When describing the newly launched AdWords advanced campaigns, Susan Wojcicki, SVP of Google AdWords Advertising said, “We want to provide the best search results for users regardless of where they are and what device they are using.” This statement beautifully encompasses what AdWords advanced campaigns are all about.
The first thing you’ll notice when learning how to use AdWords is that you’ll have the ability to build enhanced campaigns where you’ll have the ability to manage bids across devices, locations and times of the day. You can do all of this from a single campaign using mere bid adjustments.
Let’s use an example so that you can understand how to use AdWords new advanced campaigns. Let’s say that you have a restaurant that offers a take-out menu. You’re trying to target customers within a ten mile radius during the days your business is open across all devices. You can then increase your bids, let’s say 20%, for all bids that come from prospective customers searching on smartphones that are five miles away. You can then decrease your bids, say 30%, during the hours that your business is closed.
The advanced campaigns for AdWords have essentially gotten smarter, or at least the people behind AdWords have gotten smarter. AdWords advanced campaigns will display the proper ad and extension, such as site links and click-to-call numbers, based on a person’s context and the device they’re suing. To put it in simpler terms, your messages will get sent to the right people in the right manner at the right time. What more could you ask for in an online advertising platform?
Let’s say you have a gym that sells health supplements and equipment. You can then customize your headlines, text and landing pages so that people using smartphones see ads that will take the visitors to your mobile site. Meanwhile, you can target people using computers and tablets by showing them relevant links on your regular website.
When your establishment is open for business, you can show ads to potential customers that include a store locator, as well as a business phone number for those users who may be using a smartphone. When your business is closed, you might show ads that will send visitors to your website where they can order your products and services that way.
AdWords advanced campaigns also provides advanced reports so that you can track all conversions. These conversions may be website visits, purchases over the phone, app downloads, in-store offers that have been redeemed, and so on.
When you are able to track all conversions, including all-new conversion types, you’ll be able to better measure the return on your AdWords investment across all devices over time.
With AdWords advanced campaigns and advanced reporting, you’ll be able to determine when people respond to your ads, download your apps, call your number or anything else. You can then use this information to tweak your advanced campaigns for AdWords over time.
A Caveat for Sophisticated Mobile Accounts
Search Engine Land recently published an article on AdWords advanced campaigns and warned sophisticated mobile account users to hold off on making the switch to the new AdWords. Apparently, the new advanced campaigns for AdWords combines some of the intricate features of the old mobile accounts, and so these intricacies will be lost if you switch and staring learning how to use AdWords advanced campaigns.
If you have a tablet optimized site, for instance, you can’t target desktop users differently. The new AdWords advanced campaigns combines the two (tablets and desktops) to essentially be the same entity. So if you have a tablet optimized site, you may also want to hold off on the switch for a while.
Search Engine Land also recommended that mobile only accounts also hold off on the switch. However, if you aren’t using very many AdWords mobile-specific capabilities, you should make the switch to AdWords advanced campaigns as soon as possible.
With so many options to customize your campaigns across devices, times and other aspects, you now have much more control as an AdWords advertiser. Make the switch to AdWords advanced campaigns (as long as you’re not part of the groups that were advised not to) and start experimenting with all the various features. It may seem like hit-or-miss at first, but keep watching your advanced campaigns for AdWords analytics and tweak accordingly. Soon you’ll be directing your smartphone users, tablet, and desktop users to, well, to wherever you want each of those individual visitors to go. That’s the power of AdWords advanced campaigns.
