One of the questions I often get asked by marketers new to AdWords is how to structure their account properly – there just seem to be so many choices.. what’s the best way? Here are a few ideas to get you started.
#1 create a new campaign for every country you want to advertise in. If you sell a digital product in, say, Australia, NZ, UK, USA & Canada, the only way to get sensible statistics for each of those countries is to have 5 separate campaigns. For instance if you mix them all together & pick ‘all english speaking countries’ then that keyword with average position 4.6 might be in the #1 or 2 spot in NZ & Canada, 4th in Oz & UK & position 9 in the States. Information you need to know in order to manage the account properly
#2 always create separate campaigns for Search vs Content traffic. Not only are the bid prices wildly different, the text of your Ads needs to be different too – you’re dealing with 2 very different mindsets. One group are actively searching, the other are browsing & you’re trying to catch their attention & interrupt them
#3 segment by keyword – here are some general suggestions:
- You might have some keywords that are product/service (hopefully experience!) focused & some that are variations on your brand name(s) – if you always want to be found for your brand (and why wouldn’t you?) then you’ll want to set a higher budget for those words & perhaps a lower one for more general product phrases. The only way to do that is to have different campaigns for each
- You might have location specific keywords – these are becoming essential in many markets. You could use groups for this but it’s often better to use different campaigns & set the location of each campaign to the location mentioned in your Ads. eg show the ‘this service in sydney’ ad only in the sydney or NSW state region.
- some keywords are very general – the ones used early in a buyers decision making cycle (eg “plasma tv”), others are very specific (eg “Sony PlasmaPro FWD-42PV1″). You may want to limit your spend each day on the general stuff, but always get found if someone is looking for a particular product number – again 2 (or more) campaigns with different budgets will solve this
And if it all sounds too hard to create different AdGroups & Campaigns, make sure you install the AdWords Editor – it makes moving keywords, ads & groups as easy as dragging & dropping!
