Google AdWords Enhanced Campaigns: What do they mean for you, the advertiser?

Google recently rolled out Enhanced AdWords Campaigns. You can upgrade your campaigns now, otherwise all AdWords Campaigns will be automatically upgraded by mid year.

Since the change I’ve attended some webinars and a fantastic presentation Loves Data, so read to find out what Enhanced Campaigns mean for you.

Why have Google introduced Enhanced Campaigns?

Think about how you currently search for information online and what you search for.

If you’re like a lot of people who have a Desktop, Laptop, Tablet, SmartPhone or all of the above, you know that you can access information whenever you want, so you search the internet and use social media at all times of day, on whatever device is most convenient.

You search because you want to find what you’re looking for.

And you want results immediately.

You want relevant results, because it takes more time if you have to search again to find what you’re looking for.

With AdWords ads, the more relevant your ad is to the person searching, the better your outcomes will be.

Enhanced Campaigns allow you to customise your ads to make them more relevant

With Enhanced Campaigns you can provide messages that are relevant to people searching for your products or services based on:

• the time of day that they search
• the device they search on
• where they are located when they search.

Enhanced Campaigns allow you to create smarter ads using more powerful tools, plus you get access to more advanced reports.

Locations

Within a Campaign you’ll be able to see the performance stats for different locations. So if one location is converting better than other locations, you’ll be able to adjust your bids accordingly.

If you currently have different campaigns targeting different locations, you’ll be able to merge them togetehr and adjust your bids for different locations.

Note though that if you want different ad copy to show in different locations you’ll need to keep separate campaigns.

Devices

With Enhanced Campaigns you can bid higher or lower to trigger your ads to show on different devices, depending upon your strategy. You can also create different versions of your Ad Copy for Laptops/Desktops/Tablets and Mobile Phones.

For example if mobile phone searches are important to your business, you can bid much higher for clicks than you do on Computers/Laptops/Tablets, so that your Ad appears in one of the top positions.

Find out how to see if people are clicking on your ad from a Computer, Tablet or Mobile device.

Ad Copy

As mentioned above you can create specific versions of your ad copy for Mobile Phones and for Computers/Desktops/Laptops which have tailored text, extensions and landing pages.

Sitelinks Extensions

This is one of my favourite changes!

Sitelinks Extensions are links to different pages of your website that appear underneath your ad when it appears in one of the top positions. They make your ad bigger and give people more options for what to click on, so they can effectively increase the Click Through Rate of your ad.

At the moment to view the performance of Sitelinks Extensions the stats for all links are grouped together.

For example you might have links to: Home, Specials, Free Delivery and Contact. You’ll see the stats for all impressions, clicks, Click Through Rate, Spend and Conversions for all the links grouped together.

But with Enhanced Campaigns you’ll be able to see the performance stats for each link. This will help you decide which links are working and which ones you can change in order to improve the ad performance.

You’ll also be able to set different Sitelinks Extensions to show at different times of day. For example if you’re promoting a Restaurant, you can show Sitelinks Extensions for “Lunch Specials” leading up to lunch time, and for “Dinner Specials” after lunch, prior to dinner.

How will your ads change once they are upgraded to Enhanced Campaigns?

For advertisers with straightforward ad campaigns targeting all devices, the new features will be available to you in your Settings. If you decide not to take advantage of them your ads will keep running as they previously did.

However, that’s not the case if you have Campaigns set up specifically to target different devices; one campaign to target Computers plus Tablets and another campaign to target Mobile Phones.  In the past it was recommended that advertisers targeting mobile traffic set their campaigns up this way in order to customise your keywords, Ad Copy and bids, but with Enhanced Campaigns it’s no longer necessary and the separate campaigns will need to be merged together.

A important change with Enhanced Campaigns is that it will no longer be possible to only target Mobile Devices. Your campaigns will need to opted in for the other devices too.

What do AdWords advertisers need to do next?

All AdWords account holders either need to upgrade their Campaigns to Enhanced Campaigns or Google will upgrade them mid year.

• If you’re one of my clients, I’ll look after the upgrade for you and ask you for any extra information that I need.
• If you’re currently working with an agency, ask them about their upgrade plan.
• If you’re managing your own campaigns and currently have similar Campaigns that are targeted by device it’s recommended that you upgrade and merge your campaigns together in the next month or two, before Google rolls your campaigns over to Enhanced Campaigns. When the campaigns are merged you need to make sure you avoid keyword duplication.

Not sure what you need to do?

Email me for a Free AdWords account review and I’ll get back to you with recommendations and costs.

Got questions about AdWords Enhanced Campaigns?

Feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to answer – no Google speak required!

Until next time

Melinda