The list of tools that every Google AdWords Newbie should know

The list of tools that every Google AdWords Newbie should know Google AdWords is an extremely targeted and measurable form of today’s online advertising. Although I started my career as an internet marketer about three years ago, I first used AdWords about ten years ago while trying to advertise a website I created. For the past few years I’ve mentioned advertising on Google AdWords to my clients and they all seem to have the same response, “It doesn’t work,” “Google is just trying to make more money,” and all I could say was “ok”, until now.

While working at Web1 Syndication I learned more about Google AdWords than any other place that I’ve worked for!

Once I started my first week at Web1 Syndication, I was presented with a couple of online tutorials called PPC Experts Academy and PPC Profit Blueprint all made by one of the owners at Web1, Ben Pate.

Like I mentioned earlier I knew the basics of using Google AdWords but not to the extremity I learned in just that one week alone. Here is what I learned and everyone should know, especially business owners and AdWords Professionals:

Do any campaigns have more than one device enabled?

I have seen many internet marketers make this same mistake numerous times. How important is it? It’s vital!

Here’s why. Let’s just say your landing pages are only setup for desktop viewers. Which is a huge mistake since 40% of searches made for local products and services are local in nature. But let’s just say that is the case here.

If you setup your campaigns for both mobile and desktop you’re not targeting your audience correctly. In today’s world people want information available to them as fast as possible. Do you really think this person will take the time to sit on your site and zoom in? NO! Now do you see why this is so important to make sure you are targeting the right device with the right stuff?

Here is how you check for these settings. First, make sure that you are viewing all campaigns by clicking “all online campaigns on left column”. See screenshot below.

Next, click the settings tab to view the settings for all of your campaigns. See screenshot below.

You should see something similar to this (see screenshot below). Notice the devices column. As you can see all my campaigns are setup to all. This will target mobile, tablet and desktop users.

I have made sure that all of my landing pages will show properly regardless of the device my audience uses.

When setting up your ad rotation, what is difference between optimize for clicks and optimize for conversions and when do I use each? First off, what is ad rotation? Ad rotation is a preference to determine how your ads distribute when you have multiple ads. Yes, Google gives you the ability to rotate your ads in a manner that will allow you to choose whether you want to optimize your ads for clicks (default setting), optimize for conversions, rotate ads evenly or rotate ads indefinitely. Here is where to check for this: First make sure that you are checking all of your online campaigns. Start by clicking all online campaigns on left column. (See screenshot below) Then, you will see a screen like the one below. Click on the settings tab. This will take you to a screen like below. Notice the settings of all your online campaigns. Next click on the campaign you desire in this instance make sure that you select a campaign that is setup to run on Google Search. This will bring you to a screen that looks like this. Notice campaign settings on top left. (See screenshot) Next scroll down to the Ad delivery: ad rotation, frequency capping. Your screen will look like this. (See screenshot) So now that you know where to find it, here are your options and how to use them: Rotate ads evenly This option will give equal preference to all ads within your ad group no matter how well they perform. When to use: When starting a new campaign you should rotate them evenly to see how well the ads you wrote will perform. If you haven’t changed your ads after 90 days, Google will start to optimize for clicks or conversions depending on whether you have your conversions setup. Another example of when to use: When split testing your current ad against a new ad. You want Google to distribute both ads evenly so that you can test performance and find the ad that will give you the highest CTR%. Click through rate or CTR is the amount of times Google shows your ad divided by amount of times your ad gets clicked. Optimize for clicks This is Google’s default setting. Google gives preference to the ad that will get the most clicks based on past CTR performance. Examples of when to use: When no conversion tracking is setup. Optimize for conversions A conversion is a tool that allows you to see what happens after a customer clicks on your ad. Conversions include a customer successfully submitting your contact form, purchasing a product from your store or a sale via phone call. Why is this important? Imagine this scenario: you setup your campaigns properly and then a customer clicks your ad. How do you know what happened next? Conversion tracking allows you to see exactly “what happened next”. How to setup conversion tracking for a contact form submission or when a customer purchases your product. The first thing you want to do is make sure that your landing page has a form or your products shopping cart is setup properly. I won’t go into the details of how to create a form or how to setup a shopping cart. You can ask your web developer to help you with this. Make sure when doing so that you tell your developer that you need a “thank you page”. A “thank you page” is a page that will show after a customer successfully submits your form or purchased your product. The thank you page you will have your developer ad tracking code that will notify you every time this goal is reached. How do I do this? (See details below) Click tools on top navigation menu. Then hover over to conversions and click. (See screenshot below) This is what you should see next. (See screenshot) Click on the + Conversion button. Next, give your conversion a name. Then choose webpage button. (See screenshot below) Then click Save and continue. After that, choose the most accurate conversion category. If you have a form you will select lead or signup depending on your business. If you are selling a product online then you will select Purchase/Sale. Then select HTML language (comes default). Lastly, give your conversion a value. What is this goal worth to you in terms of money? (See screenshot below) Then save and continue to the next step, your conversion tracking script. Here’s what this page looks like. Copy and send this code to your developer, they will know what to do with it. The Dimensions Tool on Google AdWords Another helpful tool in AdWords is the dimensions tool. Here are some of the things that it can do for you: 1. Find day of the week that you’re your campaigns perform best. 2. Find the time of the day that your campaign performs best. Here’s how to get there: I will show you the data on all of your campaigns. Start by clicking all online campaigns on the top left column. Then click the dimensions tab towards the right of your screen. Then click view towards the left side of your screen under campaigns tab. Then hover down to Time and then over to day of the week. Here are a few of things you can look for: 1. Day of the week 2. CTR (click through rate) 3. Avg. CPC (Avg. cost per click) 4. Cost / converted click 5. Click conversion rate 6. Est. total conversions Here’s what you should have in front of you. First, sort through the data by clicking on CTR. Like mentioned earlier click through rate us the amount of times a potential customer could have seen your ads divided by the number of times they clicked on it.(See CTR sorted below) As you can see with the screenshot above Sunday has the highest CTR. Next, take a look at the AVG. CPC. In this case you want the day that you are spending the least amount of money possible. Click AVG CPC so that your data is sorted from least to greatest. (See screenshot below) As you can see from the screenshot above Saturday’s and Sunday’s are the days with the lowest average CPC. Then, look at Cost / converted click. Sort your data once again from least to greatest. As you can see Saturday is the day that you are spending the least amount per conversion. In order to see this data you must have conversion-tracking setup. Next, look at click conversion rate. Sort your data from highest to lowest. You want the day that click conversion rate is highest. Lastly, look at your Est. total conversions. As you can see Monday has the highest conversions. How I would interpret the data based on the last screenshot above? It seems as if Monday’s are the best in overall performance. Here’s why: Average cost per click is not the best out of all of our days. But as you can see from the last screenshot it is the day that we are receiving the highest amount of conversions. Most importantly, it is the second best day in terms of cost / converted click, which is ultimately what we are looking for. What I would do with this: For now I would look into each campaign and see which ones perform best on Monday. However we will go further into that on our next blog post. In conclusion, about ninety percent of what you’ve read in the blog post I learned within the first week of my career at Web 1 Syndication. Thanks to Google AdWords, PPC Profit Blueprint, PPC Experts Academy and Ben Pate I’ve learned at what to look for and what to do next with the data that I gather. I am looking forward to next week and what I’ll learn next at Web1 Syndication.