Guide to Google AdWords

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Advanced Edition

Guide to Google AdWords

Becoming the Expert
After successfully navigating the setup of a Google AdWords account and the initial round of
settings, optimizations, and expansions, the time has come to not only manage your account
according to general best practices, but to really identify how your account will flourish.
By the end of this whitepaper, you should have a greater understanding of the distinction between
e-commerce and lead generation PPC strategies, the effective use of Remarketing, utilizing advanced
segmentation for improved targeting, cross-device attribution, and using automated rules in your
accounts.

Heres what youll learn:

1) The distinctions between e-commerce and lead generation PPC
2) Understanding how to create the most value from your Remarketing lists
3) Advanced segmentation opportunities for your account
4) Cross-device attribution for a broader look at how users engage with you
5) Utilizing automation for a simpler and more efficient account management

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Guide to Google AdWords

E-commerce vs Lead Generation

Businesses across the world take advantage of PPC to improve their brand exposure, their customer
base, and ultimately the return on their marketing investment. Although they may have many things
in common, there is a critical distinction between the world of e-commerce and lead generation
pay-per-click marketing.
In the table below, these differences are clearly outlined for simple assessment of the strategies and
tactics that are affected.

As these points are considered, these distinctions should be visibly acknowledged in your account.
The metrics used for gauging regular performance will vary based on these principles and overall
success may be felt in differing timelines. Additionally, the way in which new and converter visitors
are targeted depends on the nature of your PPC, such as seasonal effect on shoppers or the transition
of Free Trial users to full-paying clients.

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Guide to Google AdWords

Remarketing: How To
The concept of remarketing or retargeting allows a business to continually engage with a
demographic who has already been to their website. This means that the individual is not only
more familiar with the online experience, but they have also begun the process of identifying if
your product or service is meeting their needs. Because of the specificity of your targeting - with a
quantity of online browsers whom have been to your site - remarketing efforts tend to yield lower
costs-per-click as well as higher conversion rates. Those who click through a remarketing ad are often
individuals who know what to expect by landing on your site and thus are further into the conversion
process or buying cycle.
Before you can succeed in remarketing, you must create your Remarketing campaign. Because you
will need a list of previous visitors, the initial step is to create and place your remarketing code.

Remarketing code
This is a specific Google code that will be placed on all pages of your website that will then tag or
cookie any person that visits one of your pages. This cookie can last for any period of time, ranging
from just a few days to as many as 540 days for a Display campaign and 180 for a Search campaign.
Your remarketing code is found in your Shared Library of your AdWords account, under Audiences.
Once there, you will encounter clear steps for placing the code, including the option to email it to your
developer, if youre not the one placing it.

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Guide to Google AdWords

Remarketing: How To Cont...

Once youve properly placed your code, you can verify its status on the Audience page of your
Shared Library.
Once you have completed this
step, youll need to create your
remarketing lists. Commonly, an
All Visitors list is created, which
simply tags all users whove been
to your site for remarketing. This allows to you remind visitors of your products and services for
future contact.
In addition to this general list, your next step will be to identify your converting traffic and assess your
interest in re-engaging with them.
For lead generation PPC, as mentioned previously, often an individual who has completed a lead form
will have little additional value for further conversions.
Unless youre operating from an e-mail list or free trial, converted users in lead gen should be a
remarketing list that is excluded from your targeting.
In order to do this, youll return to your
Shared Library Audiences tab and choose:

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Guide to Google AdWords

Remarketing: How To Cont...

This list will then be added to your targeting as an exclusion, while your All Visitors would be included.
There are many levels of visitors to include and exclude depending on the intention behind your
remarketing efforts. You may want to target those whove gone through a certain stage in the
purchase process or who have completed a certain step in your form signup.
Remarketing exists similarly in Google Analytics, where your standard Analytics tag will need just
a slight adjustment to allow for it to track features of your Display network placements. It can be
useful to create your remarketing lists through Analytics when you want your lists to revolve around
particular behavior, such as targeting a certain quantity of items browsed or through a specific type
of service your company provides. It is through the construction of these lists and combining them
for highly refined targeting that you can put the bid and budget emphasis where it is most likely to
convert well.

Additional Remarketing Campaigns

RLSA
Although traditional Google Remarketing was based in the Display network, it has grown to be in the
Search network too. Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) offer targeted ads for those searching
through a Google search engine. You use the same type of remarketing lists as with your Display
campaigns, but here you would include keywords, just like any other search campaign.
To create your RLSA campaign, youll go through the same process of creating a Search campaign with
ad groups and keywords. However, youll also include targeting for your desired audience.

When it comes to keyword targeting, you can be a little more flexible with your choices. Because you
know the window of time this group has engaged with your site, you have a bit more confidence that a
search for one of your broader keywords can be conducted with a greater understanding of what they
need. This means that when your ad appears, the individual not only knows more clearly what theyre
investigating, but also recognizes you and the experience they had on your site.
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Guide to Google AdWords

Remarketing: How To Cont...

For this reason, RLSA campaigns often have lower volume, but a higher conversion rate than
traditional search campaigns, and even traditional remarketing campaigns on the Display network.
RSDA
A third development in remarketing is through the construction of what are considered RDSA
campaigns. This combines your Remarketing search campaigns with another form of campaigns called
Dynamic Search Ads (DSA).
These text ads are created based on the users search term and what Google deems to be the most
relevant headline. You provide the description lines, but the headline and destination URL are
both inserted dynamically based on Googles perception of what will yield the most positive user
experience. The concept behind RDSA is to take the DSA campaign and add remarketing lists to the
targeting so that the ads are highly relevant and shown to highly qualified users.

Targeting
Once youve successfully begun running your remarketing campaign, youll want to start optimizing
it. Because the nature of this campaign is fundamentally different from standard Display or Search
campaigns, we also utilize additional methods for improving performance.
As is the commonly accepted practice, conducting placement reports will allow you to identify sites on
which your ad shows. From these, you can identify what placements are sources of inefficient spend
and exclude them. Conversely, those that have brought in strong conversion volume should remain in
the running, potentially to even be set as a managed placement, so that you can control the bidding for
these sites.
To identify the effectiveness of the ads you are showing to known visitors, the first optimization will be
through the examination of the Reach & Frequency report, as seen in the AdWords Dimensions tab.

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Guide to Google AdWords

Targeting Cont...
From this report, you can segment the number of times per day, week, or month that a user was shown
your remarketing ads. This data can be folded into a pivot table where the frequency is aggregated
over a time period. The data shows that the
conversion rate is strongest for those who
have seen the ad 2-3 times in a single day. The
conversion rate then declines a bit before
resuming to a higher rate after 7 impressions.
From this table, you can take advantage of
the frequency capping option within your
remarketing campaign settings tab. You can
segment by the quantity of impressions per
day/week/month as well as by ad group/
campaign/ad.

Advanced Segmentation
At this point, your account should be divided into a structure that allows for best achievement of your
overarching PPC goals. While such segmentation is imperative for successful account management,
additional parameters can allow for a more efficient use of your spend. These segmentations include
the use of some of Google AdWords more in-depth reports, such as click type, extension performance,
and geographic report.
Sitelinks have many areas of segmented reporting, all of which is available within the Ad Extensions
tab, under Segmentation. Two reports that can provide extremely actionable takeaways are Click
Type and This Extension vs. Another.

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Guide to Google AdWords

Advanced Segmentation Cont...

Click Type

Upon selecting your Click Type segmented report, youll see your active sitelinks, with details as
follows:

Although you may not have a large variety of ad extensions, this report allows for you to identify what
component prompted the initial click. In this chart, a sitelink highlighting a New Arrivals page is shown
to have 55,474 clicks with 406 conversions. Yet when the segmented report is opened, the link itself
only had 1572 clicks and 8 conversions. While sitelinks may have contributed to a larger performance
increase, the sitelinks may not have carried as much weight as at first glance.

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Guide to Google AdWords

Advanced Segmentation Cont...

This Extension vs. Other
Similarly, when the This Extension vs. Other report is pulled, we can distinguish how the New Arrivals
sitelink performed compared to other sitelinks that were present in the same ad group as well as other
ad extensions. This report is invaluable when seeking to adjust your sitelink messaging or targeting. In
this case, the New Arrivals sitelink contributed to a mere 1% of clicks.

The outcome of this reporting is a better understanding of the value of each specific extensions
utilized in an account, to identify room for optimization and expansion.

Geographic Performance
When evaluating the success of your targeting or seeking new opportunities for geotargeting, the
Geographic report can provide detailed information about performance. As a report in the Dimensions
tab, it pulls data for users based on their location as well as their areas of interest. When a campaign is
created, the default setting is to target those in, searching for, and viewing pages about the targeted
location.

A geographic report provides a clearer view of how this has manifested.

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Guide to Google AdWords

Advanced Segmentation Cont...

Of the 4,000 total clicks in this account, the location of interest occupies approximately 20% of
the traffic volume, with only 17% contributing to the conversions. While this is not an outrageous
discrepancy, it gives some opportunities for reducing inefficiencies when excluding the location of
interest.
The data from this report can also have Region columns added, which break down the type of location
by, in this case, state.

This data can be further reviewed for overall contribution by location, as well as segmented by location
type.
These additional reports can provide you with continued opportunities to improve your accounts
traffic coverage, engagement, and overall cost efficiency

Cross-Device Attribution
In a world where mobile & tablet traffic now occupies over 60% of online traffic (comScore report), the
acknowledgement of multi-device and multi-channel interactions is crucial. Cross-device attribution
refers to the way in which Google is able to track users interaction with your site across multiple
devices and multiple avenues of exposure, such as emails, direct, paid, and organic searches.
In the AdWords interface, it is most common to associate your conversions with the last click a user
made (which occurred on your ad) before converting. Google does its best to use back end data to
give us estimates on what they think the actual conversion volume is for our hanapinmarketing.com
accounts, taking into
consideration the use of multiple devices including desktop computers, tablets, and smartphones.

Guide to Google AdWords

Cross-Device Attribution Cont...

Estimated Total Conversions
Estimated total conversions is a metric that Google has begun providing to do just this. The ETC
calculates when a conversion was made on one device while the initial click was made on a different
device. Although there is limited transparency on the accuracy of these calculations, it certainly
provides an idea of the contribution multiple devices may be making to your conversion volume.
In order to gauge your multi-device presence,
two simple reports can assist in this process.
Segmenting by device will give you a clear
picture of the performance occurring in
your account based on desktop, tablets,
and mobile devices. This report is found in
the segmentation tab and can be used on a
campaign-by-campaign basis or pivoted across
the entire account.
The value of this particular report is to identify what portion of your traffic is coming through
each device. If you are at a neutral 0% big modifier for your campaign, and yet mobile users are
consuming 75% of your budget, you can clearly assess that you have a strong mobile presence.
Similarly, if you have no bid modifier, or even a positive mobile bid adjustment, but see minimal
mobile traffic, you can deduce that there is little interest in researching or acquiring your product
or service on mobile devices.

Here the mobile presence is consuming 35% of the budget over the course of 30 days, and yet only
returning 18% of the sales.
If you are unsure of your mobile presence due to a -100% bid
adjustment, Google Analytics provides insights through the
organic and direct traffic you have received over time.
Using Google Analytics segmentation of Non CPC, we can see
traffic unassociated with paid search.

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Guide to Google AdWords

Cross-Device Attribution Cont...

In the Audience tab of the GA interface, a Mobile report overview can supply
us with a better picture of what happens outside of the PPC realm.
Below is a report for non-paid traffic that is segmented by device.

From this data we see that we are actually pulling in a larger

segment of mobile traffic through our ads that may have
necessarily arrived organically or through other means.
Additionally, examining your search funnels may also give
way to further insights to the path your users are taking
pre-conversion. Google Analytics provides many views of
this type of traffic, including the Multi-Channel funnels,
as seen in your Conversions tabs. The Overview of this
report allows you to select the
traffic sources to consider and
demonstrates the interaction
seen in the pre-conversion
process.
In an account where you see
quite a bit of overlap, such as
the Paid Search and Direct
overlap of 5.49% as seen here,
a deeper look is required.

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Guide to Google AdWords

Cross-Device Attribution Cont...

In the Top Conversion Path report, found in
the Multi-Channel Funnels tab, you can see
these specific interactions but with greater
segmentation.
Even greater segmentation can be achieved
with the Secondary Dimension tab of the
report, in which campaign or even keyword
level is available.

This yields a report such as this:

Identifying the relationship between your PPC efforts and non-PPC interactions not only affects the
value of PPC but also the deeper understanding of what brings users to your site and returning to
make their purchase or sign up.
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Guide to Google AdWords

Automating Your Rules And Reports

When working on accounts with hundreds of thousands of moving parts, efficiency is of the utmost
importance. As you become more familiar with the workings of your PPC account, you may begin to
identify processes or optimizations that dont need the human touch and could be just as successfully
implemented through an automated rule.
Google understands this need and has provided a thorough list of rules that may be used with each
in your account. While this list is impressive, there are a few examples that are most frequently
implemented and most easily applied across the boards of varying industries.

Reports
Automated reports can be useful in receiving updates on performance when you cant necessarily be
in the account every day. While its strongly recommended that you are in your accounts each day, the
automated report can provide you with a snapshot that tells you what you need to know, as often as
you need to know it.
Automated reports are extremely simple to pull; in fact, theyre just like pulling a report!
You can do this for any downloadable report, for whichever date range you need, ad at the frequency
you determine.

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Guide to Google AdWords

Automating Your Rules And Reports Cont...

Rules
If you find yourself making the same optimizations to your
account on a regular basis, it may be time to create a rule to do
it for you.
Bid Rules: Of the rules on can create in AdWords, the most
commonly used rule is the bid rule. To begin, youll want to
select the keywords for which this rule applies.
Here well choose Change max. CPC bids when which
allows you to pinpoint the circumstances that would incur a
shift in your bids.
Note! If you are conducting bid changes on a regular basis, and
each of these changes is conducted in the same mathematical
way, this is the type of automation that can free up your time
while still achieving the same goals.
Upon selection your option, youll encounter several choices. Once scenario may be as follows:
a) If you, like many PPC account managers, conduct weekly bid changes, you would pull a keyword
report and identify areas of inefficient spend. You always select keywords that have spent over a $15
CPL goal and reduce those bids by 10%, keeping your bids above $3.00 which youve experienced to
be associated with an eventual drop in exposure. A useful rule would sift through your keywords and
make the adjustments for you when they flare up. In this case, your rule would be set for a weekly
review, using the previous weeks data. If the keyword had an average CPL over your designated $15,
the rule would reduce the bid by 10% with a minimum bid of $3.00. Because these are small changes,
you do not request a confirmation email that the rule has run, simply notification if there are any
changes made or if errors occur.

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Guide to Google AdWords

Automating Your Rules And Reports Cont...

b) Another opportunity for automation is in regards to your competition and the effect it has on your
account. For this scenario, lets say you are in a fairly competitive market and from time to time, your
Search Impression Share slips beyond a percentage that yields consistent performance. Because
traffic varies slightly from day to day, running this rule daily isnt necessary. It would be useful to run it
weekly, however, so that when the average generally decreases over several days, the drop does not
go unnoticed. Here you may create a weekly rule that increases your bids by 10% for any keyword that
has a Search Impression Share below 70%. In this case, the previous weeks performance is taken into
consideration before the bid is adjusted. Additionally the results would be emailed to you on a weekly
basis, regardless of change status, so that you can quickly review how Impression Share is looking for
these keywords.

Ad Management rules
If you are a business that continually changes ad copy, there are some simple options that can assist in
enabling and pausing your ads.
In one scenario, you may offer promotions at certain times, such as holidays. In this example, the ads
selected have been given AdWords labels that indicate that they are promotional ads for Fathers
Day. These ads were uploaded to run for the 2 weeks preceding the holiday and need to be set live in
coordination with the promotion going live on your site.

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Automating Your Rules And Reports Cont...

In this circumstance, the rule may look like this:

This one-time rule will ensure that your ads are set live at the desired date and time, with a
confirmation email requested when the change occurs.
Campaign management rules
Lastly, one rule that exists within AdWords can assist with campaign performance. If you have an
account that utilizes the Total Conversion Value metric, and has a goal Conv. value/Cost (AdWords
version of ROAS), you can set yourself a campaign budget rule. This rule would allow the daily budget
to be increased by a certain amount or percentage as the estimated Conv.value/cost remains above a
certain threshold.

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Guide to Google AdWords

Automating Your Rules And Reports Cont...

Of course, this rule could apply similarly if your goal is a CPL threshold. This type automation allows
your campaigns to spend more if they are justifying it with profitable performance.
Upon creating this rule, you may set another rule for later in the day. In this example, the rule is
executed at 1pm. A follow up rule may apply at 5pm, where, if the Conv value/cost slips, the budget
would then be reduced, and so on.
The overall advantage to using automated rules in your AdWords account is to take the daily, weekly,
or monthly tasks you routinely run, and allow the interface to do them for you. This frees up your time
while still generating the same outcome.

A Quick Recap
These are the things you should be familiar with now:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)

The distinctions between e-commerce and lead generation PPC.

Understanding how to create the most value from your Remarketing lists.
Advanced segmentation opportunities for your account.
Cross-device attribution for a broader look at how users engage with you.
Utilizing automation for a simpler and more efficient account management.

But of course, this is not a comprehensive list of everything you could know in Google AdWords, but
its a good start. As the world of PPC constantly changes, theres always something new to learn. So
keep reading, keep experimenting, and make sure you are actively taking part in PPC communities,
events, and resources. Youll be the expert you strive for before you know it!

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Learn more with Hanapin.

For help with your Paid Search
Campaigns, or to talk to a paid search
professional, contact us:
www.HanapinMarketing.com
812.330.3134

Hanapin Marketing is a paid search agency based in Bloomington, Indiana. Founded in 2004, the company
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manges & optimizes clients paid search programsincreasing sales while simultaneously
decreasing budgets.
From ad copy composition to keyword research to landing page optimization, Hanapins core objective is to
maximize our clients return on investment.