42Reasons Your Adwords Sucks

42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK.

Sunday, 1 June 14

42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK

INTRODUCTION.

With over 9 years of hair pulling, keyboard smashing, coffee spill ing exper iences with Adwords, weve seen (and been guilty of) some great screw ups. Some were small and some were simply gut wrenchingly huge (Google is the winner in ever y case however!).

This was written as a guide to the foibles many of us are guilty of, whether we like it, know it or not.

So here are 42 reasons why your Adwords campaign sucks.

J immy,JimmyData.com

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Sunday, 1 June 14


CONTENTS.

1. Negat ives

2. Too Broad?

3. Budget Constra ints

4 . Mobi le

5 . Granular i ty

6 . Pr ic ing

7. Monday?

8 . The Landing

9. Extens ions

10/11. More Extens ions

12. . . .Extens ions!

13. Adcopy

14. Mobi le b id adjust

15. Mobi le ads

16. Low imp Share

17. Ad del iver y

18. Modi f ied Match

19. Search Queries

20. Analyt ics

21. Search + Disp lay

22. Convers ions

23. The of fer

24. Sp l i t Test ing

25. Ad test ing

26. Low CTR

27. Ignor ing the long ta i l

28 . Trends

29. Remarket ing?

30. Remarket ing #2

31. Automated Rules

32. Pat ience

33. Dynamic Inser t ion

34. Dynamic inser t ion #2

35. Lazy?

36. Calm Down

37. Tr igger Happy

38. Schedul ing

39. Geo Target ing

40. Ad Sett ings

41. Compet i tors

42. Repor t ing

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1. NO NEGATIVES

It never ceases to amaze me how many adver tisers are swimming in the PPC wor ld without the aid of Negative keywords.

I recently audited a major global account with a spend of approximately $250k per month over 18 countr ies and the total number of negative keywords was 220! Thats 220 negatives over thousands of adgroups and $250k of spend per month! Its l ike sending a capacity cruiseliner with 3000+ guests that is only fitted with 60 life jackets.

I calculated that for one adgroup alone, the spend for irrelevant keywords for a month was close to $600. This was for one adgroup out of thousands.

Put your negative keywords in. If you dont then you are wasting both money and time chasing your tail .

As an example you sell Watermelons. Yes Watermelons, thats what you do now. You sell the big fresh green ones with the red fil l ing that for some reason stains like nothing else . (how does water stain anyway?)

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Sunday, 1 June 14

Anyway, where was I. Yes Watermelons.

So you run a campaign adver tising your watermelons. Your keyword list looks something like this:- watermelons- water melons- buy watermelons

Look ok r ight? Well not really, especially since these are simply broad keywords. So Google will look for synonyms and anything else it deems relevant.

What this means is that when someone looks for a honeydew, cantaloupe and possibly even those horr id rockmelons, your ad may show. If you are not sell ing these other imitation melons then you need to add them as negatives .

There are more tools in the Adwords arsenal such as match types etc but get your negatives sor ted fir st and foremost.

5 42 REASONS YOUR ADWORDS SUCK


Sunday, 1 June 14


2. TOO BROAD

You are too broad. You bid on gener ic terms and dont bother with modifiers.

What some adver tisers dont understand is that Googles definition of broad is well just that, ver y broad. The synonyms they use can really send your campaign off on a tangent and tr igger some really random terms. Remember the watermelons? Yeh well being too broad was your problem. Think the terms reseller and whitelabel are different? Google might not think so. Think the words cheap and budget are different? Google may not. I know I do and the conversion rates for each term is completely different.

Thats when the modifier comes in. Some have called it the phrase match kil ler. Think of it as somewhere between broad and phrase and what it does is essentially tell Google to stay away from synonyms but include plurals. Kind of sounds like what you would expect a normal broad to be! It does not necessar ily for all campaigns that using modified broad terms are vital, but the major ity of the time, I would use them.

Dont let Google do the guess work, take control.

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3. BUDGET CONSTRAINTS

Is your budget too small? If you are sell ing a product for $500 and your monthly budget is $1000 then that is most likely not enough to test a market.

Similar ly if you have a keyword list of 1000 keywords and a budget of $500 per month, you have spread yourself too thin.

TIP: There are no hard and fast rules however there are some ballpark figures to work towards. As a benchmark, use Googles keyword tool or an external tool like SEMrush to work out what a click is going to cost you. Assume you can manage to get 2% CTR on your keywords, you can then work out a budget that will most likely work for you.

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4. NO MOBILE LANDING PAGE

Mobile is huge now, and Jimmy is not just talking about the screens (yep.. I just went there). If you havent already checked, you will find that mobile traffic makes up anywhere between 30-50% (possibly more) of all the traffic coming through Search. People will take action from their mobile , especially in industr ies such as beauty, travel or auto.

So make sure you either offer a great mobile exper ience and/or have a defined mobile strategy otherwise you will be wasting your money. Understand your mobile traffic and take the appropriate action. If you dont have a strategy in place and need time, set your mobile bid adjusters (for enhanced campaigns) to -100% and come back to it once you have decided on a strategy.

TIP: If your mobile exper ience isnt up to scratch, then tr y using click only call extensions. This will ensure people using mobiles only have the option of call ing. Perfect for local ser vice based businesses.

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5. TOO GRANULAR

I l ike granular ity. Love it in fact. However sometimes you may be asking too much of your campaign if you stick pr imar ily to the long tail . Long tail keywords do, on average , perform much better than general terms however the downside to them is that they generate less volume.

The issue with being too specific is that if Google feels the search demand or interest isnt high enough, it simply wont show your ads, regardless whether the term is a proven performer or not.

Another problem with being too granular is that the wrong keywords star t tr igger ing the wrong ads. If a broad term from one campaign can tr igger multiple adgroups and their associated ads.. well it will . In this case the highest performing bid will win that auction. So you may need to bite that granular bullet and star t building out those adgroups to clean up your broken campaign.

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6. PRICING

Dont lie . Dont say Free if it isnt and dont make a pr icing promise that you cant easily and clear ly deliver to your Google traffic .

None of my business you say? Well think again, its not about me, its Google who is going to penalize you (thats r ight Mr Acai Berr y dude). Thats r ight, Google does actually analyze (whether it be automatically or manually) the landing page exper ience and if you dont deliver on your promise or your selling proposition then Google will either charge you a for tune per click, or they simply wont run your ads at all .

TIP : An image wont cut it. Google isnt the best at reading images so make sure your key sell ing dr ivers are clear and in a readable text format.

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7. DAY OF THE WEEK

Have you studied user behaviour for different days of the week? I guarantee you that most of the time there will be a correlation and a skew towards cer tain days performing better than others.

As an example , we have found for products sell ing physical items that need to be shipped, Thursdays - Saturdays were the worst performing days with CPA almost tr iple compared to a Sunday -Wednesday. Why? Well. . people didnt l ike to wait 4 days to receive the item because generally no one delivers or ships on the weekend. Makes sense r ight? There is a good chance a lot of adver tisers may not understand user behavior and be spending top dollar on days where a decent CPA was achievable . This will var y from Display to Search, with displays impulsive users less likely to care when they get their product.. . as long as they get it.

Understand your day of the week repor ts and get yourself thinking why the behaviour var ies as it does. Understanding and asking yourself these questions is a great step towards improving your campaign.

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8. LANDING PAGE

What do you know about your landing page? Have you tested it? Does it have tr igger elements that are sending people off your website in an instant.. or possibly tr igger elements that are making people buy?

In the day of the week example mentioned previously, the clients Thursday to Saturday problem was rectified by simply adding Ships within 24hrs (which they did).

In another example , a client with a prominent dating site focused around matching professional singles, found that whenever their landing page features picture of people under 30 conversion rates would plummet. Why? The landing page didnt relate with the users coming to the site (slightly older). Removing images of people and keeping the site neutral was the key to turning this campaign around and dr iving website sign-ups.

TIP : Tr y using heat mapping tools like crazyegg.com to understand the habits of visitors to your landing pages. Also ensure you have linked your Adwords with Analytics to better understand user behaviour from specific keyword which provides great insight.

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9. AD EXTENSIONS

Since there isnt enough complexity in Googles Adwords ranking system, towards the end of 2013, Google decided to change how it calculates its Adrank (Ie the position you appear on the search results page). Yes your bid is impor tant. Yes your quality score is impor tant. But there is now another factor in the mix and this third component is, quoting Google directly, "the expected impact from your ad-extensions and formats". And yes... it is truly as vague as how it sounds.

So if all things were equal and there are two competing ads with the same bid and quality score, then the ad which is deemed to have the most positive expected impact from extensions will in most cases, appear higher. This all sounds a bit here-say but Google does kind of make it easy in that they will generally show the highest performing combination of ad extensions and formats as it deems appropriate. Bottom line, this means use the ad extensions, use them all and try to incorporate them into every one of your campaigns. Don't do it.. then your competitors are already one step ahead of you (literally!).

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10. CALL EXTENSIONS

Do you simply need the phone to r ing? Are you using call extensions? Are you dr iving people to a non-mobile fr iendly website instead of only giving them the option to call? Each business is different, but if you need phone calls, then make sure you are using call extensions. Any business needing phone calls should util ize these and with todays changing Adrank algor ithm, its never been more impor tant.

11. S ITELINKS

If you are generally ranked in the top 1-3 positions and are not using sitelinks via ad extensions then your competitors are doing a better job than you, simple as that. If they are also not using them, please contact me and let me know your industr y, I want in! Again, l ike most ad-extensions, remember to use site links wherever you can (there is ver y little reason not to use them). Sitelinks allow you to take up more real estate on the front page and enables you to include more information about your business, giving potential customers more choice and more targeted deep-linked options. Use them. Full stop.

TIP: Use them

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12. LOCATION EXTENSIONS

Are you a local business and need people to find you? Restaurants, Dr y Cleaning ser vices, beauty salons, dentists. . pretty much any business which requires someone to physically go to your business and interact, then you should consider using locations extensions.

Depending on the device you are targeting and what other ad extensions you are util izing you may not be showing in the map 100% of the time. However due to Googles new Adrank formula, it simply doesnt make sense to ignore it.

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13. GENERIC ADCOPY

I see this time and time again from adver tisers whether it be a lack of time or whether they have specific branding and copy guidelines to stick to. But the truth is: generic adcopy is a killer for campaigns.

Generic adcopy does several things to your campaign. If you are running the same adcopy for all adgroups across all your individual themes then you are not providing a relevant ad for each theme right? And relevancy is at the forefront of great user experience. The gener ic ads lead to two main problems:

1. The first being your CTR would almost always be lower than it ideally should because your ads are not very relevant to your user. For example if you are a beauty salon and you have a generic headline that says Local Beauty Salon, that might be fine if someone searches for local beauty salon. However what happens when someone searches for pedicure in Camberwell? They will of course, see the same headline. Is that Relevant? Well kind of. If you were that user, would you prefer to see the headline Pedicures from $39? Thats relevancy..

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2. Google understands that your ad is generic and in turn, as seen in the example above, is less relevant to your target audience. Since Google rewards relevancy, such generic adcopy will lead to a low quality score. A low quality score will mean Google will push your Adrank lower, meaning an even lower CTR and much higher CPCs. CTR is an element of quality score so down it goes again, and again, and again.

When does this snowball end? When you have 0 impressions and 0 traffic. Put some effor t into your adcopy.

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TIPS

1. Use Price in your adcopy 2. Use Ad extensions. 3. Base your copy around themes 4. Only test one thing at a time so you know what works and what doesnt.5. Test test test. Always test new copy and creative.

Throw in a Geo reference and you are all set.

Usefu l example can be found here

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Sunday, 1 June 14


14. MOBILE BID ADJUSTER

What performs better.. Mobile or desktop? If you can answer this then you probably have a good idea of what bid adjuster you should be using. Mobile performing through the roof? Up the adjuster. Mobile tanking a little, reign it in or shut it off completely. Use conversion data to understand where your adjuster should be. Need the extremes? There are 2 numbers you should remember, -100% and 300%.

15. MOBILE AD SELECTION

Mobile ads dont look the same as desktop ones. Ads you want to display on a mobile may not be what you want the desktop users to see. Ads perform differently whether they are on mobile, desktop or tablet... you get it.

Google actually allows you to select which ads you would prefer to show on mobile. If you dont select anything, then all ads will be treated the same so it may be worth thinking about differentiating mobile and desktop ads.

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16. LOW IMPRESSION SHARE

Low impression share tells you a great deal about your campaign as a whole however many search marketers dont actually know how to use this info to make the most out of their campaigns. Most SEMs, PPCers or whatever they go by, still think that a low impression share means your budget is not high enough so you are missing out on impressions. It sounds pretty straight forward actually, you dont have enough of a budget, so Google is throttling or switching your ads on and off so you dont go over budget by the end of the day. Right?

Sorta.. but not 100% right. Or even close to 100% right. The more telling statistics to look at are the other impression share data that Google gives you. These include Search Exact Match IS, Search Lost IS (rank) and Search Lost IS (budget). Little briefing:

Search Exact Match IS- Looks at % of impressions you received for terms that matched exactly (or were close variants) your keywords.

Search Lost IS (rank)- Search impression share that was lost due to your Adrank.

Search Lost IS (budget)- Search impression share that was lost due to budget.

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16. LOW IMPRESSION SHARE

(cont)

In fact the least important metric when it comes to analyzing impression share is, in fact, search impression share! To get a better idea we would use the other type of impression share data. In the screenshot above, on face value, we are missing out on 10% of impressions but that is only half of the story.

In regards to budgets causing lost impressions it is in fact, only 0.9%, so increasing our budget will not lead to an increase in search impression share. More telling is looking at the Search Lost IS (rank) which tells us that a low Adrank has lead us to missing out on impressions. Even more alarming, we are missing out on 19% of exact match IS.

So what shall we do here? Its all about Adrank, not budget. What can we do to improve Adrank? 3 things: Bid, Quality Score and Ad Extension usage.

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17. AD DELIVERY

Ad delivery is usually set to spread evenly over a day by default. Check it and ensure you have the right settings. Spending too quick? Then if could mean that you have it set to accelerated. Bit simple? Youd be surprised.

18. ONLY USING MODIFIED MATCHES

Are you using modified broad matches only to find that you are not generating enough traffic? Many PPC adver tisers have star ted to consider modified broad matches as the new phrase match. To some of these marketers, the modified broad match has become a crutch. Probably not the best idea. Remember, modified broad matches only allows for plurals and close variants.. no synonyms.

The downside with the modified broad match is that it can possibly hide invaluable data. Sometimes by only using modified broad matches you could be missing out on some valuable traffic or keyword data especially if its a new campaign or an agency digging into a new industry. Modified broad matches only allows for plurals and close variants.. no synonyms.

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19. NOT USING SEARCH QUERY DATA

Fitting that this comes right after using the broad modifier as a crutch. Search queries can give you some of the most valuable data available to improve your Adwords campaign. Many marketers think the search query repor t is only really good for finding negative keywords but that is only one par t of it. Understanding your search terms is also a great way to find more keyword ideas to flesh out your campaign.

The truth is, how you search for a product, may not be how they search for it. Getting the full story will allow you to build a better keyword list, write better ads (more specific to the actual terms coming in) as well as stop those rogue keywords from coming through dragging your quality score down and Avg CPC up.

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20. NOT MERGING ANALYTICS WITH ADWORDS

I cant say merging Google Adwords and Google Analytics is the most intuitive thing to do , but its not very hard and the rewards are high. Lately the new look and relatively user friendly Analytics makes it quite easy to do.

All you need to ensure is that your Analytics account is shared as an administrator with the MCC account you are using and then it is pretty straight forward from there.

Merging Adwords and Analytics will ensure Analytics data can be filtered among what is coming in through organic or paid search. Note that there will usually be a variance between what Adwords tells you and what Analytics tells you.

Once you have merged the two, you are given a ton of data that Adwords alone doesnt tell you. Once they are linked, log into Analytics -> Acquisition -> Campaigns... and there is all your data.

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TIP: Use Adwords for raw click data and Analytics for behavioural analysis of your users. Dont try to analyse exact numbers in Analytics as it will simply lead to you chasing your tail.. there will be a variance.. but analyse the data and use that information to both improve your campaign and your website.

21. COMBINING SEARCH WITH DISPLAY

I still cant believe how many people and agencies are still doing this. Never run display and search in the same campaign. It makes zero sense to do so as both types of campaigns work completely different and all you end up with is a whole bunch of skewed data, a low CTR and a lot of wasted money. Split them up and keep them separate, search is not display and display is not search. Jimmy says no.

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22. NO CONVERSION TESTING

Are you running conversion tracking? No? Leave. If you are not measuring your campaign then there is no point running it. Simple. As. That. Its like writing an email without your monitor plugged in. You are hitting buttons, you kind of know stuff is happening, a few noises, groaning, ticking... but thats about it. Before you run anything, get your conversion tracking sor ted.

23. NO OFFER VISIBLE ON LANDING PAGE

This goes in line with pricing (point 6) in that if you promise something in your ad, then you should deliver on that promise quickly and without too many roadblocks. Make it difficult then you may notice higher CPCs, little traffic or no traffic at all.

TIP: Ensure your offer is in a readabe text form, otherwise it may go unnoticed and your Quality score will remain low.

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24. NOT SPLIT TESTING LANDING PAGES

If you dont test then you dont know what you are leaving on the table. Always split test landing pages where you can. If you dont have an A/B testing platform or system, simply use Googles experiments and star t analysing landing page data. Its almost fun in a way but remember to only test one thing at a time.

TIP: Things to try and test: headlines, colours, positioning of call to action, test prices. One test at a time is impor tant to understand the effect of each test.

25. NOT TESTING DIFFERENT ADS

Have you decided that your current adcopy is good and simply left it? Or have you tested any new adcopy at all? Often PPC marketers and agencies either dont test enough adcopy or they dont test at all. You could have the greatest campaign potential, however have deemed its useless as a result of simply not having good adcopy which can be attributed to not testing variations.

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Good adcopy will mean not only higher CTR but also may lead to: 1. More impressions 2. Higher Adrank 3. Lower CPCs 4. More conversions. No brainer really, test your adcopy!

26. IGNORING LOW CTRS

Low CTRs can be painful. To see the full explanation visit point 13. Generic adcopy above.

27. NOT USING THE LONG TAIL

If you were buying a 2011 second hand Ford Fiesta how would you go about searching for one? Would you type in used cars? Probably not. Would you type in Used Ford.. possibly not. What about 2011 Ford Fiesta? Bingo. 2011 Blue Ford Fiesta.. even better.

Welcome to the long tail and if your adwords campaign is performing badly then have a look at your long tail keywords, if you have them at all.

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Long tail terms do not generate as much traffic as shor ter, broader terms, but their conversion rates and effectiveness is a whole world better.

TIP: This is essential if you are in a competitive, high demand industry. Use your search query data for ideas

28. NOT USING TRENDS TO ANTICIPATE DIPS

If your organic sun screen business did really well in December, chances are April or May will be a big shock. Not all products are evergreen and some are affected (sometimes significantly) by cyclical or seasonal trends. Understand where the trends are an anticipate the ups and downs.

Just because your campaign was working well last month, doesnt necessarily mean it will work well in 2 months times. Find the trends and adjust accordingly. Some interesting trends we have noted (dog fleas, Gutter and Window cleaning, Dating over Christmas)

TIP: Apar t from search queries you could try using Googles trend tool - http://www.google.com.au/trends/

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29. NOT REMARKETING

What do you do with the traffic that has not conver ted on your website? Im concerned about that blank look your are giving me which usually means err.. nothing.

If you are adver tising on Adwords then there is no question about it, not everyone will conver t. You will most likely be losing potential leads, new business, qualified traffic and sales at some point, so why not try and bring these people back? Youve done all the hard work already.

Think of it this way. You have spent a small for tune to get the traffic to your site and paid a premium CPC. We know not everyone will conver t that should have (ie those that will benefit from your product.) This may not be your fault, some people, depending on where they are on the buying cycle need several touch points to take action, so dont take offense.

So why not pay a fraction of that CPC to bring them back again? The conversion rates I have seen and the acquisition costs from remarketing is truly remarkable in some instances. Try it at least and forget the concern that display doesnt work. Trust me, try it.

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30. NOT REMARKETING PROPERLY

Are you selling products and simply remarketing by sending people back to your website? Then you are most likely not remarketing properly and should be using some really cool tools that Google gives you at your disposal.

You can remarket with product ads so if someone was looking at that stunning black dress on your website, then you can show them more stunning black dresses as they browse the net. What could be more relevant?! Were they searching for accommodation in Bali? Then chances are they are still considering going to Bali so use your cookie pools effectively to target the right people and most importantly, send them to the right place.

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31. USING AUTOMATED RULES

Automated rules can be great and can save you lots of time but its impor tant to know what you are doing when you use them.

A thing to note about automated rules is that they are exactly that, automated. I have seen people run automated scripts daily, trying to stay within the top 2 Adrank. This can be a true disaster if your competitor is doing the same or you have a quality score issue.

A common script to run is trying to keep a high adrank by increasing bids automatically if the average position is consistently below a cer tain number. The script does not know that your profit margins are at $8 so it will happily bid $15 a click.

Ensure you set your limits with automated rules. Even if you are reluctant, set a max CPC ceiling so its doesnt go over board.

TIP: Add Quality score in your automated bid. Ensure you dont increase bids where the quality score is under 5, There are other factors you need to address and simply upping bids with your automated rules wont solve the issue.

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32. NOT BEING PATIENT ENOUGH

Are you someone that checks your campaign daily and makes major changes to it just as frequently? Chances are you may be chasing your tail and overriding previously beneficial changes before theyve had a chance to take effect. Adwords is about being statistically relevant.

33. NOT TESTING DYNAMIC INSERTION

Getting really bad CTRs but are convinced that your keywords are driving in the right market? Well then maybe your ads are simply not good enough or not relevant enough. Using dynamic keyword inser tion into your adcopy is one super easy way to make your ads more relevant to the user.

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TIP: Simply add this to your Headline: {KEYWORD:Default Headline}. In the section where it says Default Headline put in your default headline (please dont leave it as is!). This essentially tells Google that if the search term typed in by the user is too long (over 25 characters) then replace it with the default headline. Easy? Now go give it a shot.

34. RELYING ON DYNAMIC INSERTION

Word of warning. Dont rely on dynamic keyword inser tion. I have seen this reliance many times over ,and in many cases, caused many issues for that adver tiser. The risk with running dynamic inser tion ads is that it will mimic what the person has typed in, which in some cases may be irrelevant.

Lets say you install solar systems and solar panels for companies looking to save money on their energy bills. Naturally you bid on terms such as Solar systems and are also using dynamic inser tion. So you are happy and satisfied that this is going to work brilliantly.

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Enter the inquisitive 9yr old who visits Google and searches the term Solar System Map. Guess whos ad shows up? Guess what the ad headline said? You have not disappointed the 9yr old, you have paid a for tune for that useless click and not one got what they wanted. If on the other hand your ad said Solar Panel Installer, would the child have bothered to click your ad? Probably not. So dont use dynamic keyword inser tion as your crutch, but a great testing tool.

35. NOT CHECKING AND AMENDING ENOUGH

Thinking that after a month of a well running campaign that you are set for life? That type of thinking has been the downfall of many PPC managers. The entrance of 1-2 adver tisers can completely change the dynamics of a whole industry. Picture this, you are conver ting at 10% paying $2 a click. That means your conversion cost is a cool $20. If your margin is $10 then all is good. However now picture that CPC being taken to $3 per click? Suddenly you are not making a profit. Things can change drastically from week to week even day to day.

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Even if your campaign is cranking along, check on it regularly. Check your auction insights and what your competition are doing and also any trends in your search query repor t that will help you make your campaign even more profitable.

36. CHECKING TOO MUCH

Have a budget of $20 a day yet check your campaign daily? This could in fact be more detrimental to your campaign than doing it good. There are no hard and fast rules but the number of times you should check and make changes all depends on the data.

If you are running a very large campaign with lots of volume, then checking it daily might be a good idea. However most adver tisers dont fall into this category, and the daily checks can often lead to you chasing your own tail. A Monday isnt a Tuesday and a Tuesday is definitely not a Wednesday (dont get me star ted on Fridays!). Be sensible with checking your campaign and ensure you are getting the full scope of data before you can conclude that changes based on good data.

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If you really are not sure, then maybe leaving it a little longer is the way to go.

37. MAKING TOO MANY CHANGES AT ONCE

Chicken or the egg? Dont make your campaign subject to such a debate. For example if you were to change up the landing page as well as your adcopy and then suddenly you witnessed an increase in conversions then you have yourself a dilemma. Was it the adcopy? Was it the landing page? If you had only changed your landing page, test it for a week, and then re-evaluated then you would have a much better idea of how that landing page performed. Same thing goes if you were amending ONLY adcopy, gather some data, analyse and then make a judgement.

Keeping a campaign stable while only tweaking one element at a time will allow you to properly gather what leads to results, and what doesnt. Making several changes at a time will jumble the good and the bad, leading to bad decisions on what has proved effective and what didnt.

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The less variables you introduce in your testing, the more accurate the data will be.

38. DAY SCHEDULE SETTINGS

Hitting budget easily and getting decent results? Good. But not great.. Right? Have you checked your hourly performance? No? Well that could be your answer to a more efficient and more profitable Adwords campaign.

Google allows you to run 'Hour of the Day' repor ts within their segments and then based on the data from here, you can choose when your budget should be spent during the day and also increase the max CPC for cer tain times.

The more data you have, the more noticeable pattern you will see. Hourly schedules can help improve efficiency and drive conversions to the next level. Spend during proven conver ting time periods and weed it off or shut it off during lull periods, its your call.

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39. GEO TARGETING

For example mixing countries into your targeting may mean you pay too much for some country traffic and not enough for others. For example if you are selling software solutions globally, does it make sense to bid $2 worldwide? $2 will see you at position 1 all day for many countries and 9+ for others.

A single bid will often lead to skewed country data and if you dont believe me, check your Dimensions tab in your previous or current multi country campaign. Grouping countries into segments is a way to avoid this and will allow you vary your bid across multiple countries to ensure you get traffic and data from all the applicable regions to determine what areas are profitable, and which ones are not.

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40. AD ROTATION SETTING

Did you just let Google 'look after' this one? Bad choice. Google's default setting is to optimise for clicks. Its probably the best option if you are only running one ad :). But since you are reading this, you are probably testing more than one ad and therefore should move on from this default setting. You should always 'evenly' test your ads because it is wrong to think an Ad simply is a way to draw more clicks.

An ad star ts the conversion process and different ads have different conversion rates so choosing the ad that simply generates more clicks means leaving conversions on table without you even knowing it! In June 2012, Google forced all adver tisers to show ads evenly for 30 days (sometimes 90 days) for whatever reason I'm not sure... might have something to do with wanting more click$. Anyway, Google then backtracked in October 2012 giving adver tisers and ad managers the option to rotate ads indefinitely. Google doesn't usually backtrack and is evidence that 'default settings' need to be discarded in favour of a more measurable approach.

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41. IGNORE COMPETITORS

The reason you pay what you do, the reason you dont get all the clicks and the reason why you now pay $3.25 not $2.95 per click is because of the competition.

Want to know the strangest thing? Its the people below you are the ones driving your CPC higher and higher, not the guys above. How does that work? Well, considering all things were equal, in the Adwords bidding war, you only pay 1c more than the guy below.

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42. Time Repor t ing

All 41 reasons prior to this mean absolutely nothing if you dont have the time to put best practices into action.

Repor ting to clients is the real time sucker, the resource drainer, the dread all PPC marketers feel that time of the week, month or quar ter. Its time consuming nature means many of us unfor tunately spend our time repor ting on client campaigns, instead of optimising it for better performance.

This is why JimmyData was created, to save time, money and that dreaded feeling on repor ting day.

Streamline and automate your repor ting process and use time saved to work on building and running better campaigns.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

J immyData is an Adwords and Analytics repor ting tool designed to save digital agencies time and money by building beautiful, automated and custom repor ts in minutes.

Get creative by shar ing real time data with clients and providing them with repor ting like they have never seen before .

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42Reasons Your Adwords Sucks

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