your campaign(s)
This information will allow you to determine what factors you need to improve the most on so that you can start outranking your competitors. For instance, you can start adjusting your bids based on your competitor’s position. Also, you may find some competitors that you weren’t aware of before and analyze their websites or even the ads they are currently running.
3) Ad customizers
In the Business Data section of AdWords, you can do great things, the main one by far is the option to create custom ads that will dynamically change based on parameters that you predefine.
This will allow you to add information quickly to change the current promotion or sales price that you have on the website you are advertising. You can even include a countdown that will mark how much time is left for any promotion or discount.
Creating custom text ads
Creating custom text ads will allow you to avoid having hundreds of ad variations for your ads. Instead, you will be able to create 1 ad that will dynamically change based on values that you will predetermine on a data feed that you would upload into AdWords. You can use this to change the values of promotions, discounts, sale prices, or locations.
You can determine which values you need to insert for your ads at a campaign level, ad group level, and even keyword level.
This is an example of a feed that I uploaded to one of my clients. In it, you can see that I inserted different product types, prices, and even quantities that the product each has. This is being defined at the ad group level so that I can easily have the same ad in all ad groups but it will dynamically change based on the values specified on the feed.
Uploading the file is an easy process, you will find the option under ‘Business Data’ on the Shared Library. It will also give you a preview feature to make sure there will no mistakes with your upload.
After uploading the feed you will just need to create your dynamic ad in the respective ad groups where you want it to be shown. Ad customizers will even allow you to place countdowns in your ads in case you have a time-sensitive promotion or call to action. You can place a countdown that will show the user how many days, hours, and even minutes are left for a specific promotion to expire.
Creating custom image ads
Custom image ads allow you to have banners showing to specific users based on different factors. These banners will show alongside remarketing ads. What you will need to do is modify the variables in your remarketing code so that AdWords can capture more information from the user visiting your site. Information such as the services/products they find interesting. With this extra information, you can determine what where users most interested in when browsing through your website, so you can show them a banner ad tailored to their specific interest.
For instance, if you offer travel packages, and a user visited a package you offer to go to London, then you can follow this user with a banner ad that will show information on flights to London with a discount if that flight is purchased by clicking on the ad. The same thing can be replicated to all possible destinations of your flight packages.
4) Automatic rules
Automatic rules are an option for you to set and schedule changes in your campaigns based on the conditions you choose. For instance, you can predefine that you want to pause campaigns, enable them, raise their budgets, or raise bids when needed. You can also pause keywords when they are underperforming, etc.
Establish predefined changes
Establishing these changes is rather easy. At any level of your account you will find the option Automate by clicking on it you will see a set of predefined automatizations you can implement. If you’re looking to check on your rules, you can click on Manage rules and this will allow you to customize your own rules depending on what you want.
Avoid forgetting/missing out on a change you determine has to be done in the future
Being able to automate some of your work allows you to avoid the human mistake factor that could tamper with your performance. If you know that there are changes to the campaign that are performed periodically, then you can leave those automated and let AdWords take care of them for you. Here are some examples of helpful automated rules:
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Pause campaign when all-time cost has met X amount.
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Enable campaigns on specific dates (Seasonal campaigns).
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Pause campaigns on specific dates (Seasonal campaigns).
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Raise bids if the position is higher than X.
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Pause keywords when impressions are higher than X and CTR is lower than X.
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Pause ads when impressions are higher than X and CTR is lower than X.
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Lower budgets on days that have been determined to be less productive.
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Raise bids on locations that show X amount of conversions.
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Raise bids on hours of the day that show X amount of conversions.
Give These Features A Chance
I promise you will not be disappointed about expanding your AdWords knowledge by utilizing these features. They might be the missing piece from the puzzle that will boost your campaign’s performance. If you want to learn more about AdWords features, check out this Shark Bite about the features you need to embrace this year.
