Earlier this year Google announced the Enhanced Campaign migration and like most other advertisers, I’ve been kicking and screaming ever since.  The last thing I like to do is spend time relearning something that from my perspective worked perfectly fine “the old way.”

The deadline to migrate was July 22, 2013 so most advertisers are fully converted to Enhanced Campaigns by now.  That means you’re either scrambling to figure out what’s new, or you buried your head in the sand and you’re praying your campaigns will magically improve on their own.  This article is for the former.  The latter can stop reading and I’ll probably talk to you in a few weeks… :)

There are 5 key areas you need to review once your campaigns have been upgraded to Enhanced.

 

1. Devices

Devices are the main reason for Enhanced Campaigns.  There have been numerous studies showing the growth of mobile and tablet internet usage and Google is positioning AdWords to capitalize on this trend.  By capitalize, I mean they are forcing advertisers to invest in ads targeting mobile and tablets.

If you went through our AdWords Success Formula course, then you know I strongly recommend separate campaigns for each device you’re targeting.  However, that is no longer possible with Enhanced Campaigns.  Instead, you must advertise to desktops, tablets, and mobile devices all in one campaign.  And as of this article, it’s only possible to edit your bid for mobile.

That means two things:

  1. If your website is not mobile friendly, then set your mobile bid to negative 100% (-100%) so you don’t waste money on mobile ads.
  2. If your website is not tablet friendly, then it’s critical to fix that ASAP. There’s no way to hide from tablets so the only option is to optimize your website and sales path for this traffic.

 

2. Locations

With Enhanced Campaigns, you can now edit your bids for specific locations.  This is truly an upgrade from the previous AdWords platform.  The first step to take advantage of this feature is to run a geographic report for all of your historical data to see top performing geographies and poor performing geographies.

Next, increase and decrease your bids for each geography accordingly.

 

3. Ad Scheduling

Ad scheduling is nothing new and the process is the same two steps we used for location bids.  Run a time of week and time of day report to see if there are any top or poor performing days or times.  Then adjust your bids within the Ad Schedule Settings area of your campaign.

 

4. Audiences

Audiences are nothing new, but Enhanced Campaigns makes them a little easier to work with for Search campaigns.   I wrote about Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) back in September 2012 so check out that article if you’re not familiar with Audiences and Remarketing in AdWords.

Instead of creating a new RLSA campaign, you can add Audiences to any of your existing search campaigns and adjust the bids accordingly.  For example, you can add an Audience of prospects who have not yet purchased from you and bid a little higher for them versus cold traffic.  Since those prospects have already visited your website, they are more likely to convert compared to cold traffic that does not yet know, like, and trust you.

 

5. SiteLinks

The fifth setting to review is your SiteLinks Ad Extensions.  In the old AdWords, SiteLinks were simply one line of text.  In the Enhanced Campaigns, SiteLinks are full ads with a headline and two description lines.  This represents a huge opportunity to increase your ad click through rates and increase your conversion rates by segmenting your traffic at the ad level.

 

Make sure you review all 5 of these critical settings soon.  It’s only a matter of time before your competitors catch on and start outperforming your ads!

 

Free Enhanced Campaign Review

This week only (until Friday, July 26th), I’m offering free Google AdWords Enhanced Campaign reviews to help you make a smooth transition to Enhanced Campaigns.

To claim your free review, send an email to enhanced@mainstreetroi.com

I’ll review your Google AdWords Enhanced Campaign settings, and then I’ll email you my recommendations.

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