Category Archives: AdWords

What To Do If Someone Is Bidding On Your Brand Terms

You’ve just noticed a competitor is bidding on your brand terms, what do you do now?

Competitor bidding is on the rise. When you find a competitor bidding on your terms it can be pretty annoying. After all, people searching for your brand terms is highly qualified traffic and losing them at this point can feel like you’re losing money (and you possibly are!)

So what can you do about it? Here are my top suggestions:

Bid on your own terms

The good news is, it shouldn’t be difficult to get position 1 and push your competitor down in the search results. As one of the main components in ad rank is quality score (largely determined by your relevance between your keyword, ad and landing page), it will be easier for you to claim the top spot.

There are many businesses doing this (particularly well known brands with multiple competitors) to remain at the top of the page. Some examples include; Audi, Barbour, Porsche and Nike.

Bid on their terms

Despite it possibly making up for the shortfall from losing some of your brand-term traffic, this is something that needs to be exercised with caution. Bidding on competitor terms can be expensive and upon noticing a drop in clicks, your competitor could increase their maximum CPC and/or budget.

Creating this kind of bidding war can often put strain on your budgets and it’s unlikely to get the competitor to stop bidding on your term.

Consider a trademark complaint

Competitors are allowed to bid on your brand terms. However, if you have a trademark on your brand terms and they are using the terms in their ads you can ask Google to investigate the matter. If found to be infringing on your intellectual property, Google can then disapprove the competitor’s ads. If you’re not sure about whether or not this will work for you, you can find out more here.

Get in contact with the competitor

I once had a client ask me to pause their competitor keywords after they had a conversation with one of their main competitors. The client felt it would be good to avoid competitor bidding for the sake of remaining friendly with their competitors. Instead we put the budget into the other campaigns that they were running.

If you’re already friendly enough with your competitor, you could call them and speak to your main point of contact there. Otherwise, you could try (politely) emailing them.

Some people will listen and acknowledge your request. Other times, it might fall on deaf ears – but hey, if you don’t ask, you don’t get.

If you would like some help with competitor bidding, get in touch with Alix Digital here, I’d be happy to help you get rid of the warpaint and find a way around the issue.

Where Did My AdWords Account Go?

If you’re reading this from 26^th March 2018 onwards, it may be because your AdWords account has been retired by Google. Any accounts that have not spent any money for the last 15 months will be deleted to speed up the AdWords experience.

So Google deleted my account?

Yes.

But all is not lost. You have some options:

1. Simply reactivate your account (phew!)

There is  an option to do this by going to your account preferences.

Preferences can be found by going to your tools, billing and settings section (the spanner, top-right). Then go to ‘Preferences’ under the ‘Setup’ section of your site.

From there you’ll be able to select the option to reactivate your account if its’s been deleted.

2. You *could* create a new account.

I hear you, yes this could take a bit of time and if you used the account a lot in the past, the historical data could be very useful. However, please bear in mind, a lot of has changed in the last 15 months.

This could be an opportunity for a squeaky-clean new AdWords account, a fresh set of keywords to target and some funky new ad copy.

Of course, if you have a lot of historical data that you’re looking to use as a basis for your ongoing activity, I’m not telling you to delete and re-create your account. It’s up to you – it’s just an option.

3. Show cancelled accounts (MCC Only).

If you’re using a MCC (My Client Centre) – I’m looking at you, agencies, this one is easy. Simply select the ‘show hidden’ option in the menu (the three dots on the left).

Still a little confused? Why not get in touch – I’d be happy to help you out. Good luck and get some use out of your AdWords accounts!

7 Deadly Sins of an AdWords Campaign

Pay-per-click (PPC) has been considered one of the most sought after marketing services in today’s modern society and it’s no surprise. Everyday we face the wash of the selfies, hashtags, acronyms, stalkaholic tendencies and everyone is in it for themselves. The ability to target people who are likely to be interested in what you or your client is selling isn’t just a science, it’s an art.

Bloggers, influencers and experienced marketers could talk for hours about how to make PPC work well, but what makes a bad PPC campaign? Well here is my list of the cardinal sins that should be avoided at all costs:

1. Not doing your homework. Irrelevant content is annoying and pointless. What is being promoted might seem obvious, but when paying for advertising you need to know for sure that you’re clued up on what it is you’re promoting. Why would people click on your ad? Who are they? Where are they? Will they convert into a sale/enquiry? Set aside time to research your industry and demographic.
2. Not testing. For example, your ad might be the best ad you’ve ever written but how do you know it works? Even if it works well, could it be more successful? Be a pioneer in the world of technological evolution and never stop experimenting. I recommend having two versions of ad copy, AB testing if you will. Track your conversions carefully and monitor performance. Test everything you can, landing pages, keyword match types, different imagery on display campaigns and so on.
3. Using broad keywords. Did you know that using the term ‘online casino’ in 2014 would have cost you and average of £52.72 per click? Aside from the obvious cost problem, broad keywords seldom attract your ideal audience. Try making the keywords more specific. Build specific landing pages that will retain their interest and translate into a sale (or whatever your goal may be). Also try avoiding broad match keywords. Opt for exact match, phrase match and broad match modifiers.
4. Neglecting exclusion settings. I grit my teeth whilst looking at the costs attributed to a campaign with no exclusion settings. Sadly it’s not uncommon to look at an account for a UK-based campaign and see the ads have shown in countries all over the world. Adding exclusions takes seconds, but forgetting to do it costs unsuspecting companies gruesome amounts; hundreds, thousands even.
5. Not tracking conversions. From small businesses to agencies, there are many shameful culprits of this sin. A lot of the time, performance is measured like this: Impressions, clicks and CTR (click through rate). Excellent. But how do you know if any of those clicks converted into a sale or valid enquiry? How much money did your PPC campaign make for you? You should probably know these answers. If this is your guilty habit, hop onto Google Analytics (pronto!). Need help? Check out this post by PPC Hero.
6. Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI). Okay, this one isn’t bad and the idea is actually quite clever, but the lack of control over the content of your ad can be risky. If you want to run DKI, you must be squeaky clean in your best practices, avoid competitor bidding for trademark purposes, remember to input keywords with capitalisation, ensure these ads aren’t linked to a misspellings ad group, avoid nonsensical sentences with mismatched ad copy and keywords, etc.
7. Not monitoring placements. This mainly applies to running display adverts, whether it be display or remarketing you should set up exclusions. You’ll find you have more control over behavioural and contextual targeting (BT & CT) but remarketing/retargeting targeting is a bit more open. It will show your ads to someone who has a cookie dropped since visiting your site but be careful where they see it. Do you want your ads showing on sites with adult content? Do you want your ads showing on sites with controversial content?
   Oh, and just because you’ve set up exclusions, doesn’t mean you don’t have to check where the ads have shown. There could be sites you didn’t think of or new sites you couldn’t have thought of… it is the internet after all.

There are more than 7 things that could go wrong, but for the most part, paid ads are incredibly useful for both companies wanting to promote and for internet users looking for something you can provide. A careful and considered approach will always be beneficial, do your research, analyse your data and have fun testing!