Chapter 9 : Creating Effective Ad Groups part 1

Taken from Building Your Bussiness with Google for Dummies by Brad Hill

Ad Groups are the fundamental marketing units that propel your AdWords
campaign. If keywords are the sparks of AdWords success, Ad Groups
are the flames. And, one hopes, your campaign is a roaring bonfire. But forget
the heated analogy. The point is that success in AdWords depends largely on
the effective creation and manipulation of Ad Groups.
Why is the Ad Group the most powerful element of your campaign? Because
it contains the four motors of your advertising and conversion strategy: ads,
keywords, bid prices, and destination pages. As such, the Ad Group defines
what your advertising campaign looks like, who it is shown to, how much it
costs, and the location where your business meets your customers.
Although it might seem excessive to devote an entire chapter to Ad Groups,
the truth is that I could probably write an entire book about them. (Such a
book would also include pictures of my editor’s dog and my personal ruminations
on Leno versus Letterman.) So be happy that I’m limiting this examination
of Ad Groups to one chapter.
Here you find strategies and mechanics that are not covered elsewhere. The
mechanical aspects include creating Ad Groups in the Control Center and
editing their parameters (keywords, ads, and bid prices). The strategic issues
include the competitive struggle for placement on the page (effective bidding)
and putting your ads on productive search pages (researching and selecting
keywords). The important crafts of writing good ads and composing dynamic
landing pages are covered in Chapter 8.

Creating New Ad Groups
You create Ad Groups in AdWords Campaigns. You can’t open an account
without creating an Ad Group, even if you never deploy that initial effort.
Assuming that you own an AdWords account, then, you have some experience
with the mechanics of creating an Ad Group. Busy advertisers open
new Ad Groups frequently. Here’s how it happens:
1. In the Control Center, click the Campaign Management tab.
2. In the Campaign Name column, click any campaign.
Naturally, you should click the target campaign of the new Ad Group. If
you don’t want the new Ad Group to be influenced by that campaign’s
global Campaign settings, click the Create New Campaign link instead of
an existing campaign. Do not hesitate to begin new campaigns, and lots
of them. When you do open a new campaign, Google walks you through
the Campaign settings, and then returns you to this point and marches
you through the creation of a new Ad Group.
3. Click the Create New Ad Group link.
4. Enter the name of the Ad Group.
I used to include the campaign name in my Ad Group titles, but I lost that
habit after experiencing screen clutter when running AdWords reports.
There’s no need to duplicate the campaign name in the Ad Group title,
because the campaign name is always visible somewhere on the screen
when you drill into its Ad Groups.
5. Scroll down and compose your ad, and then click the Create Ad &
Continue button.
If this Ad Group is not the first Ad Group of the campaign, Google supplies
the most recently created ad of the campaign to work with. So you’re
not necessarily creating the ad from scratch. Even if the ad copy differs
substantially from the previous ad, chances are good that you won’t
change the display URL and the destination URL. This convenience
saves time when mass-producing Ad Groups with ads that are nearly
identical.
6. Enter your keyword(s), and then click the Save Keywords button.
7. Enter your bid in the Traffic Estimator, and then click the Calculate
Estimates button.
8. Adjust your bid and recalculate the traffic and placement estimates
until you reach a good balance of cost versus position.
160 Part II: Creating and Managing an AdWords Campaign
Later in this chapter, I discuss bidding strategies and the importance of
knowing your return on investment (ROI) needs. For now, try for an average
position of four or higher (which means 4.0 or lower in the Average
Position column), without committing to paying more than you think a
clickthrough is worth. See Figure 9-1.
9. Click the Save & Continue button.
Your Ad Group is created, and begins running immediately. That immediacy
always takes me a bit by surprise. For some reason I expect a confirmation
and review of my selections, like you see in an online shopping
cart, before the Ad Group is launched to the public. The Save & Continue
button sounds like a mid-process button, not the final launch button
that it is.
If you want to stop the process, immediately click the Pause Ad Group link
after Step 9. Even in those few seconds of activity, you could generate hundreds
of impressions and some clickthroughs if your keywords are popular.
So get in the habit of deliberating on your Ad Group choices before clicking
that final Save & Continue button.