Account Structure: Learn How the Experts Structure Their PPC Accounts

Episode Description

Structuring your Google Ads accounts can be tough if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Fortunately, these experts know how account structure needs to change with the updates to ads, keywords, matching, and more. Learn how to remain resilient in the face of rapid changes in the ad platforms.

This panel covers:

• How Amalia and Navah restructured their accounts based on the latest changes to Google Ads
• Is what worked well only a few years ago still the best solution today
• Why restructuring your accounts is important
• The pros and cons of various account structures

Episode Takeaways

How Amalia and Navah Restructured Their Accounts Based on the Latest Changes to Google Ads

• Amalia discussed the complete overhaul of her PPC strategies due to significant changes in Google Ads, moving away from traditional structures like single keyword ad groups (SKAGs) due to the changes in match types and close variants. •
• Navah highlighted her shift towards using broad match keywords with audience targeting to improve efficiency and mentioned using dynamic search ads (DSAs) to leverage Google’s machine learning for better ad performance without exhaustive campaign structures.

Is What Worked Well Only a Few Years Ago Still the Best Solution Today

• Both speakers noted that past strategies are becoming obsolete with Google’s increasing integration of machine learning and automation. The methods that used to work, like precise keyword matching and extensive manual structures, are no longer as effective or necessary.
• Amalia shared a personal experience where her tried-and-true methods suddenly failed, costing her financially and leading to a significant strategy shift.

Why Restructuring Your Accounts is Important

• Restructuring is crucial to adapt to the rapid changes in advertising technologies and platform algorithms. Staying updated with Google’s changes and adjusting campaign structures can prevent performance dips and leverage new optimization opportunities.
• Both speakers emphasized the importance of continual learning and adaptation, using structured testing to refine tactics in response to platform updates and market conditions.

The Pros and Cons of Various Account Structures

• Amalia and Navah discussed the pros and cons of different account structures, including the use of broad and exact match keywords within the same ad groups. They explored how blending different match types can speed up learning and improve performance, though it requires careful management.
• They also debated the merits of maintaining separate campaigns for different match types and languages, with Navah advocating for a more segregated approach to enhance strategic focus and budget allocation.

Episode Transcript

Frederick Vallaeys: Oh, hello everyone. Welcome to the next episode of PPC town hall. My name is Fred Vallaeys. I’m your host. I’m also the co-founder and CEO and Optmyzr. So you got an accidental sneak peek there at our two panelists who have just put in the background. But we have two amazing women who are going to join us today to talk about campaign structures in modern PPC.

And I know when I’ve been to conferences, it’s always been one of my favorite sessions, is debating what is the right campaign structure to get the most out of. Success from search marketing people have so many strong feelings about it You know, they they really hold on to the structures that they love that they’ve been Invented sometimes given names to it’s kind of like babies You name it and then you have to love it for the rest of your life but is that really the case right?

So because google is doing so much automation and and there’s so many changes even in the last couple of weeks going into q4 It sort of feels like Google had all of these changes lined up that they didn’t want to do in Q4 because that’s a really sensitive time for a lot of advertisers. So it’s like, boom, boom, boom, new stuff after new thing at the end of Q3.

And how does that impact the right campaign structures? So that’s what we want to talk about today. We’re Everyone who’s joining us live, we we want to get your interaction. We want to see what you think, what has worked for you. So let’s make this a great session. So welcome to PPC Town Hall.

All right. So the two amazing experts we have, Navahand Amalia, we’re going to say hello first to our first time PPC Town Hall panelist, Amalia. Welcome to the show.

Amalia Fowler: Thank you.

Frederick Vallaeys: So tell us a bit about yourself. And we, we like to ask everyone, where are you joining us from? So go ahead and put that in the chat comments on YouTube, on LinkedIn.

We’ll pop it on the screen. That’s also going to be your way to ask us questions. Amalia, where are you at? And tell us about yourself.

Amalia Fowler: I am in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I can’t just say Vancouver because everyone assumes Washington. So I have to clarify it’s an entirely different country.

I am currently a instructor at the British Columbia Institute of Technology or BCIT. I also own my own consulting business, Good AF Consulting, and I’m doing PPC Consulting for Rickety Roo, which is an agency in the States that works with home services businesses. So I’m a busy person and I’ve been doing Google ads for the last seven or eight years, and I’m really, really excited to be here today with you too, and have this conversation.

Frederick Vallaeys: That’s great to have you. I can’t imagine what it’s like being an actual teacher who’s responsible for keeping content up to date. I’ve always sort of figured that if you’re a teacher, you kind of put together your materials and then the next. A decade. You kind of work off of that. PPC, I bet it’s not like that, right?

No,

Amalia Fowler: I make new slide decks every term and every time Google releases an update, I have a little bit of a panic because I have to redo the slides and then re even midterm. There’s been like days where When they updated the keyword match types last time, I was lecturing on that the next day. And so I had to edit within like a 12 hour period to actually make sure the right information was getting across.

Frederick Vallaeys: And then we have Navahas well. And I don’t know, Nava, one of the things I always do before these shows or before I speak at a conference is like I check search engine land because I’m sure that whatever I’m talking about, Google just announced something new. Do you have that sort of panic as well?

Navah Hopkins: Oh my goodness, it is, it is a profound panic I’m gonna be speaking at Call Tracking Metrics Launchpad November 3rd, and I, I had to make them agree that we were allowed to edit things right up until like, the day of, because the topic is all about cookies which you were very gracious and allowed me onto your show to talk about before so yeah, this This is an ever changing landscape.

There are no right answers. There are no wrong answers. There’s just data to help inform our path to testing. And we all, we all are in this together to, to find the best strategies.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah. And so Nava, obviously you’ve been on the show many times. Well, just keep

Navah Hopkins: letting me on.

Frederick Vallaeys: You know, we don’t always agree, but. You know, it’s what makes it fun. And then I just saw a dog behind you and I’m like, whoa, that’s it’s not a real dog. Hey, the real dogs are upstairs. Okay. Amalia now if I was saying like the, the answer, like it always changes, like, do you have a special t shirt you want to show us?

I do. Okay. I’m

Amalia Fowler: so glad you asked. So I’m wearing my It Depends t shirt. Oh, hold on. The video is backwards. So I’m wearing my It Depends PPC t shirt, which is what I wear whenever I speak because everything depends. And I’m trying to teach my students that too. And it’s become this kind of running joke. And then there was a, We had an expert in the class talking about what they do, and the students asked them a question, and without knowing the context, they were just like, it depends, and everyone laughed, and they couldn’t figure out why what they said was so funny.

But it’s because everything does depend when it comes to what we do in this industry. You can’t control the external landscape, every client is different, and so, I’m hoping starting with that mindset means that we adapt in a way that is best for us, and not necessarily all in the same way. There’s lots of right answers, And I think that’s the core of the it depends mentality.

Frederick Vallaeys: Well, and let’s start with that, right? So it depends and it changes. You’ve been doing PPC now, you said, for roughly eight years. Do you find that the structures that you used to have still work or are they completely obsolete?

Amalia Fowler: They are, I think, for the first time in the last six months, completely obsolete.

I used to be able to tweak the structures that I was using and then When something new came, just make a smaller adjustment. And most recently I, I was used to going in auditing an account, pulling out the best performing keywords, restructuring according to, you know, high intent what has worked well in the past, and then.

setting it off on its machine learning adventure and having it work really well. And for the first time last month, I followed that process that I’ve done at least a hundred times and everything just tanked. And it was a very expensive learning experience. But yeah, It kind of led me to wanting to have this conversation where are we at the point where things have shifted so much that we need to adopt almost an entirely new way of looking at things?

That’s the question I’m asking myself.

Navah Hopkins: I’m curious, do you find that on just the search first networks like Google and Microsoft, or are you finding that also on the social side? Because I, it’s interesting, I’m in a very similar position, but I actually find that I have more of an advantage on social first, visual first campaigns, because they’re, they have that built in faster ramp up period, and you’re meant to keep adapting and tweaking them, whereas search, like, we had to kind of let it sit and gather data, so I’m curious if you’re seeing both.

Amalia Fowler: No, I’m having exactly what you, you were saying, where on the search campaigns, on, on the search side, it’s just, It’s, it feels a little bit like a mess because you have to wait so long to try and figure out what is actually happening. Especially with me, I work with a lot of lower budget accounts, so the volume of data is not as high as fast.

But on social, I’m having more success with the same kind of familiar structures that I was using before.

Frederick Vallaeys: Right. So the conversation today, then I guess we’ll focus a bit more on search where it seems like things have shifted quite a bit now before the show even went live, all three of us had one of those moments of panic because we looked at the comments and who is it?

It was Slobodan. He’s like, Oh, great topic. What do you guys think about the Hagakure method? First problem was, I think it’s actually called the Hagakure method. So when we looked up what Slobodan put in, which is like phonetically, it sounds right, but we couldn’t find it. And we’re like, Whoa, none of us have heard of this method.

What are we in for here today? But Navahmade a great point and Nava, do you want to make a point about, like, names and structures and best practices?

Navah Hopkins: Sure. So what, what was really interesting about, about this in, in reading the blog post is that it seemed like it was a lot of, kind of, common sense pieces of information but more specifically that was maybe Google aligned.

But ultimately it also felt a lot like the Stagg Versus SKAG mindset. So what’s the Sorry. I’m rambling, I guess, a little bit. So, in terms of the method itself, the idea is that you have an ad group for Different keyword concepts. There’s just one landing page for that ad group. You’d have dynamic search ads as one ad group within that campaign and, and you might use some if functions to help customize.

And what Amalia and I both saw when we were looking through that blog post kind of describing the process was that it seemed very Google friendly, very pro Google. But also that the ideas that were being mentioned have been mentioned in other ways before. So a lot of people may come up with a name or a brand for a strategy that’s ultimately still bits and pieces of other people’s strategies.

So just because you subscribe to One overarching theme of, of a management style doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re right or wrong and doesn’t necessarily, like, you don’t have to necessarily gravitate to just a named theme, you can, you can take best practices that you are finding working for you.

Apply them, test them, always challenge them. You don’t necessarily have to stick to a named themed strategy. Some of us, like, I, I used to hang my hat on SGAG versus STAG and I would, like, make a really big point about, like, STAGs are where it’s at, i. e. single themed ad groups versus sing single keyword ad groups.

But ultimately, The idea is identify concepts that are profitable, allow your budget to work efficiently, use the tools at your disposal. So the branded name of the strategy isn’t as important as whether that strategy’s bits and pieces are working for you and your business. Right, and I totally agree.

Frederick Vallaeys: So let’s not get hung up on what something is called. Sorry, I will swap you back in there. Go ahead, Vimal. But but I’m also thinking in like shopping campaigns. Martin Rudgerding came up with this like three, level structure of high priority medium and low priority and how you would set that up but he never gave it a name and it was always like this thing at conferences where it’s like It’s this thing that martin rutgerding described where you do like blah blah blah And so before you’ve even explained the thing it’s like a one minute discussion So it’s really nice to have names that we can sort of like, group around and then and then have a sensible discussion and say Okay.

Well, maybe this is the part of that Strategy that’s no longer quite as sensible given the recent changes that google has made so I don’t know if people know it by anything else besides the hagakure method if anyone’s using it has a different name for it would love to hear it, but some of the the oldies that Now, I was just talking about it, and Amalia, I’m going to throw this to you, but what are those old ways that you used to do things that don’t work anymore?

I mean, I can think of alpha beta, I can think of deal and stick, SCAG, STAG many others, but what, what’s no longer really working for you?

Amalia Fowler: The main one is skags ever since the match types have changed and close variants are honestly not that close a lot of the time anymore. That’s been a big one, a lot of overlap.

And then I used to see a lot of accounts or when I first started, there was a lot of accounts divided by match type, which So you’d have your ad groups for your, your broad match and then your phrase and then your exact as well, which was an interesting structure. Those two, I find, just due to the way the match, match types now work trying to explain what exact match is to a room full of students when it’s not actually exact is an adventure in and of itself.

So I think those changes in that structure of this gag. Really has not really has been what’s thrown off my structures the most. I did do single theme ad groups as well, so when we moved from Skag to Stag, but even then now I’m finding it doesn’t, it doesn’t achieve the same thing that I really want it to that I really was, was looking for those more narrow granular Methods, and I say the word granular and I laugh because I know that like, we’re, I used to be so hung up on the granular and so hung up on the manual and then over time like I’ve begrudgingly started to question everything and, and realized I don’t actually have as much of a problem with machine learning as I originally thought I did, and I’m trying to embrace it now.

But those are the things that didn’t, have changed, have really changed for me in how I set up. And also embracing broad match, which gives me like a little bit of a shiver to say, because I have spent a long time vocally hating broad match, so now I have to backtrack on everything I’ve once said.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah, and I suppose I did just make sure people know we’re not backtracking, it’s just things have changed.

Amalia Fowler: Yes. Yes.

Frederick Vallaeys: Now, what about you? I saw you like rubbing your hands when we talked about. So

Navah Hopkins: there was a phenomenal Twitter conversation about close variants and exact match matching to a different language. And it really got me thinking because my knee jerk reaction when I saw that was go home, Google, you’re drunk.

Like this is, this is ridiculous. Why are you matching to a completely different language? But then Jenny Marvin, the saint that she is and it’s, it’s shared the incredibly important context that actually completely changed my perspective on it, which is Google is now accounting for people that might be bilingual, trilingual, and bring that pluralistic mentality.

And what’s interesting is that English is probably the most expensive language for better or for worse. You might be able to get a more cost effective lead through the door simply because someone, like, Google has detected that this person is bilingual, trilingual based off of their account settings, based off of their search behaviors.

Now granted, it’s not the same experience and you will not see the same conversion rates as if you had the ad in the landing page perfectly matched for that language. But this is kind of a really interesting time where we take the human assumptions out and we, we kind of allow for all things being equal.

What is the best path to profit? Sometimes the machine gets it really wrong, and there are some hilarious banana peel slips where, like, it’s, it’s just, like, atrociously incorrect or terrible, terrible waste of budget. But there are a couple of times where those human assumptions where if the human was in charge, managing the account, setting all the targeting and didn’t allow for any interference, there would be missed opportunities.

So. I think close variants I probably was more of an early adopter and early champion of them because I saw them as an opportunity to have more efficient account structure, have the budget go to ideas rather than syntax. But the language piece is I think actually really, really fascinating.

And as we become a more pluralistic society, I think those sorts of innovations in automation will, will become that much more apparent.

Frederick Vallaeys: Right. Okay. So like Amelia says, let Google do its broad match close variant thing. But then I think you’re saying really monitor it, take a look at what the search query data shows us, and thank you, Google, for giving it back to us.

Navah Hopkins: Yes,

Frederick Vallaeys: And I suppose the next question is How do structures evolve, right? I mean, we all start with what we think is kind of the right thing in our Google ads account, but then we start looking at query data and then we start to understand what are these foreign language speakers that are coming to us.

Does that mean like you make new ad groups? You still, in certain cases have single keyword ad groups on high volume opportunities where, you know, maybe you think you can still steer Google to the right attacks, the right landing page. Like what does that evolution look like for, for both of you?

Amalia Fowler: I still have single keyword ad groups.

I, they are just I don’t know the best way to explain it. I still have single, single keyword ad groups. They’re just slightly broader and will encapsulate, whereas before I would have had like four or five ad groups for, let’s say appliance repair, because it’s the thing that’s popping into my head.

I’d have like fridge and dishwasher and washing machine and whatever as separate ad groups. Now it’s just appliance repair and capturing those. terms from whether it’s broad match. I still lean more towards phrase and exact match when my client doesn’t have a huge budget or if it’s early and I don’t have the negative keyword list as flushed out as I would like to.

I still tend to lean to phrase and exact to get it that way. But even a phrase match appliance repair will start to match to things like dishwasher or fridge or whatnot. And So I still use single keyword ad groups in that context, but I also like to lean now more on dynamic search ads as well because then that landing page can match to what is popping up in, in a whole new way.

I have some accounts that are smaller clients that we only have a dynamic search ad campaign and ad group running and I see Navahnodding and I feel like you understand exactly what I’m saying there. Well,

Navah Hopkins: the, the thing with DSA is that it. It empowers the brand to not have every single ad group or campaign under the sun.

Like, they, you can, you can bank on the feed, you can, you can get that value. One other thing I’ll just note in terms of close variants, ironically enough, I’ve shifted more, and this is going to sound terrible coming from me, to actually having some SCAGs in there, but they’re specifically long tail, i.

e. five to six word long broad Match keywords with targeting audiences on top. So like in market audiences the, the similar audiences IE off of customer lists any, anything that I can take my competitor spend or to be fair, my previous spend and prequalify the budget going to those folks.

So I think broad match with audiences is perfectly reasonable to be frank. Sometimes exact match terms. Those are can also be good candidates as standalones. I typically will still have two to three keyword concepts per ad group. Just as a general rule, but those kind of data acquisition ad groups, whether it’s DSA or whether it’s broad with Audiences are very, very powerful.

Frederick Vallaeys: I think I’m hearing sort of two things here. So Amalia brought up the point, if you have limited budget, stick with the things that are more controlled. So more exact, more phrased, less broad. But then I think I also heard in some cases early on in campaigns, DSA is a good, like, testing ground and it enables you to get on competitor terms without necessarily buying them.

Navah Hopkins: I just want to make sure that it was clear what I was specifically saying around competitors was that audiences, like your audience, audiences by the nature of what they are, you’re banking on everyone kind of crowdfunded spend of, of purchasing intent. So if you don’t have the budget to build your own on prequal or non qualified audience that can help focus the budget.

So it’s, it’s specifically audiences. DSA, I mean, you might get some competitor terms but I just wanna make sure that the point I was making was, it was about the audiences, not the keywords.

Amalia Fowler: And for DSA it really depends on how the site is built and how well the site is built as well. I like, I like starting if, If the client I have is also employing an SEO agency, or in the case of Rickety, where they are an SEO agency, so all of them generally have that on the other side, then it works really well to start with DSA, and you can start to identify high volume and high value terms, and then if you want to separate those out as you go, that can be a really easy.

informed way to start to build a larger campaign structure if they don’t have a lot of budget. Instead of doing a ton of keyword research, setting up a bunch of campaigns, setting up a bunch of ad group and finding out that, you know, this is not the ideal structure for that client. When a client only has a couple thousand dollars a month max really Pinpointing what works early on is important, and so I do that with DSA, but only if their site structure is going to be backing up that as something great to start with.

If their site is a mess, don’t start like that, because you’re going to just get a mess in return.

Frederick Vallaeys: Garbage in, garbage out.

Amalia Fowler: Exactly.

Frederick Vallaeys: Okay great. Thanks for clarifying that. So let’s take a look at a few audience questions. Some of these are pretty quick, so let’s answer them. So Jason’s asking about the adventures of closed variants.

Is DKI potentially a dangerous thing to do. Yes. So, well, and just to be clear on that too, so dynamic keyword insertion, it is your keyword that gets inserted. But I guess what Jason’s alluding to is that Google may sort of randomly go and pick a keyword that it thinks is kind of close. And that might not have been the keyword that you thought would be pulled in.

Google is not going to put in the The random search term that somebody types in, that’s not how DKI works, right? And Google actually, I want to see if you have an opinion on this, but Google recently revised how to do the match type prioritization. So now they say if you have the exact match variation of whatever the user searched in your account, That gets the preference, and then for everything else, it sort of depends, but they’re adding a new layer of relevancy to it.

It used to be very heavily driven by ad rank, and ad rank is a relevancy measure, but now they’re bringing in a new relevancy standard, which seems more semantic machine learning driven Right? So from my perspective, it sounds like they’re starting to do a better job of trying to pick the right ad and the right keyword from your account.

Amalia Fowler: I haven’t seen that prioritization yet. So I do have some accounts where there’s the exact and broad version in the same ad group and the broad version is still heavily, heavily favored in terms of delivery, even when the search query terms are this are similar. So like taking that into account, I’m hoping in theory, I really like it.

Because that should be the way it is in, in my opinion, but in practice, we’ll have to see how that plays out over time. I don’t know, Nava, if you’re seeing anything similar. Pretty much.

Navah Hopkins: And full disclosure, this might be that bias that we were just talking about, always challenge your biases.

Frederick Vallaeys: Mm hmm.

Navah Hopkins: I, I typically see DKI ads underperform against, not including if functions like countdown insertions or things like that, but where it’s specifically DKI.

I typically see those underperform. Do you think DKI is lazy? A little bit, a little bit but it typically, comparing a DKI ad to a human written expanded text ad or human written responsive search ad Based off of the data I, I saw during my time at WordStream based off of just anecdotal data, seeing things since, DKI seems to underperform.

I’m, I would love to change my opinion on it, like I genuinely would. I think that would make for much easier account management, but I I’m not a big fan.

Frederick Vallaeys: We just ran a study at Optmyzr for SMX Next where we’re presenting next two or three weeks. And we looked at RSAs with DKI and without DKI. And if memory serves me right, the ones with DKI always underperformed the ones without it.

Which is really counterintuitive because you would think putting the keyword in Like ensuring the keyword is in there would help you. But then at the same time, I think it’s like what you’re saying, right? We we as marketers haven’t really been marketers and we’ve been like using these crutches from Google, like DKI, because when you, once you have 10, 000 ad groups, well, do you really want to write 10, 000 really well written ad variations?

Probably not. Right. So you, you lean on DKI in the beginning, but then you. You’re like, Oh, my work is done, but no, your work isn’t done. You should have applied like the Pareto rule, 80, 20 principle, and probably looked at your 20 percent highest volume ad groups and try to write something a little bit better.

Right, actually put your marketer’s hat on. And I think the advertisers that do that, they see more success with it.

Amalia Fowler: Yeah, and even though the keyword doesn’t get matched to the query itself, sometimes if the query is way off and the keyword is in the ad, then there’s still that mismatch there. And so I prefer I mean, it’ll surprise nobody, but I prefer a level of control in my accounts as much as possible, which is why I have so much trouble adapting to a lot of these machine, or I did have a lot of trouble adapting to a lot of the machine learning when it started to, to come on the rise.

I like to, I like to be in control. And so ad copy is one of the places where I just make sure I am. Mostly.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah. And we’ll talk about ad copy, I think, in a bit but let’s take the next question. So Gabrielle is asking and this is to the language point, but would you suggest campaigns in different languages rather than targeting all languages with English campaigns?

Navah Hopkins: 100 percent different campaign, different campaigns for each language have a campaign per country per language because those are strategic objectives. My point earlier was that there might be people that. By the nature of targeting, you would miss if only your human targets were chosen. I actually think it’s, this is one of those times where I don’t mind a little bit of waste to learn.

Is there another prospect pool out there another buyer persona out there that I didn’t consider as a human marketer with my own various biases, but in terms of overall structure, it still holds true every campaign should have a strategic objective that has one budget that it is marching towards. That means one language per campaign.

Ideally, one at one major location. If you have to do a country, fine, but like definitely don’t mix countries per campaign. If you, if either of you want to challenge me on that, like I’m definitely down to have that debate.

Amalia Fowler: No, I I am fully on, on board

Navah Hopkins: with everything you’re saying. Strategic objectives per budget.

Frederick Vallaeys: And I’ll challenge it. I’ll put on my Googler hat. For a second, not at Google anymore. Right. But so Google basically says, listen, if you’re doing smart bidding and you’re using broad match and you’re letting us do close variants and you got RSA is running, then go ahead and like loosen up your targeting.

Because at the end of the day, you’ve told us your cost per acquisition goal is 25 and we’ll find those 25 acquisitions, whether they’re in India or South Africa or the United States or France, it doesn’t matter. Right. We will figure it out. So we ran an experiment and we. assume that that might actually be a good thing to do.

And so we ran it and this was an experiment we did with value rules. And so in value rules, you can say if I get a conversion, like lifetime value of that conversion differs by geographic location. So for example, we would have said a conversion from India is generally less valuable to us than a conversion coming from the United States, just because of the lifetime value.

Okay. So we put in these value rules and then we get rid of geographic restrictions. And all of a sudden we’re getting like massive, massive amounts of traffic from Bangladesh, from India, from Pakistan, and none of these convert. And so we look at what’s going on and we put in the biggest decrease value rule can do, which is minus 50 percent for those countries.

But clicks from India, for example, are 20 times cheaper than an equivalent click in the United States. So even with a 50 percent decrease in value associated. associated. Google just thought that these were amazing high return on ad spend clicks, and we couldn’t tell them actually, no, they’re not as valuable as you think they are.

It needs to be lower, lower, lower. Like we hit the bottom of how low we could go. And so at the end of the day, we just had to bring back country exclusions to get rid of that traffic. And so the only way to have done a good job with it is like what you two are saying, actually have a campaign for those countries.

Navah Hopkins: Thank you for being brave and testing so that we all can just sit here and on our safety island.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah, I’m not playing with with actual advertiser’s money. I’m playing with Optmyzr’s money and And that makes a big,

Amalia Fowler: a big difference, right? Yeah, I think a big Even if I know that something could be good, even if I know that there is a chance that it works, even if I want to test it, what, what it comes down to me for me is being able to explain it to my client.

And when my clients are all smaller clients with smaller budgets and then statistical significance takes a much longer time to reach just by the nature of the numbers, it’s really hard to be like, Hey, we’re going to run this for three months. out of your ear to see if this works out in our favour or not.

Like, getting the buy in to try things is a lot harder, and I don’t know if I don’t know if anybody else experiences that or how you do get that buy in, I’ve been very lucky sometimes I do have clients who are willing to put aside a smaller percentage and we do test it or using experiments within Google Ads, but for the most part, getting buy in for these big changes, I’d say is a big part of the challenge when you’re, when you’re working with clients.

Navah Hopkins: So I will say one of the things I’m exceptionally grateful for. Is that when I want to do a wild and crazy test on, say, Microsoft ads, I’ll put it at about 75%. That wild and crazy test isn’t a complete waste of time, isn’t a complete waste of budget. Like it’s, there’s, there’s some value that can be gotten there.

Granted, it’s almost always a smaller percentage. It’s almost a smaller pool of the overall Brand, but when it comes to Google, unless I know that the client has budgeted my, my, my number is like 20 to 30 percent for wild and crazy experiments, I just, I, I’m not going to take them away from their normal path to profit unless it is a dedicated time where we know it’s slow.

So this leads into the seasonality question. I’m a lot more risk tolerant when I know it’s August because for most brands, like when it’s e commerce, like, yeah, they’re, That’s, that’s the beginning of the ramp up. But for most brands, August, I do every, all my wild and crazy tests because that’s, it’s a slower time.

Like people are on vacation, like there’s just less things going on. And so if it goes badly, it’s, it’s not that bad. And if it goes well, we then have a framework to really roll it out a little bit in, in Q4, but mostly in Q1. What I won’t do is during the best time, the most popular time, The busiest, the most high ramp up time that I do not run wild and crazy tests.

I was hoping that my opinion on this would be changed, but it, so far, it’s like over 10 years now. Nope. That’s. And then do you find that still true? Or is it like Google has changed, started changing things so rapidly that even what was like, Hey, we got everything ready for Q4. It’s amazing. It’s going to work well.

Frederick Vallaeys: We’re not going to touch it. And then like, boom, Google does something and Drops. And I think we used to see that a little bit with smart bidding. Yeah. Like 10 years ago, like things would be all good. And then your most important time of the year comes along and something in this machine learning breaks and it sets all your bids wrong.

And there’s absolutely no recourse. So there is a very real mechanic to that 30. 4 day average. When you make a wild and crazy change you should absolutely expect that Google will spike your budget that those during those first five days especially if it’s on max conversions. One of the horror stories that I had was I would campaign was doing amazing.

Navah Hopkins: We were crushing life. Everything was great. They wanted more. And so we put it on max conversions. Within five days. a week, the budget got slashed basically 75 percent because we over spent, we basically spent the month in, in a week because of the mechanics of when we made the change to, to smart bidding.

So you want to think about when you’re making your changes. You can’t just turn them on willy nilly. The other thing, and this, this is a kind of a debate that we’ve PPC folks have had for a while is whether you pause things or whether you turn the budget way, way, way down. I don’t think it’s possible to pause things anymore if you want the campaign to stay alive.

It used to be Maybe you can, maybe you can’t. I’ve seen so many accounts just tank if you pause something and then you try to re enable it. This is not true for Facebook. For Facebook, like you can do whatever, like they like new things, but on on the Google side and a little bit also on the Microsoft side, the moment it is paused, you should basically expect that it’s a brand new campaign.

Frederick Vallaeys: Interesting. There’s one nuance to that. So Discovery campaigns, I’ve heard that they will run really well in the beginning, give you lots of volume, cheap clicks. And then after a day, Google figures out, hey, maybe it’s not that good of a campaign. So they shut it off, but you just like copy it. Pause the old campaign, make a new one, and then just keep getting that spike again and

Navah Hopkins: again.

A little bit. With Discovery campaigns, my, my experience has been if you set up your targeting correctly and your exclusions correctly, and you look at the right Metrics you can kind of account for for that spike There are some campaigns though in certain verticals where if you turn it off You should just expect that you’re going to have that that ramp up period again think finance because those rules are really really tough and then also anything e commerce I find that that’s A little bit too competitive to to turn it off and then get those same results

Frederick Vallaeys: Hey, Joey.

Thanks for saying we’re having a wonderful conversation. Thank you for listening. We do have another question that I wanted to take from Andrew, if I can find it. So, Amali, I’m going to throw this one to you. But we had talked about like match type campaigns or ad groups per match type. So the question is, would you keep exact And broad match and separate campaigns, or would you bundle them together now, or would you just like not even do exactly anymore?

Amalia Fowler: My answer to this is gonna be it depends, which surprises nobody. I do, as a a matter of personal practice and whether or not, I mean, you may have differing opinions on this. I So it does depend. In a branded campaign, or a branded ad group, which we could also debate whether or not those are worth having, but I have them in a lot of cases.

I have exact and broad match together, because for me, the like, general intent and matching of all of those things are gonna work out if I have a robust negative list, which mostly is a negative list of competitors in the case of a broad match keyword. Hey, can I ask you why you have the exact and the broad on the same?

In the same ad group? Yeah, that’s a great question. I’m not sure that there is an exact reason. It works, that’s why, that’s like the data in those situations with the branded campaigns have always pointed to that not being a problem. In my other campaigns, I do separate them out, but Nava, go ahead.

Navah Hopkins: Well what with broad and exact is that the Exact will typically have lower volumes, so the broad match can help jerry rig the exact to go faster, so you end up ramping up the ad group, end up ramping up the campaign that much quicker by having the volume there to help teach the campaign. This is probably the one area where we will disagree.

I, I have, I see match type level campaigns and ad groups fall in their phase all the time because of budget allocation. By combining it together, you’re, you’re able to help fuel that success. But again, I, I have shifted in, in my mentality from having all three match types or when there were four, all four match types for every single keyword concept I was going to bid on now maybe it would be one or two broad match champions and everything else is on exact.

What I used to do, rely on as a clutch crutch rather was Phrase Match. I’ve stopped doing Phrase Match. So it’s Oh, interesting. And that’s, that’s one of the things that has really changed for me is I’ve just flat out stopped Phrase. It’s now just Exact or Broad. And time will tell whether that’s I was right to abandon my love of Phrase, but we’ll see.

Amalia Fowler: And you said it more elo you said it more eloquently than I did. At the, at the end of the day, when I When I have had them in the same campaign, it’s often that I, or in the same ad group, it’s often that I didn’t set up the account and it is working. And I don’t want to move something that is working because I think it’s better to have them separate.

And, and what Navahsaid about the volume, I mean, they, there is a default to Broadmats getting, Broadmats getting a lot of the volume a lot of the time. And so, When I’m setting up something new and I don’t have a negative list that I can rely on, I don’t know the client that well, I don’t know the campaign that well, or the account that well I will separate them because I don’t want all the volume to go to one place and not give the other.

I see all these really deep accounts with like tons of ad groups, but not a lot of budget in the campaign that I often audit. And I think the big problem there is a lot of those keywords and ad groups don’t actually even get a shot because Google has identified this one ad group that it believes is performing and those other ones that are like in those really deep structures, you just, it doesn’t mean that those keywords wouldn’t work if they were allocated their own environment and their own budget, but the way it’s set up, it doesn’t work that way.

Well,

Navah Hopkins: I mean, to be fair, Any campaign that has more than seven ad groups, I typically will make, it’s, it’s the Marie Kondo way. Does it spark joy? No. Out of here.

Amalia Fowler: I love that. That’ll be my account structure name. Okay.

Frederick Vallaeys: So here’s the secret formula, right? How many campaigns and then seven ad groups per campaign, and then like five keywords per ad group.

Navah Hopkins: Yeah. So a campaign per objective, five to seven ad groups per campaign max. Two to three keyword concepts per ad group, and then get your e trays in now.

Frederick Vallaeys: Sorry, two to three keyword

Navah Hopkins: concepts.

Frederick Vallaeys: So each ad group has multiple concepts?

Navah Hopkins: So say for example we were talking about this before of like appliance repair fixing appliance, appliance maintenance.

I would combine appliance repair and appliance maintenance together. dishwasher might get its own ad group. And then again, using ad group level negatives to direct the budget.

This is a million. It’s like, please challenge me on this.

Amalia Fowler: What I’m thinking about is how that works with things like location based See, I don’t do

Navah Hopkins: location based keywords. No, but I don’t do location based keywords.

Amalia Fowler: Interesting. I’ll

Navah Hopkins: use just the location because the networks will just apply the location on it anyway.

Amalia Fowler: So they will, but then my ad copy. doesn’t necessarily, like, I have found better results when I have, and, and for me, it’s usually the lower mainland. So for all of those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, but North Vancouver and Vancouver are very different places. And so for me, I will then either have to separate my campaigns by place by like geo targeting or if they’re really close together, there are some cases like Google doesn’t love Canada the same way it loves the United States in terms of separating geography.

So like I have to often postal code it or like create specific radiuses. And so if they’re really close together. And also someone like works in one city and lives in another city, like getting that separation is something that I find a challenge with the method that you’re talking about, but in theory, I agree with.

Your grouping of intent, like maintenance and repair, like Google, if basically if Google sees them as similar or semantically similar, and I can tell by how the matching is working, then there’s no point in having them in separate ad groups because they’re just going to end up competing for the same.

Queries. So if I can see that they’re competing for the same queries and I put them in the same ad group, essentially, which I think is along the lines of what you’re saying,

Navah Hopkins: Yes. But again, not every keyword deserves budget. There’s there’s there’s, there’s a certain point if it does, if it has an off average cost per click, or if you go to Google Trends, and you see that the region that you’re in, that’s just not how people search, don’t actively bid on that idea.

Frederick Vallaeys: But I think the delineation, we have to start drawing a little bit is like what. Would this campaign structure for automated bidding and this campaign structure for not automated bidding? Because obviously it changes how the budget is used. How I mean, and I think in the old days when you had a broad match and an exact match in the same ad group, it used to be because you wanted to put different bids for them and that was the okay.

But now if you have a CPA target, well, who cares? I mean, Google will figure it out. Anyway Julie wants to know how many keywords is too many? Reza is asking the same thing. So I know it depends, but.

Amalia Fowler: I live and die by five to seven and like seven is a lot now. Like the word, it used to be the 20 was too many, but like I live and die by five to seven.

And that is not something I think my mind will. Change on in this current era and that is a lot of the time related for me to add relevance as well. So if you have

Frederick Vallaeys: like, how many ads would you put in an ad group? So I,

Amalia Fowler: I, I am on an ETA kick right now. I’m going to try and get in as many as I can, but right now I usually have two ETAs and one RSA per ad group.

And that

Frederick Vallaeys: is one RSA. Okay. Just to give people context. Oh, sorry. RSAs so RSAs, responsive search ads, that’s going to be the only format after July 1st, 2022 that you can edit and add and create. So that’s why you’re on the kick of just load as many ETAs, expanded text ads in your account as you can.

So you just have them there in case.

Amalia Fowler: Yeah. In, in my experience, I have had ETAs outperform RSAs, but I’ve also had RSAs outperform ETAs. Like there’s, there’s this. And I think that’s a big trend in some circles in our industry of people hating on our essays and I just like I have, I have found that if I write them a specific way or if I get, you know, if I can get that RSA quality up, according to Google, then that works out really well in some of my accounts.

I have them both. There are some campaigns, and this will probably make both of you cringe, that I recently took over that have standard text ads still in them, but they’re

Frederick Vallaeys: outperforming

Amalia Fowler: everything else. And so I’m leaving them if it works. And I think that’s a caveat for all the best practices and all the structure stuff we’re talking about.

Like if your account is working according to your business objectives and your goals, like don’t go change all of it because of what we’re saying. Like leave what works. And then if something is not working or stopped working, like, adapt as you go. That’s, that’s what I would do.

Navah Hopkins: So it’s funny, I actually don’t cringe at all about the standard text ads.

Specifically because it’s the same reason why everyone should, if you haven’t already, make sure that you have expanded text ads. In your campaigns right now, because Google and Microsoft are depreciating the ability to create or edit them. I think it’s June, is it the 22nd or the 20th of next year?

I feel like it’s the 22nd. It’s the

Frederick Vallaeys: last, it’s the end of Q2 is the last day that you can modify ETAs. So starting Q3 2022. It’s RSAs and pausing and enabling existing ETAs.

Navah Hopkins: Correct. So just like when expanded text ads came out, there was a period where you could still do standard text ads, and then they had that treatment.

Google and Microsoft both benefit from data and age. So a standard text ad that is performing almost always went out in the optimized rotation, simply because it has the data to back it. And with responsive search ads, I actually like them a lot. Provided that you pin your, your headlines, which I realize is, is not quite what the recommendations are, but, but you should it’s, it’s important but having those expanded text ads in to teach the RSAs is one of the strategies that we all tell you to do, that you will not be able to do anymore, simply because you will not be able to create expanded text ads, so that’s why you want to get them in now but you want to make sure that they’re good, so don’t just put in formulaic bad copy, take the time, this is a really good time Think about your business, think about your buyer personas, think about your, your value props, and come up with maybe four to five templates that you can repurpose to install once that, that runway runs out because you, you don’t want to be stuck the day before, like, ah.

Writer’s block, oh well.

Frederick Vallaeys: I wonder too about the approvals process, so are there going to be like a gajillion expanded text ads created that last day of Q2? Oh man. Oh wait, we need to hire a million people. I would,

Navah Hopkins: I would love to be a fly on the wall in the the, the policy room as like they’re all dealing with like the, the automatic disapprovals and then like, no, no, no, this is fine.

Frederick Vallaeys: Brett’s asking, do you tend to use all the available headlines and descriptions for RSAs? I’ll do a small plug here for SMX Next. So I am doing a session specifically on RSAs and we’ll share what we found on that topic. And I’ll give you a brief answer here as well. But there’s going to be much more at SMX Next if you want to join that. But Amalia, do you have a take on number of headlines?

Amalia Fowler: I, I, I use all description lines. I will say that I use all four. In terms of headlines. It depends on the ad group that I’m working with and the number of keywords that are in the ad group because at some point I just get really repetitive.

So if I can create unique, differentiated headlines, some that are with call to action, some that are with not I know that Google says it can differentiate between just like word order in my experience. It does not deliver like that. I have had, you know, I don’t know, appliance repair near me or appliance repair Vancouver and just like the single appliance repair as a hypothetical, apparently I’m on an appliance repair kick today.

I’ve had them show up together. So as long as I can create unique headlines. That if I’m really looking at it, because I don’t pin mine the same way Navahdoes if I’m really looking at it, would these combinations still all be okay together, where it doesn’t look like a mess, then I will maximize my headlines.

If I cannot create differentiated, unique headlines because I’ve, I’m running out of ideas or there’s only so many ways words can go together. I’m not just going to create a word salad for Google to play with.

Frederick Vallaeys: And that’s, that’s very sensible, I think. I’m not talking about the appliance repair, because you can’t buy new appliances anymore these days, right?

Navah Hopkins: What’s funny too is the quality of the ad. Magically, it’s a great ad if you use all the headlines, but you, if you had just a perfect three headline ad that you just think that that’s what you left there it’s, it’s suddenly poor average. So there, there is a certain degree in which you may want to just play with Google, play by Google’s rules, put them all in there so that the ad has the best chance.

On the subject of pinning, I have strong feelings that the call to action should be headline two, because that’s typically the last headline that is going to serve, but ultimately, however you structure your ads is fine, so long as you group your calls to actions together. your hooks together, things like that.

Frederick Vallaeys: Well, now I was talking about a lot of people may not realize, but you can now do multi asset pinning. So in the beginning it used to be you pin exactly one thing to headline one, one thing to headline two. Now you can actually say, here’s four variations of my promotion, pin all of these to position two, and then Google can rotate between them and figure out what works best.

Navah Hopkins: Sorry, I, that I took for granted that like, people were following. So yes, that is very exciting that like you can now pin these things. So maybe people will pin more and it will be great. This is the problem, right? I mean, there’s so many small changes coming from Google and sometimes we pick up on it.

Frederick Vallaeys: Sometimes we miss it. I think a lot of people did miss this one. At least based on who I talked to, maybe I talked to the wrong people. So yeah, Brett, my answer to using all the headlines. So in the study that we did for Optmyzr, it’s the more headlines you give, it’s basically giving more flexibility to the machine learning system.

So it tends to result in better performance. And the way that we look at performance is not so much conversion rates, CTR, but it’s actually incrementality of more conversions.

All right. We’re pretty close to the the end of the show here. So I think I’m going to have to. ask both of you for maybe the final thing that you want to talk about, because we have lots of questions, so we can do a whole other episode on this. But maybe

Navah Hopkins: what’s one thing that we haven’t changed?

Like in this sea of inconsistency, what’s, what’s one thing that we’ve, we’ve each stayed consistent on?

Amalia Fowler: Oh, that’s a good question. I think for me, the thing I have stayed the most consistent on is almost where I look for optimization opportunities. Like I still I still start with my keywords and queries and everything like that.

And then if, if the changes I’m making in those areas are not doing anything, I will revert to changing my structure, which is like kind of what motivated this entire conversation. People do not often realize there are a lot more levers you can pull to make changes within the platform than they think.

So that’s something that I have. really adopted and learned and tried to teach is, you know, there is more than one way to solve a problem if you find a problem. And I think keeping that mentality has been something I’ve kept the same. And also I’m still convinced that there are absolutely terrible ways to structure an account.

Like there are these variations of good ways, but when you are wrong, you are wrong. And in my head, like wrong is, you know, tons of ad groups, tons of keywords. I have audited account where there’s one campaign and 800 keywords and 30 something ad groups. Oh yeah, that’s my face too. That is the wrong way to do it.

And I think that will always be the wrong way to do it. It doesn’t matter how powerful automation gets. And so I think my opinion on that hasn’t changed, but now I want to I want to know your answer.

Frederick Vallaeys: Oh, you asked a question. So I get to answer. Oh,

Amalia Fowler: yes.

Frederick Vallaeys: I’m taking back control of my show, but no, This should be a conversation no, but since you asked so I think negative keywords and basically search terms management, right?

I think negative keywords are kind of the one thing that has not changed fundamentally how it works. These are negative exact match keywords. Right. So the exact words have to appear. That’s when Google will not show your ad. So that does afford us quite a good level of control. So if these close variants go a little bit far afield, that’s how we can reel it back in a bit.

And then at the end of the day, it’s really about thinking, you know, I made a landing page for this. I wrote an ad text that I think is going to be the best for this, this query, this thing that somebody searches for. It’s harder to define how I match to that query because keyword match types are getting so much looser, but my negatives help me bring it back to where I want it to be.

And then of course, don’t do this for your whole account because that’s when you end up with, you know, exceeding your account limits for negative keywords, but do it for the most important, the highest volume traffic. I will say on that I like to look at root negative keywords. So if I have a bunch of things that are coming in that are like, how can I, or how do I, or, and I don’t want any of them.

Amalia Fowler: I just negative out the word, how. Because then those queries and that’s something I think people don’t do but how I treat negative keywords has changed because now I do actively do negative keyword research at the beginning. Whereas before I didn’t feel like I had to do that with the match types. Neva?

Am I

Navah Hopkins: allowed to say something? So my, my answer to this, and I agree with both of you a hundred percent is actually just looking at accounts from a place of pragmatism. So can I fit at least 10 clicks in my day? If not, this budget is likely not set up for success. What is my impression share?

Impression share has, has been my guiding light in account management, account auditing. So that’s, that’s typically where, where I look there. Same thing with auction insights. Like how, how am I pacing there? So. Yes, on the functional standpoint, I agree a thousand percent. So just to give a slightly different answer, can my budget do the things it set out to do?

If not it is okay to use that budget for a non search channel. And I think that that rule of ten, like, can you fit at least ten clicks in your day? If the answer is no, you are banking on a better than ten percent conversion rate, that is going down. To lead to failure is, is just that, that pragmatic approach over oh, trying to over mechanic something that just was never going to work in the beginning, in the beginning.

So yeah, that’s not as technical of an answer, but that’s, that’s, that’s what’s to stay consistent. Relying on math is something that has stayed consistent. Like at the end of the day, the budget, the clicks, the cost per clicks, the conversion rate, like all of that has to line up for success. And sometimes it doesn’t.

Amalia Fowler: It doesn’t sometimes we have a new client and they’re like we have a thousand dollars a month and i’m like well Mathematically with a cost per click of you know, seventeen dollars. This is a terrible channel for you like find something else So I I think diversification is a great point and I think the mathematics of it has not changed and probably will not change Great Amalia, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Frederick Vallaeys: This has been fantastic. And let’s put amalia back on the screen producer so Thank you for being on the show. There’s your Twitter handle. What else do you want people to do? How can they find you, get in touch with you?

Amalia Fowler: That’s the best way. Honestly, I’m like a single platform lady. It’s just Twitter all the time.

As long as you don’t mind also hearing about my beef with brands, sometimes come on over and chat PPC with me there.

Frederick Vallaeys: Great. And I think Amalia, you actually reached out to me and said, Hey, can I come on PPC town hall? And I was like, Totally. So the platform is open. If you think you have something interesting to share, like Amalia, who was thinking a lot about account structures, we’d love to have you on.

Nava, it’s been a pleasure having you on for the third, fourth, fifth time, I can’t even remember. Three. Okay. Well, let’s make it a couple more. So let’s put you big on the screen right there. How do people get in touch with you? At

Navah Hopkins: Navahf is my Twitter handle. I, I am an active participant in PPC chat.

You can always ask me questions. I’m the ask the PPC for Search Engine Journal. So it’s You have a question that you want a really in depth answer to? Absolutely use that form. I’ll send the link to be included with the sendout. You can hang over on LinkedIn. I’m on the, the, the speaking circuit.

So if, if, if you see a presentation that, that I’m, I’m giving and, and you wanna ask some questions, whether it’s PPC, whether it’s dog related Star Wars related I’m, I’m always happy to chat.

Frederick Vallaeys: Okay, so you’re basically everywhere you might turn around and see now what’s standing behind you but great

Navah Hopkins: only sometimes

Frederick Vallaeys: We still have to personalize too, right?

Not always PPC Hey, but thanks so much. It’s been a great show I hope people learned a lot from everything you shared about campaign structures So we’ll be setting an announcement for the next PPC town hall But if you just want to get that automatically subscribe to the channel subscribe to the email list And thank you so much for watching and we’ll see you for the next one