This blog was written to advise advertisers of the best practices for deciding the why, what and how of re-structuring your adCenter campaigns. We hope this gives you the foundations for moving your campaigns into a more efficient structure leading to improved key performance indicators (KPIs) over time.
Why would I consider a re-structure?
Have you ever found yourself contemplating either of the following?
- I need to set up a new campaign/account, where do I even start?
- My current campaign just isn’t working the way I want it to even after several optimisations. What could I do?
If you have, then don’t despair, we might have the answer... a re-structure.
What is re-structuring all about?
Re-structuring basically means starting your campaign/s from scratch..."a daunting thought" you may be thinking, however, it can have limitless wins for your business and is not something that should be shrugged off lightly. Re-structures can help to lower your CPCs whilst increasing your CTR long-term due to positive changes being made on your account.
As a Media Specialist, I have re-structured some client’s accounts with amazing affects and clients have been delighted with the results. If you’re still not convinced, I would recommend that you try a test re-structure by pausing one of your campaigns and creating a new test campaign following the guidelines I set below in my 9 step guide:
How? - The 9 Step Guide to Restructuring...
1) Develop Your Structure
Firstly you need to decide what you want your structure to look like. You may want it one of 2 ways;
- Break up your campaigns according to product/service
- Break up your campaigns by match-types if you want to monitor your match-types closely.
For this article, I will be concentrating on re-structuring by breaking campaigns out by product/service as this is typically what works best for our clients.
2) Review your landing page to ensure your new structure will be highly relevant.
Decide what the main products/services you wish to advertise are and ensure you have web pages dedicated to those products/services. If you are a travel company and offer holidays to various locations, you might want to create several campaigns for various holiday locations. From there you could advertise the different holiday types under those location names, e.g. if your campaign was Paris, your ad group names could include Last Minute Breaks, Disneyland Breaks, Luxury Holidays, Romantic breaks etc.
If you are a company selling a product, e.g. home furniture, you could break it down by furniture type and have campaigns named Sofas, Kitchen Tables, Chairs, etc. and then break the campaigns’ ad groups down further and include branding ad groups or whichever you would like.
A Sample Structure For A Travel Company:
I’m not saying this is definitely the structure for all travel companies so play around and find out what structure works best for you. Remember wherever possible to add in as many specific ad groups as possible to each campaign. I recommend that you add in very targeted keywords to each ad group as well as at least 3 ads with different selling points to ensure you reach all audiences. Doing this will ensure that your ads/keywords are highly targeted and also enables you to evaluate what product/service performs best for you.
3) Only Include Relevant Keywords/Ads
Once you have your structure set, you need to associate very relevant, targeted keywords and ads to your Ad Groups. To find suitable keywords, you can do some research through adCenter (the "Research" tab) or via adLabs. My colleague Shefali wrote a great checklist for keyword research which is available here and this should help your research too. Don’t ever be tempted to add irrelevant keywords to your account just to boost traffic. It will have a negative effect on your campaign over time and could possibly lead to lower CTR and higher CPCs. Always remember to add negative keywords to avoid any unwanted traffic.
The key to success is to ensure that your ads always go to relevant landing pages so don’t create an ad group for Last Minute Breaks if you don’t have a landing page for last minute breaks in Florida.
When adding new ads to your new ad groups, always ensure that they include the following;
- Mention any offers/”hot deals” you have going on at present e.g. warranty, shipping, low prices etc.
- Try to include dynamic text in your ad titles/descriptions where-ever possible -- it makes such a difference!
- If you have a well-known brand, use it! Make sure the brand name is included in the ad title or description, or even better, both! Also, if you’re an official site of the brand, also mention this.
- People are always conscious of safe online shopping so if you have secure ordering, mention this.
- Use your high-performing keywords in your adcopy.
4) Include Seasonality Campaigns
If there is a seasonal event coming up which you think could boost your sales, include seasonality campaigns. If you are a chocolate company, include an Easter campaign with Easter Chocolates ad groups. The benefit of having these created is that you can pause these campaigns and then resume them the following year.
5) Include Branding Campaigns
As mentioned above, if you have a big brand, consider adding a campaign which contains only branding ad groups. This will help you to analyze how your brand is doing.
6) Consider Match-Types
At adCenter, we always recommend using all 3 match-types however there are some circumstances where we may recommend not doing this;
- If you had an account which wasn’t working for you and you are creating a re-structured account to help your CTR, I would recommend that you start off using Exact & Phrase match-types only as these match-types tend to boost your CTR.
- If you find that you tend to spend a lot on high-spending keywords on all match-types, then only include Exact & Phrase match.
- If you have found that 1 or 2 match-types just haven’t worked well for you in the past, then either a) only use the match-types which do perform well for you or b) increase bids for those match-types which perform best for you.
7) Set Good Bids
Always set the max bid you are willing to pay for keywords. PPC is an auction and the highest bidder wins therefore if you’re not in, you can’t win. You can always reduce the bid after a while once your CPC drops due to good performance. When starting off however, it is key to start off with good bids so that you keep a good history.
8) Set your new structure live
Set your new structure live and watch it succeed!
9) Evaluate, evaluate, evaluate...
Once you’ve created your new structure, you’re not finished. You need to make sure that you check it, at least for the first few weeks, so you can correct anything which may not be working well. This may include deleting under-performing ads/keywords, adding new negative keywords, fixing match-types, updating bids, adding new products services, adding/pausing seasonal campaigns etc. Remember to use adCenter reporting (ad/keyword performance reports etc) when evaluating the success of your re-structure.
The evaluation phase is really critical as once you have completed that; your campaigns will be in good order long term. You obviously need to check in every so often to ensure bids etc are set correctly but other than that, things should tick along well for you.
To summarise;
- Develop Your Structure
- Review your landing page to ensure your new structure will be highly relevant
- Only Include Relevant Keywords/Ads
- Include Seasonality Campaigns
- Include Branding Campaigns
- Consider Match-Types
- Set Good Bids
- Set your new structure live
- Evaluate, evaluate, evaluate...
If you found this re-structuring guide useful & if you have any successes from your re-structures, we’d love to hear your story.
Here’s to low CPCs and high CTR & Conversion rates...
Happy Re-Structuring!
