In the middle of a hot month here in New Jersey, the You Can Be Found Anywhere is a never before released one, from the archive.  We are found at the Athabasca Glacier in Jasper National Park in Canada, discussing not letting your Google Ads go cold.  The idea is that you need to stay up to date with the latest tools and trends, to not only help your campaign use new features, but also to be on top of ways that Google changes the rules to give themself more money are your expense.  Really nailing the point home about how quickly things change in this world is that just two years ago, it was called Google Adwords, but now it is Google Ads, so even something as basic as the brand name is different than it was.

Managing Your Ad Campaigns

Because the world of search and display advertising changes so quickly, it is good to regularly check in and make updates and tweaks to make sure things run as smootly as possible. Sadly, I have seen small business owners just leave their campaigns to run for themselves without updates, and what once may have worked and got them new business slowly became less and less efficient as Google offered more efficient targeting methods, but also at the same time, regularly moves the goalposts. Some of the major “adjustments” Google has made to the basic rules in recent years include:

  • The name of the brand changing from Google AdWords to Google Ads
  • Match type definitions for your keywords. Google has made tightly controlled matching to specific words and phrases nearly impossible by changing the definition of “exact” to include “close variants”.
  • Ad structures have changed a number of times in recent years from basic text ads to responsive search ads with different numbers of headlines and descriptions, as well as different rules for the number of characters in both.
  • There are a myriad of new targeting methods and Google tries to move us closer to letting them “manage” your campaigns for you, which is a big red flag.

So if you don’t want to be at the mercy of Google for your ad spend, but still want to get the most out of this powerful tool, so you can be found anywhere, from a living room couch search to a search at a far off glacier, give us a call for a tune-up and warm up your campaigns a bit.