Just recently Google announced the release of AdWords Automated Rules to all accounts.
Automated Rules lets you schedule automatic adjustments to your AdWords account based on criteria that you specify. You can set automated rules at the various levels within your campaign:
- Campaign level
- Ad group level
- Keyword level
- Ad text level
The Automate feature can be found just below the historic graphs.
Below are some handy automated rules you can use on your own AdWords account:
1. Increase Daily Campaign Budget
To ensure you don’t miss out on growing demand for your product, this rule will automatically adjust your daily campaign budget (increase it by 10%) if the previous day’s spend has exceeded the campaign budget set.
This rule should be set on individual campaign level (Selected Campaign) and ‘Requirements – Cost’ needs to be updated every time it has been triggered. Email Alerts are essential so you are notified of this change.
The example below was used for a campaign with daily budget limit of $100, up to a maximum of $500.
Ideal for –
- Campaigns with keywords being added consistently.
- Campaigns with high volatility in search volume / seasonal demand.
- Campaigns with low impression share.
- Campaigns with increasing CPC.
2. Pause Poor Quality Score Keyword
It has been widely accepted by search advertisers that an AdWords account with a large proportion of low quality score keywords will have a negative impact on the entire account. This can be seen when a low quality score is given to a newly added keyword.
This rule will help you keep your account in optimal health by pausing keywords with poor quality scores, so you can evaluate them individually, either by updating the ad text, consider different match-types (both to improve CTR) or review landing page content (to improve relevancy). Again, it is essential that email alerts are setup to notify you of the changes.
The example below was used for an account wide automated rule to monitor poor quality scores keywords.
Ideal for –
- Large AdWords accounts with 1,000+ keywords.
- Accounts with tight CPA / CPC constraints.
3. Pause Non-Converting Ad Group or Keywords
In order to get the most out of your AdWords spend, it is essential that an account optimizer is continuously monitoring the performance of individual Ad Groups and Keywords, such that CPC bids are made against keywords that are converting, not against those that do not convert.
This rule will help you identify Ad Groups that are converting at below the minimum threshold, after it has reaches a statistically significant data level. The number of clicks required will depend on the search volume of the Ad Group and the length of the period the data is gathered.
The Ad Group rule below was an example utilized by First Rate to identify poor performing Ad Groups that did not meet the minimum (1-per-click) conversion rate of 12.5%, after it has reached 400 (statistically significant) clicks per ad group.
Note: Using this method will avoid automatic pause on Ad Groups that have low volume of clicks per month.
Ideal for –
- Accounts with tightly themed Ad Groups.
- Accounts with high search volumes.
- ROI driven AdWords Accounts.
4. Pause Poor Performing Ads
Continuous Ad testing is by far one of the most effective ways to drive improvements to your AdWords account, and the speed of which you can change your marketing message on search engines is what gives this medium (one of) its competitive edge.
With the new AdWords Automated Rules, it gives an experienced Search Marketer an added tool to monitor ad test performance and make swift updates once the test has been completed.
The rule below is applied to an Ad Group, under-going a step-wise Ad tests with the goal of improving the Ad level CTR above 1.5% – the previous best performing Ad CTR. The rule will pause the ad that does did not achieve the minimum 1.5% CTR and notify me once the test has been completed (500 impressions per ad). Once a new ad has been added, you’ll need to update the CTR to the new best performing Ad CTR and continue testing.
Ideal for –
- Accounts with a large number of Ad Groups / Product Types.
- Keeping track of all Ad Testing experiment currently running and ensure Ads are being systematically updated.
5. Promote Converting Keywords
It has been generally accepted that increases in Ad Position will increase the number of visitors to your website and that conversion rate of the website is a constant from a given channel (i.e. Search Engines).
The rule below is set to find keywords that have been converting in the last 14 days, that is currently at a low Average Ad Position (below 3.5), and increase the bids gradually (by 5% increments) until it reaches an ad position between #3 & #4.
Ideal for –
- Accounts when an increasing competition is pushing down your ads.
- Optimised accounts with good ROAS to allow for increased CPCs.
If you have found another useful rule, please email us or make a comment below.