An Introduction to Google Ads My Client Center (MCC)
What is an MCC? MCC stands for “My Client Center”, which is a Google Ads account type for advertisers and agencies who need to access multiple individual Google Ads accounts using a single email address. MCCs are also sometimes called “Manager accounts” (or colloquially a “Parent Account”) if there is a relationship with 1 or more individual accounts (sometimes called “Child Accounts”). Within this, there exist the ability to have multiple nested MCCs and accounts. A single account can also have multiple (up to 2) manager accounts. The below image from Google illustrates an example of this. Google has done a great job allowing temporary management between one account and another. This schema makes management convenient, while protecting the integrity and separation possibility of individual accounts. Signing up for an MCC can be quickly done here. New accounts can be added to the MCC in one of two ways, either by making a new account within the MCC or, more commonly, by linking an existing account. Within an existing MCC, from the “Accounts” view, a user can select to create or link an existing account: If you choose ‘link existing account’, the next screen will look like this: From there, invites are sent out the account ID(s) you’ve requested to manage. You can confirm your invite was sent out by navigating to “accounts” –> “management”. Users in those sub or child accounts will then receive a notification within Google Ads that a request for linking has been made: Within the MCC account, there aren’t many differences between a single account. You will notice an additional option appears on the left hand navigation called ‘partners program’. Here you can manage coupons, certifications, and get your Google partner badge: What visibility do clients have to MCC access? When clients give access to an MCC, they don’t know directly what individuals have access to their account. Rather, they simply know that the MCC now ‘manages’ their account, meaning anyone who has access to the MCC can now access the individual client account. Individual account edits, however, will still show the user’s email address of whomever made the edit. Is an MCC necessary for getting an agency rep? In short, “YES”. Your MCC container is a method of indicating to Google how much your spend under management is. If you’re trying to get a Google rep, and have more than one account, you should definitely create an MCC to get Google’s attention beyond individual account growth. Conversion Tracking, Billing, and other MCC level features and settings MCCs also offer conversion tracking, audience management, and billing management. To view and manage some of these options navigate to “accounts” → “management”. The options here are “client” (i.e. individual account) or “this manager” ( i.e. MCC) or “none”. Additional Useful Resources:
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Evolving your strategy – Using the tCPA Smart bidding approach
Have you heard about machine learning recently? Only a dozen times a day? Here is a practical take on using machine learning in managing your toughest and most important task as an SEM manager. At Four15 Digital we have many medium, small, and large accounts taking advantage of the smart bidding approach powered by Google, which is an advanced form of machine learning algorithms. It uses data at a scale to help determine different bid amounts for each user and query to impact conversions or conversion value, factoring in a wider range of signals that impact performance than a single person or team could compute. In other words, the algorithm takes into account auction-level signals. I know that experienced SEM managers can surmise intent from a keyword. In most cases we can. It’s a skill one develops with years of looking at the Keyword Tool projections. Keyword intent is a mighty signal, no question about it. But what if a keyword that always converts also always fails to convert when certain conditions are met? I don’t presume to demystify the workings of Google algorithm, but the way to understand it is to consider vast amounts of data processed to learn which signals are present more often than not when a conversion occurs. Correlation and “hopefully” some causation analytics is also involved to determine the signals that matter, how much they matter, and whether or not they cause the conversion, or just correlate with it. So if someone who searched for that [insert your always converting keyword] is also exhibiting geographic or behavioral signals suggesting that they represent the case of a non-converter, using a smart bidding technique will result in a lower bid for that auction. Smart bidding is in essence a way to take more into account when bidding on an auction than the keyword itself. But honestly, smart bidding algorithm works well coupled with standard knowledge of SEM, as it alleviates the need to fine tune the bids. You still have to select the right keywords, write ads and extensions, point to conversion-optimized pages, ensure correct tracking, and do the work of an SEM manager, but you won’t need to fine tune your bids. There are several smart bidding techniques available today (aug 2019): Target CPA approach is the one that I’d like to discuss given how much success we’re having using that approach. It is an approach that allowed us to improve account performance for a variety of performance-based accounts. The way to migrate to tCPA is quite easy actually. After you’ve accomplished the heavy lifting of building a campaign and accumulated enough data for it, your account will push automatic recommendations suggesting that you transition to a tCPA bidding like this: The above is one way to learn what the system is suggesting in terms of a CPA target. Another way would be to navigate to each of your campaigns’ settings to retrieve information on the suggested tCPA. For instance, as I see my campaign’s settings, they look like this: Clicking on the blue link in the image above, I see the following shortcut to applying the recommendation that pops up: Clicking on the down arrow on the right hand side will take you to switching to tCPA the long way. First you’d click to select the bid strategy directly: Then this: At this point you can make a few strategic decisions that will make or break your approach. For starters I would not edit the recommended target bid too much. I would either not switch at all or switch with the recommended target. If you have many campaigns already running on tCPA in the account, then I would only edit the target slightly for the first transition. If you recommended target CPA is $131, I wouldn’t slash it in half to lower it, make it $10 lower at most. However, there is a very important point to consider at this point. Your algorithm is suggesting a target based on average. I’ve seen many campaigns that have suggested a very high target, but delivered at a lower CPA, and quickly self-perfected to improve the CPA even further. This is the time to trust the algorithm and take it’s suggestion. This is also the time to watch closely. Franky, I haven’t seen too many problems with the tCPA approach. It is indeed well designed to decipher the signals that matter and to self-perfect with more data it accumulates. Have you had issues with your tCPA approach? How about success? Share with us below!
How to Use SEM For a Small-Scale Business in a Localized Area
Most small businesses will face the decision of what marketing channels to utilize to help grow their business. In this blog we will discuss how these businesses can use search engine marketing (SEM) to market to a local area using various methods available in Google Ads and Decide Your Campaign Goal Microsoft Advertising. Below are some steps to take and features to utilize to do so: It’s important for businesses to define their campaign goals with SEM marketing. For many small businesses, their goal is to generate leads, whether that be a website visit, a form fill or purchase on their website, or a call. The campaign goal must be well-defined and measurable in order to track the success of the campaign. Set up Lead or Conversion Tracking Once you have defined your business goal, you will need to implement tracking of those goals. If your goals are tied to your website, you will need to implement tracking on your website to tracking those goals, whether that be through Analytics or conversion tracking through Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising. If your goals are tied to tracking calls to your business, you will need to instrument call tracking via Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising. Many businesses will utilize a third party call tracking service such as Call Tracking Metrics to the source of the call, the duration of the call, caller phone numbers, call recordings and more! If your goals are tied to store visits, you will need to find a method to link store visits to your SEM marketing campaign. Some businesses will feature special promo codes in their ads for customers to use in-store. Call Extensions If generating calls from potential leads are important for your business, you would need to utilize call extensions so that potential customers that see your ad on mobile can call your business directly. It is advised to use a dedicated phone number for your SEM campaigns to help you determine which of your calls came via an SEM ad. You can set up a dedicated phone number via a third party tracking service. Location Targeting Setting a target radius is important in SEM to ensure your ads are targeting the areas of interest to your business. Most platforms will allow you to set a target radius of an area starting at 1km. It is also important to add location negatives to your campaign to ensure your ads are not showing for geolocations that are not of interest to your campaign to avoid spending on clicks that will likely not convert. Google allows you to adjust your location targeting method to target or exclude people who have been in or shown interest in your target location, people in or are regularly in your target location and people searching for your target location. More details on these options are shown below: Keyword Targeting and Ads Keyword targeting and relevant ad copy are crucial for your ads to show in response to search queries relevant to your business and to attract potential leads to click on your ads. What would someone in need of your business services search for? How would you prepare your ad copy to be relevant to your keywords and to attract leads to click on your ad? Ad Scheduling Small businesses in the service sector will most likely want their ads to run during their business operating hours so they receive leads during operating hours. It would be a less efficient use of ad spend if a lead tried to visit or contact your business and find that your business is closed. Be sure to schedule your ads to run during the times when your business will be available to respond to messages and phone calls. More Information on SEM These are just a few of the various ways that a small service-sector business can use SEM in a localized area to market their business. You can find out more information on using SEM for your business in our blog on how to supercharge your local business with paid search.
Parallel Tracking in Google Ads
If you have experience using Google Ads, you may have heard of Parallel Tracking. This feature is required on Search and Shopping campaigns and will be required for Display campaigns starting July 31, 2019. Parallel tracking will be made available to Video campaigns towards the end of 2019. So what is Parallel Tracking? Parallel tracking is a feature offered by Google Ads that loads your landing pages more quickly by sending visitors directly from your ad to your final URL without redirects. This is intended to reduce potential lost visits, improve ad performance and as a result potentially increase conversions in your campaigns. How does parallel tracking work? Parallel tracking is designed to direct users to your landing page as quickly as possible while also loading tracking URLs in the background. Here’s what the user flow looks like with parallel tracking: Here’s what the user flow would look without parallel tracking: The intention of parallel tracking is to drive visitors to your landing page as quickly as possible. Should I use parallel tracking? Parallel tracking is already enabled and required for Search, Display and Shopping campaigns and will be available for Video campaigns later in 2019. All advertisers that are eligible to use parallel tracking for Video campaigns should enable this feature when this feature is available. Note that Google states this feature is currently not available for Hotel campaigns. Important note: If you are using third party click measurement tools such as TruEffect or Firebase, be sure to check that your third party tool is compatible with parallel tracking to ensure that the feature will work properly for your campaigns. How do I turn on parallel tracking? As mentioned earlier, parallel tracking is already required for Search, Display and Shopping campaigns. This feature will be made available to Video campaigns later in 2019. Below are instructions on how to enable parallel tracking in your Google AdsDisplay campaigns: Now that you know about parallel tracking and how to use it, we encourage you to enable this feature in your Google Ads account to enable this for your Display campaigns today and for your Video campaigns later in 2019!
Read This Before Creating Custom Audiences in Google Ads
Within the Google Ads platform you can create audiences of users based on factors such as website visitors, app users, YouTube users, and customer lists. These are useful because they allow you to target/exclude users so that your ads target only those users you intend to reach. In this article I’ll be explaining the lists I usually make: customer list and website visitor-based audience lists. Hopefully you can use these tips to help you find success in your digital marketing efforts. Creating Customer List and Website Visitors Audiences To create a customer list audience, from the Google Ads UI first click on “Tools” at the upper-right corner then click the blue “+” and finally “Customer List”. From here, you’ll be able to create your audience based on different types of customer data – Email, Phone, First and Last Name, Country Zip, User IDs and Mobile Device IDs. The guidelines for uploading your list can be found here. Since Google tries matching the data you’ve entered to users in their database, not all of the individuals will be matched and the final audience size will vary. We typically see a 40-60% match-rate with Google for Customer lists. Website Visitor Audiences – additional detail While creating lists based on website visitors (URLs) I recently stumbled upon some interesting warnings that you can hopefully avoid: With your audience list uploaded you can then apply that list to your campaigns for targeting! Now you’re ready to create your own customer lists quickly with minimum hassle. For more tips on improving your digital marketing efforts. Check out the rest of our blogs.
Custom Rules: How To Turn Google Ads Editor Into a Helpful Assistant
One of the most useful tools of Google Ads is the Google Ads Editor. Editor’s built-in and custom rules make your Google Ads Editor work harder for you. They change its nature from a passive database interface to an active assistant that can inform how efficient you are being with your accounts. In the video below we’ve reviewed the way to set up a custom rule, which can alert you that something in your account is not running as smoothly as you’d like it. For instance, I describe how to put together a custom rule that will alert you to the fact that your Display campaigns are running with targeting optimization on. It is not something that I want to happen in the account that I am looking at, so I demonstrate how quick and easy it is to set the rule that will scan your accounts/campaigns/ad groups/etc any time you are in the editor and alert you to the errors if they satisfy your violation criteria. Here is the new version of the custom rule video: Additionally, In the following screencast I go over the built-in Google Ads Editor rules. Why they may be important for your accounts and the way you could use those pre-built rules. If you have a favorite custom rule you’d like to share with us, please share below! Additionally, we can answer any questions you might have for us regarding the rules and SEM questions in general.
Bing LinkedIn Targeting 3 Month Update
Back in April, we blogged about our admission into one of Microsoft Bing’s newest pilot programs that lets you target LinkedIn profiles. After testing this feature for 3 months, we’ve gathered our findings and the results thus are far from spectacular. Our Test: Our client that we first added into this pilot is a B2C digital services company. Our strategy for testing was to hyper focus on relevant audiences with the Industry and Job function targeting options. We started by taking our best performing services from existing campaigns which have ad copy and assets that are tailored to their respective service. Then we created new ad groups and applied several job function and industry targets that best aligned with that specific ad group audience. Initial Results: After a few weeks we saw that impression volume was very low so we increased the bids to roughly 200% our account average bids to try and gain some traction and let them continue running. After the second month of activity we reviewed performance only to find only 1 conversion after $1.5K in spend – a far cry from our target cost per conversion of less than $45. We collaborated with our Microsoft representative and they confirmed that most of their other clients were seeing similar, disappointing results. They suspect the blame is attributed to the low volume of Microsoft ads being served on LinkedIn overall and shared some tips based on what their few, successful clients were seeing. What worked: According to our rep, clients who saw positive results did so by casting a very wide net. The exact opposite of what we did. They targeted all job functions and industries, inspected performance until volume was significant, and then focused their efforts only on those audience targets that performed well. This indicates that the targeting we marketers might assume will perform best might not actually do well at all in Microsoft’s LinkedIn placements for those audiences. What didn’t work: For us, hyper targeting – thinking we were putting our best foot-forward – did not work at all as intended. Volume was very low, even after pushing bids 200% above our account average. We’ve moved to using this wider audience targeting setup and will keep a close eye on this wide targeting tactic to prevent any excessive wasteful spending. We’ll be sure to keep you updated with any findings. Stay tuned for more updates! In the meantime, we’d love to hear your experiences and thoughts surrounding this new feature.
How to Quickly Find Duplicate Keywords Using Google Ads Editor
If you have ever managed large, complex accounts, you might find that it is easy to start second-guessing your keyword additions since it’s quite possible they already exist elsewhere in your account. It may not bother you at first, but over time you could build up a large collection of duplicate keywords, especially if you have multiple people working in a single account. Duplicate keywords are definitely not considered ‘best practice’ for a number of reasons: In order to quickly identify duplicates, I recommend using Google Ads Editor to locate them. The steps are rather easy: first open your Editor and navigate over to “Tools.” Once there, you’ll see in the drop down menu – it will provide an option “Find duplicate keywords,” go ahead and click on that: Once there, you’re able to customize how you would like to look for duplicates. These parameters you can choose from are as follows below: Once you’re ready, you can click “Find duplicate keywords” and you’ll be given a screen that looks like this one below. To help you quickly determine which keywords you would like to keep and which you would like to remove you can add columns like quality score and CTR. Hopefully, this tool helps you in eliminating duplicate keywords quickly! Not the most exciting project exactly, but it will only save you from future headaches down the line.