The 7 Enhanced Campaign Mistakes You re Probably Making............................................................................ 2 The 7 Enhanced Campaign Mistakes You re Probably Making 7 Whether you liked it or not, Google s switchover to Enhanced Campaigns happened. And just like that, your AdWords campaigns are beautifully manageable, simplified and streamlined, meeting the expectations Google set when the transition was announced earlier this year, right? For many businesses, that s a far cry from the truth. Surveys and media have revealed that the general consensus is that Enhanced Campaigns have delivered more uncertainty than measurable ROI and more scramble than simplicity when it comes to bidding by device. But, truth is, there s no turning back now. It s time to get to work and get your hands dirty in the new system. So that you don t stay in the scrambled state of mind like the rest of the paid search pack, the team at ChannelAdvisor put together seven mistakes you re probably making with Enhanced Campaigns and tips that will put you on the right track.
The 7 Enhanced Campaign Mistakes You re Probably Making............................................................................ 3 1 You Procrastinated You let Google auto-enhance your campaigns. It seemed tedious to manually review the structure of what started out as replica campaigns to make sure that all the right keywords ended up in your master campaign.truth is, it would ve been tedious. But if you let Google auto-upgrade your campaigns for you, the campaigns that were once identical all got upgraded; now you might have three copies of the same keyword floating around in three different campaigns, all showing up on computers/tablets and potentially mobile phones with three different bids. We ll assume that the one with the highest bid got the most traffic, but the keywords with the highest bids aren t all together in one campaign. And now, your stats are a mess and performance is impossible to manage. Good news! It s not too late to clean up! Use AdWords editor to find duplicate keywords across your upgraded campaigns, then eliminate the duplicates or pause the redundant versions.
The 7 Enhanced Campaign Mistakes You re Probably Making............................................................................ 4 2 You Let It Ride You decided that this transition was the perfect opportunity to test the waters of mobile. After all, everyone s doing it. So you left your Enhanced Campaigns opted in to mobile with the same bids as desktops/tablets. You meant to test it for a while, then come back and review performance by device. But, alas, you forgot; now you ve got campaigns with suboptimal mobile performance running keywords at the same bids as tablets and desktops. Use our Automated Mobile Bid Adjuster to keep the mobile effective revenue share (ERS) as close to your goal as possible. We make it easy for you; just navigate to Campaign Settings, check the box and, just like that, the mobile bid adjuster is managed within the software according to your goals!
The 7 Enhanced Campaign Mistakes You re Probably Making............................................................................ 5 3 You Treat All Traffic The Same You don t have to be geeking it out daily in your website s Google Analytics dashboard to know that mobile has arrived as a significant traffic contributor. One of our takeaways from the 2012 Christmas shopping season was that mobile phones played a sizable role in the journey from research to purchase. The growth of mobile traffic, however, is still about 2X that of mobile conversions. As such, you can t treat mobile visitors to the same experience as desktop visitors and expect the same outcome. Experiences need to be customised per device. The best way to make sure visitors land on an optimised site is to use server-side redirects to send traffic to your device-optimised experiences. In the long-term, optimising your website to deliver a crisp browsing experience for shoppers on every device and operating system is absolutely crucial to the success of your business. In the short-term, you can use analytics data to peel back the cover on traffic sources by device and let the majority rule; tailor the experience to the devices and screens that are driving the most traffic.
The 7 Enhanced Campaign Mistakes You re Probably Making............................................................................ 6 4 Your Bidder Didn t Get The Memo Automated bidders are a critical part of most paid search software platforms. Did your bid tool get the memo about Enhanced Campaigns? Make sure your bidder isn t changing keyword cost per click (CPC) bids based on how they perform on mobile devices. Your bidder should bid based on computer and tablet performance and allow you to manage mobile ROI with a Mobile Bid Adjustment. Bidding keyword or Ad Group CPCs based on mobile performance can lead to a decline in traffic on keywords that were performing well on devices other than mobile. Make sure your bidder excludes mobile performance from CPC bid changes. ChannelAdvisor Bid Rules adjust keyword CPCs based on tablet and computer performance, while our Automated Mobile Bid Adjuster looks only at mobile performance compared to mobile goals. Now, you can conquer bidding on a device-by-device basis to maximise ROI across all devices!
The 7 Enhanced Campaign Mistakes You re Probably Making............................................................................ 7 5 You Let Everyone Come Along You were a pioneer with Enhanced Campaigns and figured what s the harm in upgrading sitelinks, too? So, you upgraded all your sitelinks without giving thought to the fact that in legacy sitelinks oftentimes 90% of the link text was identical across campaigns. Now you re left with multiple copies of the same link text, and it s difficult to determine what link text is assigned to a campaign and what s extra. ChannelAdvisor s Sitelink Management allows you to add a Nickname to your Sitelinks. This way, you can easily identify and assign sitelinks to campaigns and bypass all that costly confusion.
The 7 Enhanced Campaign Mistakes You re Probably Making............................................................................ 8 6 You Got Disapproved In addition to the careful selection of sitelinks, you needed to make some changes to link text during the upgrade process. Enhanced Sitelinks have a character limit of 25, whereas legacy sitelinks had 35 characters allotted. If you don t edit your sitelinks during the upgrade process, you could end up with disapproved sitelinks, or, worse yet, sitelinks that get cut off when they auto-upgrade. Google will autoupgrade all sitelinks to Enhanced Sitelinks on 23 September, 2013, so time is of the essence! ChannelAdvisor s Enhanced Sitelink support makes this transition smooth and mitigates the risks that those valuable sitelinks will be disapproved or ineffective in the new format. Create your Enhanced Sitelinks from scratch using Enhanced Sitelink support; this way you ll have a master copy of each link text that is within the 25 character limit requirements.
The 7 Enhanced Campaign Mistakes You re Probably Making............................................................................ 9 7 You Have Unrealistic Expectations You migrated, but you re still living in the paid search world of the past. Sure, people are searching more on phones, and now tablets and desktops are grouped, but what s the big deal? Google didn t make the transition just to add some variety to your PPC management. The transition was a reaction to major shifts in consumer behaviour. The call to retailers is to understand how each device performs for your programs and set clear internal expectations. It s also important to understand how shoppers engage with your site across devices, and to properly measure your paid search program s total ROI. ChannelAdvisor s Paid Search solution provides insight that helps you dig into the true impact of Enhanced Campaigns on your business, and gives you actionable reporting to optimise fast. This includes taking a look at how tablet performance compares to desktop computer performance since it s now bid the same and shares a budget!
The 7 Enhanced Campaign Mistakes You re Probably Making............................................................................ 10! Bonus Mistake: You Forgot to Combine Budgets! You took the time to consolidate your campaigns, ensuring your keywords had appropriate bids and that ads were optimised per device. You did everything right, but you forgot to increase your campaign daily budget to account for the traffic from all devices! Make sure you ve budgeted properly so that you don t experience a significant drop in traffic!
The 7 Enhanced Campaign Mistakes You re Probably Making............................................................................ 11 Summing it up... Any change in Google s AdWords interface can be a beast to retail search marketers, but if you ve got the right tools and the know-how, there s nothing you can t handle! If you re interested in learning more about how ChannelAdvisor s Paid Search solutions can help you tweak your Enhanced Campaigns to capture and convert shoppers looking for you on every device, contact 1 300 887 239 or ausales@channeladvisor.com. Trust us. Be Seen. Call 1300 887 239 UK 0203 014 2700 US 866.264.8594 Visit www.channeladvisor.com.au Email ausales@channeladvisor.com The global standard for e-commerce leaders.