5 AdWords Rules You Should Be Using

July 25 / Chair 10 Marketing Team / filed under How-To

Once you’ve learned the basics of Adwords, the next step to becoming an PPC expert is mastering automated rules. Found in the Bulk Operations menu in Adwords, automated rules are a great way to complete routine tasks more efficiently and increase the effectiveness of your campaign. In other words: work smarter, not harder.

To create an automated rule, simply select the campaigns, ad groups, ads, or keywords that you’d like the rule to affect. Next, tap the Automate button and choose a rule from the drop down menu. Although rules are created here, they are edited and managed in the Bulk Operations menu.

At Chair 10, we use automated rules to maximize conversions and minimize costs. Here are five rules that everyone should be using to ensure their campaigns are efficient and effective:

1. Position targeting.

This is the most common rule that we use here at Chair 10. The average position of a keyword tells us how high, on average, it shows on the page. If an ad has an average position of 1, it is often in the first position. By targeting specific spots on the page, we can lower the cost per acquisition in competitive markets and optimize our cost per click.

To target a position, we want two rules: one to increase bids and one to lower bids. Using the average position variable, we can change keyword bids depending on that keyword’s position. In this example, these two rules will work together to bring keywords to an average position over time:

Adwords PPC automated rules

This rule raises keyword bids 20% when their average positions are worse than 3.3

 

adwords ppc automated rules

This rule lowers keyword bids by 10% when their average positions are better than 2.7.

2. Regulate your budget.

When managing multiple campaigns, it can be hard to keep track of your budgets. Automated rules are a great way to make sure they don’t over spend.

adwords ppc automated rules

This rule pauses a campaign when it reaches a certain threshold—$1,000 for the month.

 

adwords ppc automated rules

And this rule increases a campaign’s budget by 20% if it reaches a certain threshold ($50) by noon.

 3. Identifying underperforming keywords or ads.

Instead of manually wading through campaigns to find the best and worst performing keywords, many digital marketers use rules to help. Keywords can be sorted by their cost and click-through rate. Using the email notification option is an easy way to receive email notifications whenever a keyword isn’t performing well and may need to be paused.

adwords automated rules ppc

This rule sends us an email if an ad has a click through rate lower than 2%.

 

adwords automated rules ppc

This rule pauses any keyword if its average cost per click exceeds $5 and sends an email notification so we can personally examine performance before proceeding.

4. Optimizing keywords for conversions.

One of our best practices at Chair 10 Marketing is to always link conversion data with Adwords. Cost per click, average position, and click through rate are all valuable, but they can only tell part of the story. For example, let’s say you’re bidding on two different keywords. Here are their metrics:

adwords automated rules

At first glance, it seems like local coffee shops is a better performing keyword. It received the same number of clicks as seattle coffee but for $50 less. However, when you attribute conversions to keywords, you see a different story. Even though we paid $5 more per keyword, each conversion for seattle coffee cost $1 less.

adwords automated rules ppc

Automated rules are a great way to help make sense of conversion data. This rule increases the bids for keywords that are converting well (have received 5 conversions in the last week).

5. Ensure your ads are running.

This last rule is simple but essential. Using the email notification options, we can have Adwords email us to warn us that ads are not running. To do this, we create a rule that sends us a notification if an ad receives zero impressions:

adwords automated rules ppc

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