So what do you do if you are in charge of attracting tourism to a tiny country in the Pyrenees known for it's skiing... in the summer months? This is the problem faced by the Andorran tourist board. Great in winter - empty in the summer. Their brilliant solution? Host a show by the Cirque du Soleil and give away free tickets...
There was a short debate on one of the forums I regularly visit this morning where several AdWords consultants and agencies were discussing client's "interference" in accounts. One contributor suggested that clients should be given "read only" access to the AdWords interface. Another, that they should only be given a monthly report, and that no access be given to the AdWords account itself at all. I was, not to put too fine a point on things, stunned. Actually, double stunned...
Starting in June, Google are going to require telephone number verification for all numbers used in Call Extensions. You can verify your numbers already, if you wish, but in June, if the numbers are still marked as "unverified" then the Call Extensions will be disapproved. At the moment they are simply marked as "unverified" - an unsightly red mark on your campaigns and one which clients are (understandably) worried about. After all, anything that Google put in red on your account must be bad, right? Well, yes and no. At the same time as they mark the number as unverified they also provide helpful guidelines to help you get verification. Helpful, possibly. But of the three options, a little like Goldilock's porridge, only one is "just right"... and even that one has some serious questions to answer...
Most people understand the auction concept that underlies Google AdWords. It's a little more complex than a simple auction, the Quality Score of your keyword determines the ad rank and that either boosts the real value of your dollar bid, or reduces it. But it's an auction nonetheless. What many people fail to realise is that before your keyword is even entered into the auction another selection process has already taken place. Since, for most advertisers, there are any number of keywords within their account that could match a particular search query, Google will decide which has the higher ad rank and, therefore, is the one which should become your account's Champion in the battle for results page dominance...
Do you believe in karma? It's not such an existential question as it might sound... essentially, do you believe in giving back, paying it forward - putting in before you take out? I do. And this is why being awarded the Top Contributor badge on the Google AdWords Community Forum is something I'm very proud of. It's not because I like to be able to flash the badge. It's because it shows that I am part of a thriving community that simply helps others do better online marketing...
There has been some discussion online recently about how to use keyword match types within RLSA campaigns. For those who are unfamiliar with RLSA campaigns, these are Google AdWords campaigns which target previous visitors to your site (the RL part - Remarketing Lists) when these people run new search queries (the SA - Search Ads). For many PPC Managers there is an ingrained aversion to using Broad match keywords. and even for these RLSA campaigns many are reluctant to use anything looser than Broad Match Modified. This, in my opinion, is an unfounded fear, and you will be doing yourself a disservice if you do not use very generic keywords in Broad Match type for your RLSA campaigns.... and here's why.....
I got a new follower on Twitter this week. Actually, I got a few, but there's one guy that has made an impact above and beyond the others. Here's the story.... If I'm honest, I can't remember if I followed Blake first or he followed me. It actually doesn't matter. He followed me and I took a quick look on his Twitter profile. He has a pinned tweet - here it is: "If I follow you, then unfollow... it's likely because you use an auto-DM for new followers. I hate that shit. Stop automating relationships." And I thought, "This guy gets it.... I hate that shit, too!" and decided to send him a quick "Thanks for following"message. But, here's the thing... how would he know that my reply wasn't just an auto-DM? In his mini bio he says he's a glass half full kind of guy, so I ran with that.....
I know… that reads like pure link bait. It’s not. It’s a serious question. I’m not talking about everything Google does; they’re not the worlds richest company for nothing. I’m talking about the Google AdWords platform. Here’s why I ask the question. There are many, many people generating phenomenal business through Google AdWords. Companies like Amazon and Expedia simply can’t spend money fast enough. Affiliate marketers can flip customers faster than a 50 year old short order cook can flip burgers. But because of this everyone – and I mean everyone – who is in business at one time or another is looking at “spending some money on Google ads”. Let’s think about that for just a moment. This is probably historical. Everyone knows someone, who knows someone, who built an empire on the back of a few dollars spent with Google...
Last week I launched a small new campaign for a client. Following best practices I added two ads to the campaign and set them to "Rotate Indefinitely: Show lower performing ads more evenly with higher performing ads and do not optimise". There is a caveat below this option which states : "Not recommended for most advertisers" - but I like living on the edge. I also like to give my target audience the benefit of the doubt that they might know better than I what they will respond to. This is the essence of rotating your ads. run a number of ads against one another, see which ones people respond to best - not just in terms of CTR, but also with respect to other measures of engagement and, of course, conversions. In my experience I have often been surprised how ads which I had thought were terrible and should never have been allowed to see the light of day, perform wonderfully and without shame once launched on an unsuspecting..
In a world where we share and like almost anything on a whim, we forget that once we "put it out there" it may, like some strange new mutation, suddenly have a heartbeat, and then a whole life of its own which is out of our control like an unruly teenager. @Cella_ was probably ill advised to post this tweet just a day before she started a new job at Jet Pizza "Ew I start this f*ck *ss job tomorrow" with a row of thumbs down..... Let's think for a moment why she might have tweeted this is the first place. Let's face it, working at a pizza joint is not a particularly glamorous job. I get that. Maybe she was putting the job down so as not to be thought as someone who might apsire to working on a pizza joint. Who knows. In any event, I'm sure she did not expect the reaction from the Jet Pizza manager...
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