How to Properly Use Labels to Run Promotions for Google AdWords
Here are some tips for how to successfully use labels and automated rules in Google AdWords to run promotions.
Here are some tips for how to successfully use labels and automated rules in Google AdWords to run promotions.
Running promotions are no new thing to any PPC manager who’s managed a campaign during the holiday season. We’re all familiar with the hustle in the leading months to ensure all your campaigns are ready for any and everything. But is there a way to cut down on the ad transition work load? Absolutely.
By using labels and automated rules in AdWords, you can schedule your ads to go live and come back down based on your promotion timelines, as well as ensure full coverage of ads. First, let’s discuss the benefits of using labels on your promotional ad copy, then we’ll get to the procedure.
No matter how big or small your promotional workload, using labels can be of great benefit to your AdWords workflow. Although they’re not supported in AdWords Editor currently, I believe it’s worth the extra effort to use the interface to add labels where needed. Here’s why.
First, using labels gives you great insights to data in both the short and long term. Depending on how you set up your labels, it’s incredibly easy to monitor which offer is resonating best with customers by using the Labels portion of the Dimensions Tab. There you can see all of your labels and their corresponding stats in one quick view and determine if the emphasis on “Free Shipping” or “25% Off” has a higher ROI. In a longer-term view, you can also compare year-over-year promotional performance just as quickly with labels and maybe show the impact that different performance have on sales.
Second, automated rules are extremely easy to use with labels. Using labels, you can set your ads to update your promos when needed so you can use your precious time to analyze data and make adjustments to campaigns to maximize ROI. For your sanity’s sake, you can automate each rule to send you an email once the rule is carried out or if there’s an error so you can rest at ease or jump into the account if needed.
Before we get too far here, it’s important that everyone understand how automated rules function. Let’s say you automate ads to go active at 12 a.m. (midnight), they will go live at some point between 12 a.m. and 1 a.m. So if your promotion goes live on your site at 12 a.m., there’s the potential for your ads to live 45 minutes after your sale started. This isn’t an enormous deal for most sales, but for sales like Black Friday where people are vigilantly on their computer, you could miss out. But setting the ads to go active at 11 p.m. the previous day isn’t much better. In that instance, ads could go live as early as an hour before your sale is in effect on your site. False sale ads could be damaging to your brand, especially during these high promotional periods.
Let’s get to the process.
First, labeling.
Make sure that any and all ads that you’ll want active are labeled in such a way that you know what they mean and the time period they correspond to for ease in automating later.
Next, automate your promotional copy.
The third and last piece is your non-promotional safety net.
Due to the inaccuracy of when automated rules will run, you want to make sure your non-promotional ad copy is active for an overlapping hour as your promotional copy to ensure full ad coverage. Yes, this does mean that your non-promotional copy will run during the sale for more than an hour, but from my experience, clients/bosses are more on board with non-promo ads running for a short time during promos than they are with no ads running during promotional times, even if it is only for 20 minutes.
Bonus step: Bridging the gap between two promotions with non-promo ads. At times, you may have one promo going live directly after another has ended with no promo downtime in the middle. To bridge this cap:
Following this method, you’re guaranteed to have full coverage of ads during the high-volume seasons, a minimal amount of non-promotional copy overlap, and good visibility into the stats to make the best optimizations possible.
What are your tactics for managing promos? Share in the comments!