Author: Nils Rooijmans

My DO: Use Google Ads Scripts (sorry, no surprise here I guess). Google Ads scripts are free, make your mouth curl into a pleasant awe-struck smile every time you run one, and do not require any coding skills to get started.

My DON’T: Run Display and Search in the same campaign. You’d be surprised how many SMB advertisers have this enabled.

Please share yours, I read every one.

– Nils

PS: Bonus -> don’t forget to check your ad group level “Targeting expansion” setting in Display when submitting campaigns via Editor. I’ve seen weird changes in my settings because of doing this.

This morning, my heart ached. I was crushed and I could hardly breathe. My lungs burned as I tried desperately to cry and breathe normally.

Why?

I noticed a landing page with a CTCR of less than 70%.

The absolute horror.

GCLIDs were dropped from my URLs. 

30% of the clicks could not be tracked for conversions.

And this had probably been going on for over 3 months!

Even worse, some campaigns were running on Smart Bidding.

Not only had I been underreporting the results of my efforts for 3 months, the Smart Bidding AI had probably been downscaling the actual results for 3 months as well.

All this for no good reason, other than a bug in our conversion tracking setup.

If I had fed the machine the real conversion value of the clicks, it would probably have generated a lot more clicks and conversions.

Don’t be like me. Please check your CTCR.

See: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9600552

– Nils

PS: Want to prevent the number 1 cause of GCLIDs being dropped? Fix your Final URLs that have redirects.

Fellow list member Yosef Javed wrote in to ask a question about Ad Copy Testing with Smart Bidding (shared with permission):

“I have smart bidding activated on my account across all campaigns but running into an issue with A/B testing.

It looks like I have no control with ad rotation and ads aren’t evenly distributed for an experiment. 

I was trying to find a way to A/B test the ad copy in smart bidding to get rid of the bias, but no luck. 

If you’ve dealt with this issue before, how did you overcome the issue of ads not being evenly distributed for campaigns with smart bidding activated?“

Here’s what I wrote back:

“thanks for your email, and that is a great question.

For campaigns using smart bidding strategies (including Enhanced CPC), ad rotation will always be set to “Optimize”, regardless of how you set their ad rotation settings in campaign settings.

Note: Google might not even show you they use the “Optimize” setting. They just do.

The best way to do ad testing in Smart Bidding campaigns is to use Ad Variations.

See details: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7439892?hl=en “

There’s a bigger lesson here: when running on Smart Bidding, you might lose controls that you aren’t aware of.

An example that still surprises me is the “Smart Pricing” algorithm on the Search Partner Network.

Ready to be surprised? Read this: https://nilsrooijmans.com/google-ads-script-search-partner-alerts/

– Nils

“Never spend 6 hours managing keyword bids by hand, when you can spend $6,000 and 6 weeks failing to Smart Bid them.”

– Nils

Yesterday, we touched on the latest change by Google: the sunsetting of Broad Modified Match and expanding of Phrase Match.

Here’s a link to Google’s FAQ explaining the change: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/10286719#FAQs&zippy=%2Cwhats-happening-to-bmm%2Cwhat-can-i-expect-to-see-with-my-phrase-and-bmm-traffic

A lot of the folks in our industry saw this as another money grab by the big G. Another move that only benefits Google’s profits, not the advertisers.

We’ll have to see. Google moves in mysterious ways and the matching algorithms are a black box. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

So, the best advice I can give you today is to keep a close eye on what is happening in your phrase and broad modified keywords.

In the meantime, these are some considerations to prepare your account for the change:

If you run the same keywords in separate ad groups for phrase match and broad modified, and have negative keywords that are unique to your BMM ad group, you might want to copy them to your phrase match ad group.

If you are using broad modified keywords that do not have a ‘+’ sign in front of every term in the keyword (e.g., ‘+blue skirts’) you might want to add new purely broad keywords (e.g., ‘blue skirt’) to keep showing for queries like ‘blue dress’.

If the order of words in the user query really matters (e.g., “train from Amsterdam to Eindhoven”) you might want to add negative keywords preventing matching user queries with the wrong order.

For your phrase keywords, it’s likely that you will see an increase in the number of search terms being matched, so keep a close eye on your SQRs. Use n-grams to discover patterns in the newly-matched search terms, and negate bad performers. Here’s a script to help you with that: https://searchengineland.com/brainlabs-script-find-best-worst-search-queries-using-n-grams-228379

Also, because of phrase match being extended, user queries that only match to one keyword might match to multiple keywords in the future. This causes “duplicate search terms,” which makes managing the account structure and keyword bids a bit harder. Prevent duplicate search terms by using this script: https://adsscripts.com/scripts/google-ads-scripts/duplicate-query-checker-across-accounts

Note: If you choose to convert your BMM keywords to phrase match, the BMM keywords’ performance statistics will not carry over to the new phrase instances of the keywords. So, I would leave your BMM keywords as they are if you do not need to change them.

In the end, the ones who are prepared will benefit the most.

How are you preparing yourself? I would love to learn.

– Nils

PS: In case you missed it, here’s a link to Part 1 –> https://nilsrooijmans.com/daily/they-killed-bmm-what-can-we-do

This morning, my inbox was flooded with some interesting poetry:

“I am starting to get seriously pissed off with Google doing all this match type muddling non-sense.”

“Sick to the stomach of those greedy sons of B-es hiding search terms and needlessly messing up term matching just to push more people into their overspending AI black box.” 

“F#$k, I now need to restructure my whole damn EXACT+BMM account.”

“Please tell me they are joking. Not again this SHIT!”

“Google does ‘no evil’ again. Limiting our ability to fine-tune results and actually make money for our clients. F#$k you Google!”

I am pretty sure you already know the reason for this volcanic eruption of refined complaints; Google is sunsetting Broad Modified Match and expanding Phrase match. (Source: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/10346549)

What can we do about this?

Not much.

Google has no real competitors when it comes to search advertising. 

Monopolies can and mostly will do whatever they please, whatever is best for them.

You can expect Google to keep making cash-grabbing changes to their platform as long as they need to show revenue and profit growth.

We can blame Google, we can blame the system. It’s not going to change a damn thing.

We need to embrace the change and work with what we’ve got.

Is there really nothing we can do to mitigate the impact of this change?

Stay tuned for tomorrow, when I will share some of my thoughts on how to flow with this new go. (Spoiler: it’s not all that bad.)

Meanwhile, you can:

• Use and promote “less evil” (haha!) competitors like Duck Duck Go and Bing.
• Call upon Apple to finally release their own search engine.
• Pray the automation overlord will respect its promise to “respect word order when it’s important to the meaning.” 

– Nils

There is growing confidence among weather forecasters that the Netherlands may be hit by heavy, heavy snow and frost early next week.

20-30cm of snow in 24 hours! 

This is extreme for us Dutchies. 

In the field of Machine Learning, scientists have a name for outliers like this: anomalous data. And it is this kind of data that fuels nightmares for AI engineers. Their algorithms just can’t handle it.

The same goes for Google Smart Bidding. Sudden drastic changes in conversion rates and/or conversion value derail the prediction models learned by the smart bidding algorithms.

Luckily for us, Google knows this and offers a solution for us to help keep the smart bidding on track. It’s called ‘Seasonality Adjustments,’ and this feature can be used to inform Smart Bidding of expected changes in conversion rates for future events.

Now, I bet you that conversion rates for certain products and services in the Netherlands will go through the roof in the next few days.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see a tripling or even quadrupling of conversion rates for snow shovels!

If you’re on smart bidding and selling ice scrapers, ice skates, or cross-country skiing materials for the Dutch, this is the time to help the machines.

Go create a seasonality adjustment!

Here’s a quick and handy video tutorial by the great Joe Martinez: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5a22LEX0k-Q

– Nils

Last month, I came across another tool that could help increase your PPC Productivity. See:

Google Ads Add-on for Google Sheets
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9000139?hl=en

Using the add-on for Google Sheets, you can:

• Quickly and easily create Google Ads reports in Google Sheets.
• Choose columns and apply filters in the reports.
• Refresh reports quickly, instead of running multiple reports and copying and pasting data.
• Share reports with your team.
• View, create, and modify report definitions from within Google Sheets.
• Pivot your report data in Google Sheets.

It pulls all kinds of data from Google Ads straight into Google Sheets.

I especially like the fact that it can pull labels and custom columns.

Warning: it is a bit slow and buggy. I find myself resorting back to scripts quite often because not all functions are supported or working properly.

In my experience for basic reporting needs that do not require a lot of data, it works fine. 

What has your experience been?

– Nils

Yesterday, we talked about habits and how they improve your PPC Productivity.

Today, I am sharing one of my favorites as a first. It will help you come up with new ideas to improve your campaigns in no time. 

I call it SERP-watching.

Next time you open a new Chrome tab and load the Google Ads interface, try this:

1. Navigate to the search term report (account level)
2. Sort the list by any one of these columns: conversions/conversion ratio/conversion value
3. Copy the top search term
4. Open a new tab with a Google search box
5. Paste the search term in the search box
6. Watch the SERP

What does Google tell you?

How can you translate what you see into improving your account?

Look beyond the obvious:

• Next to looking at your ad copy, study the competing ads.
• Next to looking at your lander, study the landers of your competitors.
• Next to looking at the paid search results, study organic listings.
• Next to looking at search results, study other blocks on the page.

What else do you see?
 
– Nils

Do you know what the most productive people have in common?

They cultivate habits.

The right habits allow you to routinely perform small tasks that genuinely move the needle. The routine part makes it feel less stressful and dramatically reduces the amount of time it takes.

That’s why creating new habits is something that’s always on my mind. 

Every hour, every day.

In fact, in the last few years, I’ve been obsessing over my PPC habits to the point that Google Reps started calling me because they couldn’t believe a real human could click the same buttons in the same order at the same time, every day. (Nah, but that kind of Google Rep call would at least be one that finally generated a smile on my face…)

Anyway, I’ll be sharing some of my habits with you every week from now on. Stay tuned for the first one tomorrow.

In the meantime, think about your own habits. 

What PPC habit really moves your needle?

Share by hitting reply.

Thanks,

– Nils

Are you splitting your campaigns or ad group by keyword match type? 

If so, this script is for you: https://adsscripts.com/scripts/google-ads-scripts/keyword-match-type-validator

A very popular way to structure Google Ads accounts is by separating keywords by match types into different campaigns and/or ad groups. You can have the same keyword with different match types in a different campaign/ad group.

I still use this campaign structure quite often. It allows me to use (modified) broad keywords to discover new long-tail keywords with high conversion value. This way, I can do this without the risk of spending too much on the unknown long-tail searches that do not convert. Think, an alpha-beta campaign structure, with a limited budget for the discovery campaign.

On the ad group level, I use this structure when I want to control (lower) bids on the exact match version of a keyword, target different audiences, and/or use different ad copy. Think [leather jackets] versus +leather +jackets.

If you are also using this type of account structure, and are as clumsy as me, you will make match type mistakes; exact match might end up in your broad match campaigns or vice versa. This script makes sure your keyword match types are consistent with the match type you indicate in the naming of your campaigns/ad groups. 

As a bonus, this script also checks to make sure your keywords are formatted correctly for the specific match types (no dangling ‘ + ‘ signs).

Enjoy!

– Nils

I just got another email from a recruiter.

Here’s my response, for you to share.

Dear recruiter,

If you are looking for:
    
– 3+ years experience managing Google Ads and Bing
– Google Shopping
– Google Display Network
– Local Inventory Ads
– Google Analytics
– Google Tag Manager
– WordPress, HTML, CSS, SQL and Javascript knowledge
– Excellent Microsoft Excel skills
– (Big) Data Analytics 
– Data Studio
– Creative copywriting
    
That’s not a Senior PPC Specialist.

That’s an entire online marketing department.
    
Yours truly,

– Nils

Here’s a statement:

If your offering isn’t perceived as being any better than the alternatives (for any segment of the market), no search marketing will fix your growth problems.

True or not true?

– Nils

PS: HT to @timothyjjensen and @aprildunford -> https://twitter.com/timothyjjensen/status/1352724824951582720?cn=ZmxleGlibGVfcmVjcw%3D%3D

That’s what I get asked all the time. And my first answer is always the same: don’t.

Many PPC managers think they need to learn JavaScript to be able to make the most of scripts.

Not true.

You can start using scripts without having to write a single line of code. 

Simply start by copy-pasting some of the best scripts maintained by Google. 

Once you get a feel for what’s possible, you’ll probably come up with some more ideas.

You’ve activated a mindset for automation.

Your next and easy step will probably be: searching for other freely available scripts. 

Then, after experimenting some more with these scripts (with still no real coding involved), you will eventually come up with the most valuable ideas.

Ideas for scripts that are unique to your specific situation. Scripts that will move the needle in your account. These are the scripts that you probably cannot find on my list or via an easy Google search. Scripts that need to be created specifically for you. 

That would then be the time to ask this question: “Where do I start to learn JavaScript?”

Once you are ready, you know where to find me.

– Nils

Coming up with great ad copy is hard. But it doesn’t have to be.

With my “Ad Copy Input”-sheet you’ll crank out your 5 ad variations in no time.

Here’s how: when onboarding your next client, send her a copy of the GSheet (link below) to ask them for the following input. 

1) Facts

Facts about your product/service. Facts are boring. Think hard data.

• Price
• Number of pixels
• Horsepower
• Weight
• Etc

2) USPs 

The uniqueness of your company. Or how you would want it to be perceived. It can be a true statement, a marketing slogan, or what you want people to know about your company.

• Saddleback leather: “100-year guarantee; They’ll Fight Over It When You’re Dead”
• FedEx Corporation: “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.”
• Target: “Expect More. Pay Less.”
• Enterprise: “Pick Enterprise. We’ll Pick You Up.”
• Everything taxes: local, state, federal, and even international
• Plumbers: “We’ll be there anytime, anywhere, day or night.”

3) Benefits

Benefits are what someone gets from using a product or service. A product or service’s benefit is why we pull out our credit card to make a purchase. To come up with benefits, pick a feature, add “so you can” to the sentence, and finish the sentence.

4) Call to action 

Calls to action tell a user what you want them to do. When your landing pages feature that same call to action; you can often see higher conversion rates. 

A good call to action combines a benefit statement with a call to action. Consider this: “Subscribe to our newsletter” and “Receive powerful marketing tips.” In the end, the result is the same. The user will get an email sent to their inbox. However, no one wants yet another email. All marketers want powerful marketing tips. By combining benefits and calls to action, you can stand out from the crowd.

5) Testimonials

Your best source for social proof and wordings that express the real benefits and will resonate with your audience.

Here’s the link to the sheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VNlNEtAl3JmMLGnRHnE7Z8Ga5DOq0tHo5bLzc9mtFGw/

PRO TIPS: 

• Group the entries in the different cells based on their different themes. I use background colors for that. For example: sustainability (green), price (orange), comfort (blue), etc. 
• Create different ads based on the different themes, using input from cells with the same color. So, one ad variation that focuses on the price aspect, one ad variation that focuses on comfort, etc. 
• Label the ads with their corresponding theme.

Now, you can easily analyze aggregated stats based on the labels, to show the winning themes.

– Nils

PS: HT to Brad Geddes who taught me this back when I was still in the PPC cradle.

Here’s a day-to-day reality for many PPC specialists: ad extensions get disapproved, out of the blue, for various reasons.

Call extensions get disapproved because of an “unverified phone number.” Sitelinks get disapproved because of “destination not working.” The list goes on…

Today’s catch is a script that alerts you when this happens.

https://medium.com/@postman31/disapproved-extensions-report-314bff9539ae

Tip for the pros: you can create a script to alert you and/or resubmit disapproved extensions (i.e., changing the number on Call extensions to something random and back automatically resubmits them). This will save you a lot of headaches.

– Nils

Sometimes, the simplest tools can have the biggest impact.

“In October 1935, US Army Air Corps brass gathered at an airfield in Dayton, Ohio. They’d come to see two aircraft builders pit their planes against each other in a series of trials, with the best-performed aircraft getting its builder a lucrative contract for new long-range bombers. In theory, the two rivals, Boeing Corporation and Martin & Douglas, had an equal chance of winning the contract. But in reality, the result seemed a foregone conclusion.

The smaller Martin & Douglas plane just couldn’t compete with Boeing’s bigger, more powerful Model 299. This imposing aircraft boasted a 103-foot wingspan, four engines (the norm was two), five times the specified number of bombs, and twice the range of its predecessors. Rumour had it that the army had pretty much already decided to order 65 of what one newspaperman had dubbed ‘the flying fortress’.

The Model 299, carrying five crew members, made for an impressive sight as it taxied onto the runway and then roared off to rise gracefully into the sky. But as the army chiefs and manufacturing executives looked on, the plane stalled at 300 feet, tipped sharply and crashed to the ground. Two of the crew were killed, including the pilot, Major Ployer P. Hill.

An investigation found that Major Hill had been preoccupied with the many procedures required to fly the complex new plane, from monitoring the variable oil–fuel mix in each engine to adjusting the pitch of the constant-speed propellers. Because of this, he’d forgotten to release the rudder and elevator controls. But while the tragedy was blamed on ‘pilot error’, the implication was that the Model 299 was too complicated to be safe – as one reporter put it, it was ‘too much airplane for one man to fly’. The army contract was awarded to Martin & Douglas; Boeing’s business was ruined almost to the point of bankruptcy.

But some in the Army Air Corps still thought the Model 299 was the better aircraft. So a group of test pilots got together to work out how further accidents could be avoided. They ruled out more training – Major Hill had been in charge of flight testing and couldn’t have been more experienced. Instead, they came up with a stunningly simple idea. Previously, flying a plane had been fairly easy for a pilot to manage. But aeronautical advances now meant there were too many things going on in the cockpit for one person to handle. What was needed, the test pilots decided, was a checklist.

The pilots kept their checklist straightforward but comprehensive, including even the most obvious actions – release the brakes, close all doors and windows, unlock the elevator controls, and so on. Everything a pilot needed to remember was there, on a single index card. And it did the trick. Using their checklist, the pilots flew the Model 299 for a total of 1.8 million miles without incident. The Army Air Corps subsequently ordered thousands of the flying fortresses, renaming them B-17s and using them to devastating effect during World War 2.“

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right (2009)

Google Ads is a flying fortress. 

Surprisingly, even more so now big G is trying to dumb it down.

Too many things can go wrong. 

And when they do, you don’t want to be the Major Hill.

Luckily for us, we can automate the monitoring of our accounts and have our checklists ready.

– Nils

Fellow list member Hana Kobzová sent in this success story about applying yesterday’s tip on using Twitter search to find expert advice on PPC-related topics (shared with permission):
 

Hello Nils,

How are you? Thank you for your quick tip everyday!

Today I have found a real gem thanks to you!

I was thinking, people don’t use #ppcchat globally, so lets try #googleads search terms and I have found this awesome trick. 

When adding new keywords directly from the search terms report we often add them as exact keywords (not broad).

By adding the javascript I discoverd as a bookmark we are able to do so in bulk, with just with one click for all keywords!

[…]

I have already tried it and it works! 

Here is the source I found using your tip:

https://twitter.com/bastien31/status/1171828235950338048

Have a great day and thank you!

Hana

That’s right, folks! Tinker with the Twitter search queries and be surprised by the results. It doesn’t always work, but it works more often than you think.

Give it a shot. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
 
– Nils

Quick tip for today — whenever Google pulls one of its tricks or releases a new feature, this is where I seek expert advice:

1. https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ppcchat%20search%20terms
2. https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ppcchat%20lead%20form%20extension

TIP: Try replacing the ‘search terms’ of the ‘lead form’ part with one of the latest features you’ve been experimenting with.

Let me know what you find, I am curious to learn. 🙂

– Nils

Back in 1986, Optimus Prime, the primary hero of the Autobots, was actually killed off in the Transformers movie. He was killed because merchandise manufacturer Hasbro needed to make way for new, more expensive toys.

I saw the movie in the theater with my brother. I had to console him for days. There was no one to console me. 

Eventually, Optimus Prime was resurrected due to Hasbro underestimating the backlash of his death.

Me and my brother, we could sleep again.

Sort of the same thing happened to one of my clients recently.

They paused a high-volume keyword with low conversion rates, to spend more budget on better-performing keywords.

Performance tanked.

It turned out they were using last-click attribution and did not take assisted conversions into account when pausing the keyword. The client underestimated the amount of demand that was being generated by this top-of-funnel keyword.

The moral of the story: always, always, always take assisted conversion value into account when judging the value of top-of-funnel keywords.

ACTION: Why not check the assisted conversion value for your top keywords today?

– Nils