In this blog post, we’ll look into how to identify and avoid some of the most common pitfalls. Soon, successful Google Ads optimisation will become second nature. 

Mistake 1. You’re not using negative keywords

Negative keywords are a crucial part of search campaigns. Using negative keywords effectively will help prevent your ads showing up in irrelevant searches. Plus, using certain words and phrases can result in you spending money for no reason. 

The Solution:

When using Google Ads, it’s so important to continue to expand your negative keywords list. You should action this on a weekly basis at the very least. And you need to base it on your search term reports. 

Begin with a standard list of negative keywords. You can source these by using online tools or sites that provide lists that are ready to use as soon as you need them. Your list of negative keywords will save you money on Google Ads with minimal effort. Plus, you’ll also be able to attract more qualified leads and discredit searches that are unlikely to convert. 

Once your initial list has been uploaded, you can discover the exact search terms that people are using to find your ads. At this stage, you’ll probably see some keywords that have nothing to do with your campaign. If you do, add them to your negative keywords list right away.

Helpful Hint:

Aim for a minimum of 50-100 negative keywords when you start out. Then, keep refining the list based on actual search term data in your Google Ads account. 

Mistake 2. Not optimising for conversion rate testing

A worrying amount of decisions around campaign settings are made without considering conversion testing. 

If you don’t set up any form of conversion testing, it’s impossible to have a clear picture of your campaign. For example, you can’t see how much it costs to obtain a lead or sale from your campaigns. Or even which keywords are driving sales or which keywords are no help at all. 

The Solution: 

By optimising your ads for conversions, you can boost your ROI and get more for your money. Imagine a successful conversion is a customer making a phone call. Google Ads will optimise your campaign to drive more phone calls based on the historical data linked to your campaign.

Make sure you have set up every possible conversion action depending on your product or service. 

Helpful Hint:

Set up as many conversion actions as possible. Make sure you always optimise your campaigns towards achieving specific goals.

Mistake 3. Not testing your bidding strategies

There are many bidding strategies available and choosing the right one may feel like a daunting task. If you use the wrong bidding strategy you risk overbidding on keywords. Overbidding leads to wasted ad spend and a severely drained campaign budget. 

Automated bidding strategies can seem like a big help at first. Especially as they remove the pressure of decision making. However, you should always be testing a few different strategies to find the one which best suits your campaign needs. 

The Solution: 

Choose the right strategy for you. If you need more control over your bids in the long term, opt for manual CPC. But, if you’re planning on testing out a campaign in just a couple of weeks, enhanced CPC could work best. These bid strategies allow Google to get the most clicks at the best price possible.

Ideally the strategies you want to focus on are targeting CPA and also targeting ROAS. These will allow you to bid in line with your established Cost Per Action or Return On Ad Spend. You will be able to spend the right amount on ad targeting to reach your ROI and get the most out of your investment. 

Helpful Hint: 

Always monitor your campaigns’ ad performance. You can easily achieve this by adjusting bidding strategies to ensure optimal results. Adjustments can include changing or pausing keywords or match types that aren’t performing. 

Mistake 4. You’re only creating one ad variation

When compiling your own Google Ads best practices, creating several ad variations per ad group should be high on your list.  If you want to boost your conversion rate and keep costs low, it is important to create several ad variations per ad group.

Creating one ad per ad group or one ad with one variation is a common mistake. This limits the amount of data you can collect and reduces the optimisation of your ad copy. 

The Solution:

It is important to get several ad variations and test them out to discover which one converts better. Even if you are using the same headline or the same description.

Once you find a winning ad, you can pause the rest and create a slightly different version of the winner. Then you can continue split testing.

Helpful Hint:

You should carry out a lot of testing and fine-tuning your campaign. Testing will help you to find the ROI sweet-spot. 

It’s extremely rare for a campaign that hits the ground running to generate significant leads or sales from day one.

Mistake 4. Not adding ad extensions (now called assets)

Google Ads extensions (now called ‘assets’) are optional bits of content that can provide searchers with more information. They can make your ads more compelling and help them stand out from the crowd. 

Assets such as sitelinks or phone numbers also take up valuable visual real estate in SERPs. They are an easy way to create properly optimised ads that drive more qualified traffic to your site and boost your CTR. 

Assets can be an extremely effective way to increase your clicks. Ignoring them would be a huge wasted opportunity.

The Solution:

Take advantage of assets when running Google Ads. You can add sitelink extensions, which show different links to your website and send people to relevant pages. You can add callout extensions, which enable you to show some of the unique selling points you have. Structured snippet extensions, message extensions, location extensions, and price extensions are other types of useful extensions you can use.

Helpful Hint:

You can’t control how assets will appear. Google actually decides what assets appear and for which ads. It is worth checking the extension (asset) tab occasionally. Then, you can pause the ones that don’t convert or replace them with something better. 

Google is the one that decides what extensions appear and for which ads. Your ultimate goal is to look at the extension tab from time to time and see which extensions convert better. Then you can pause the ones that do not convert or replace them with a better version.

Mistake 5. Choosing to ignore regional trends

Make sure your ads target your customers’ locations. By using the default location settings, you could be wasting ad spend by not reaching your intended audience. 

For example, if you own a restaurant in Manchester, you don’t want your ads showing up for people who can’t eat there. But if you don’t tweak your geo-targeting settings, there’s a good chance that this will happen. 

The Solution:

Define the specific locations where your ads should appear to maximise relevance.

First, you need to consider the area you want to cover. If you are a local business, you’ll only want to run ads in the immediate area. On the other hand, businesses that don’t have this limitation can test a wider geographic area. 

The benefit of this approach is that once you have some data to work with, you can examine your ad performance. For example, you may find the cost/conversion from one city is lower than another. This could be a reason you turn down the budgeting for the more expensive city and turn it up for the other.

Or, you may find that sales or leads from a service are only coming from a few key cities. If so, it could be a cue to adjust your bids and campaigns accordingly.

Helpful Hint:

Test out different locations to find where you can get the most cost-effective leads and sales.

Mistake 6. Not testing out keyword match types 

Google Ads has three types of keyword match available. These are exact, phrase and broad:

• Broad match: These push your ads to a variation of your target keywords. These can include synonyms, related searches, and misspellings. Broad match keywords help you find new opportunities but can show your ads to irrelevant search queries. 
• Exact match: These allow your ads to show for searches that include the exact phrase you’ve targeted
• Phrase keywords: Similar to an exact match, but they can also include additional words before or after phrases. Combining these can help narrow down the audience to be more specific.

By testing out these different types, you can discover the relevant keywords that will be most effective for your campaigns. 

Using only broad match keywords will make your ads eligible to show on a larger range of queries than either exact or phrase keywords. By not focusing your broad match keywords with past performances or conversion data, you risk matching to queries that are irrelevant. 

The Solution:

Choose one keyword match type per ad group and review performance on a regular basis. Ideally, every two weeks. Then, test other types to see if you can improve performance. 

Helpful Hint:

If you are a large budget advertiser, broad match keywords can actually lower the cost per conversion in the long run. 

Mistake 7. You’re not using Experiments

The Experiments tool in Google Ads can help you to run split tests to find a better way of working. 

In one safe environment, you can test different landing pages, ad copy, keyword match types, keywords, and more. 

It also lets you decide on the specific amount of traffic you want to direct to each of your experiments. This means you can limit the risks, and even better, the potential for rewards is much higher.

The Solution:

Give it a try. By taking time to use and understand Experiments, you may find a new approach that your bottom line will thank you for.

In summary: avoid common Google Ad mistakes and achieve campaign success

With so many variables within Google Ads it’s easy to become overwhelmed. Especially if you’re just starting out with PPC campaigns. It can feel tough to keep up. But, this list of common mistakes should help you to spot any quick wins and make sure your funds are making the biggest impact. 

Looking for more tips on optimising your campaigns? Check out Adzooma’s resources.

What is Hashed Data?

When data is ‘hashed’, it means that it has been passed through a formula that produces a coded version of the original inputs. This renders the data unreadable to programs or humans, however, ensures the data is still usable for its intended purpose. 

What’s the difference between encrypted and hashed data?

You may have heard the term ‘encrypted’ to describe data; hashed data is similar, however encrypted data can be returned to its original value by using a decryption formula. Hashing however is not designed to be reversible; there isn’t an inherent method to return hashed data to its original state. 

Why do we need hashed data?

Hashing is used in instances where a set of data could be considered sensitive. By hashing the data, should the system be hacked or the data be leaked, the recipient of the information will be left with a seemingly nonsensical series of letters and numbers as opposed to the raw data. For this reason, hashing is used to store passwords and usernames in databases – if the database were to be hacked, storing the ‘hash’ rather than the raw data means that no sensitive information will be accessible. 

Some functions which generally require third-party cookies are being replaced with ‘hashed’ solutions as third-party cookies are being phased out by all major browsers; alternative, cookieless means of sharing data means alternative means of data security are also necessary. Beyond cookies, tighter restrictions regarding data collection, storage, and usage following the advent of GDPR make hashing a welcome solution to issues regarding the security of stored data. 

What is hashed data used for?

Hashed data is used in instances of sharing potentially sensitive information between different systems. For example, advertisers using Google’s Customer Match feature will upload their customer data into the Google interface where the data is then hashed. This means that Google is storing your customer data in a safe and secure manner should this information end up in the wrong hands. 

Another use for hashed data is Google’s Enhanced Conversions feature. Enhanced Conversions matches data from your conversion tracking tags with that of Google accounts in order to record a conversion that otherwise may have gone unnoticed. The data used within the Enhanced Conversion matching process can include name, email address, home address, and phone number; Enhanced Conversions uses a hashing algorithm called SHA256 to ensure this personally identifiable information isn’t available or vulnerable to access aside from the original and intended purpose. 

Thanks to data hashing algorithms, personally identifiable information (PII) can be safely and efficiently shared where necessary to address challenges such as measurement and targeting. With zero and first-party data increasingly taking center stage in the digital marketing arena businesses should ensure related data is organized in a way that enables extrapolation where needed. Alongside organized data, hashing unlocks numerous opportunities for advertisers to ‘close the loop’ on their marketing.

Where can I get a GCLID from?

A GCLID – or Google Click ID – is used by a number of engine functions, either to link data together or attribute traffic and actions to certain campaigns or keywords. A GCLID isn’t something that can be applied for or collected; it appears within your URL as a parameter. URL parameters are additional pieces of information that are collected and passed within an extended URL, here’s an example. These pieces of information can include a search query, a user’s account ID, and the campaign or keyword they originated from. This information is then used to display data in interfaces or reports (E.g. reflecting how many conversions a specific keyword has achieved). These tracking parameters can be enabled by switching on ‘Auto Tagging’ within your Account Settings menu. 

How does a GCLID work?

A GCLID is a very short piece of code; a unique GCLID is created every time your Google advert is clicked and contains information about the nature of the user and the subsequent landing page visit. Within the Google ecosystem, the GCLID tracks the traffic source (including source, campaign, keyword, search query etc) as well as the time of day and the keyword positioning within the auction. (You may recognize some of these parameters as those that you would set up during UTM tracking; the auto-tagging method mentioned above is essentially automatic UTM tagging within the Google platforms). 

How is the GCLID then used?

Based on the details we’ve mentioned the GCLID collects, it may be unsurprising to learn that a GCLID links Google Ads data with Analytics data, displaying an impression and click within Google Ads, whilst displaying the relevant visit data in Analytics, such as listing the source/medium as Google/CPC and matching on-site performance data with the click itself.

The Enhanced Conversions feature also relies on the GCLID as the common denominator between Google and CRM data to match actions to the same user. The same method applies to offline conversion imports, where the GCLID acts as the thread between different events. 

As you’re tackling measurement challenges in a post-GDPR and cookieless world, remember that the GCLID and its associated features could be just the solution.

What does the Enhanced Conversions feature do?

Enhanced Conversions improves accuracy within your reporting data, allowing both automated and manual optimizations to be based on fuller, more thorough conversion data. 

Why is there conversion data missing in the first place?

The digital ecosystem is complex, and users carry out conversion actions across different logins, different devices, and different platforms. ‘Tag-based’ conversion tracking will recognize when an event has happened, but it won’t consider broader actions that may have occurred elsewhere as a result of your search campaign. 

How do Enhanced Conversions find these ‘lost conversions’?

When a customer carries out a transaction with your business (a purchase, booking an appointment, requesting information etc), it’s likely there will be a degree of first-party data that is shared with your business, for example, the customers name, email address, street address, or contact number. Enhanced conversions allow this first-party data to be shared with Google so other conversions that have been completed by the same Google login can be attributed to your Google campaign. 

What’s the problem with having a few ‘lost’ conversions?

Well firstly, it’s often more than ‘just a few’, with many advertisers reporting a conversion volume increase of several percentage points since activating Enhanced Conversions. This updated conversion volume could lead you to make different decisions for your business, for example regarding paid media budget, or which lines of business you choose to focus on. 

Secondly, there are an increasing number of automated functions within your search campaigns, all of which rely on the performance data within your account in order to make informed decisions. By undervaluing the conversion contribution from a certain keyword, automated functions such as bid strategies may opt to abstain from entering your advert into certain auctions, which could cause you to miss a conversion opportunity. This missing data could also undermine the engine’s efforts to understand what a ‘successful’ and ‘unsuccessful’ journey looks like, providing less context for automated features.

Enhanced Conversions can be set up in three ways:

1. By making small configuration changes to your existing conversion tag
2. Implementing the configuration changes through Google Tag Manager
3. Using the Google Ads API to send the first-party data to Google

The main benefit of enhanced conversions is to improve accuracy within your reporting data. This will then help improve campaign decisions by providing more data-driven optimizations and better-attributed conversions. 

First things first; what is a bid strategy?

Bid strategies offer an automated, or algorithmic alternative to manual bidding. When a bid strategy is set up, you’ll need to provide details such as the bid strategy goal, and any relevant parameters, for example, the maximum amount you’re comfortable bidding, or the lowest return on investment the bid strategy should be aiming for. Once the strategy has been set up, your bids will automatically fluctuate depending on how beneficial the strategy deems a certain option to be against your objective.

How do bid strategies work?

Bid strategies are available for a range of goals, from target impression share (or CPM models for display campaigns) and click volumes to ROAS, or return on ad spend. When your ad is eligible to enter an auction, the bid strategy will take many factors into account in order to reach a decision as to whether your ad should enter the auction and if so, what the optimal keyword bid would be. In order to assess potential benefits, the bid strategy will also reference past performance data to learn from previous auctions which were successful or unsuccessful against your objective. 

What’s this got to do with conversion tracking?

Considering the bid strategy references performance data in order to make decisions, it’s imperative that the relevant data is available within your engine account. For impression or click-based bid strategies, this data is recorded within your account as standard, however, conversion data only becomes available within your account once the conversion tracking tag has been implemented, and the conversion event has been configured within your account. Without conversion tracking, bid strategies that need to reference conversion data won’t be able to function, and therefore will not show as available options within your account. 

Which bid strategies require conversion tracking?

Smart Bidding is Google’s suite of conversion-based bid strategies. Smart Bidding uses ‘auction-time bidding’, a machine learning function that enables the engine to optimize your bids for optimal conversion performance. Smart Bidding takes broader contextual signals into account when choosing a bid, including the device, operating system, language, location, and time of day; as you can imagine it would be impossible for a human to consider all of these elements in the moment. 

There are several Smart Bidding strategies available, each requiring conversion tracking data to function:

• Maximise Conversions: This strategy will aim to achieve as many conversions as possible within your budget. 

• Target CPA: Provide a target cost-per-acquisition (the amount you’re willing to pay to achieve a conversion) and this bid strategy will aim to increase conversions within this cost.

• Target ROAS: This strategy aims to achieve the highest return-on-ad-spend (similar to ROI). In order to use this bid strategy you’ll need to assign a value to your conversions so the system can accurately gauge the revenue you’re receiving when a conversion is recorded. This is how your ROAS is then calculated.

• Maximise Conversion Value: Similar to Target ROAS but with the aim of achieving the highest conversion value within your budget. For example, if there are three different products that your customers can purchase from your website and each has a different retail price and margin, this bid strategy will aim to make decisions to achieve conversions with the highest value as opposed to simply maximizing the number of conversions received. 

Smart Bidding in 3 Steps

To reap the rewards of Smart Bidding, just follow these steps:

1. Install the conversion tracking tag on your website
2. Configure your conversion events within your account (Providing a name, tracking method, value, etc)
3. Apply your chosen bid strategy to your campaigns and keep an eye out for parameters that may need to be tweaked. 

Conversion tracking is a key component of a successful search campaign; configure your conversion events and discover how Smart Bidding can help to accelerate your campaign performance. 

This news isn’t surprising.

Responsive Search Ads (RSA) have been the only obvious ad type in new ad accounts for the past few quarters. They tend to get the lionshare of impressions when they’re in an ad group, and perform well if crafted well. 

Rather than give into panic (which is an understandable response when the ad networks announce any major changes), consider these action items:

• Audit your current ETAs for winning creative.
• Honor RSA Rules of Engagement

It’s important to communicate to any stakeholders this change and the impact it will have on creative control. Brands with extremely rigid content criteria will need to be ok with cohorts of approved content, as opposed to individually approved ads

Audit Your Current ETAs for Winning Creative

Advertisers have correctly gotten into the habit of including one RSA and two ETAs per ad group. This combo works because the ETAs are able to teach the RSA what combinations work and which do not. 

Now that there’s an expiration date on that strategy, we’ll want to audit our current ETAs, and distill:

• Which calls to action (CTAs) work best?
• Does your brand lend itself better to the CTA being in headline 1 or 2?
• Does mandatory content perform well or should it be relegated to headline three where it won’t serve as often?
• Should you be title-casing your descriptions or just your headlines?
• Are your headlines/descriptions engaging or callout copy?

This is the best time to test creative assumptions and conduct a really thoughtful audit of existing creative. 

Honor RSA Rules of Engagement 

The biggest complaint against RSAs is the lack of control and data. We’re at the mercy of the algorithm learning which CTAs go well with which engaging statements.

Thankfully we’re able to pin content to a specific spot to ensure quality control. 

When creative was left entirely to humans, quality control was subject to human error:

With RSAs, advertisers are asked to supply a minimum of five headlines and four descriptions, ensuring our ads will always have enough assets for all possible placements. 

By using pins, you can ensure CTAs always serve in position two (or one). You’ll also be able to simulate an ETA if you desire (risking poor ad quality and limiting impressions).

While we can’t see all the metrics associated with an individual asset, getting a sense for how many impressions an individual item has can at least give you a sense of how often it’s being shown. 

Takeaways

Yes, change is scary – however if you get used to the ad format and take proper steps to pin, creative quality should not suffer. 

Using Adzooma, you can get alerts for ads that might be underperforming and/or begin adding RSAs into your campaigns. Our tool is always free, and can help you navigate this change. Claim your account here.

Acting as your virtual assistant, automation monitors your account all hours of the day, making changes and sending you an alert when you need to take action. 

Before, automated rules meant using or coding scripts inside Google Ads. With Adzooma, these rules are set up easily with our simplified rule builder. 

And to get you started, we’ve taken the top 3 rules that every business needs to apply, showing you how to apply them in your free Adzooma account.

Broken Campaign Alert 

Get alerted if your adverts aren’t showing to customers with the Broken Campaign Alert. This gives you confidence your campaigns are all up and running and notifies you to take action if something is blocking your campaigns. 

To set this up, you’ll need to click ‘New Automation Rule’ from the Automation tab, then click ‘Create Custom Rule’. Using our rule creator, follow these steps: 

1. Give the rule a name 

First things first, let’s give this rule a name. We’ve called it the ‘Broken Campaign Alert’ here. 

If you want, you can also add a description in this box to help remind yourself what the rule does. 

2. Set the campaigns you want it to look after

On the ‘Apply To’ step, you can select which campaigns you want the rule to look after. As this rule alerts us if any of our campaigns aren’t showing, we’re going to want to set it to look after all our active campaigns. 

To do this, select ‘Campaigns from the first drop menu and ‘All active campaigns’ from the second. 

3. Create our actions 

In the ‘Conditions’ stage, we set what our rule checks, and what action it takes. For the Broken Campaign Alert, we want it to alert us when something is wrong. So using the drop down menus, you’ll enter the following information. 

• Action: Notify me
• Time Period: using data from Custom, 1 days of data. 

Now we have to add these AND conditions. 

• Spend = 0
• Clicks = 0 
• Impressions < 0 

This means that for this rule to notify us, the spend on your campaign needs to be 0, your clicks have to be 0, and your impressions need to be less than 0. Or, in simple terms, your campaign isn’t spending money or being shown to anyone. 

To add these conditions, press the blue ‘Add condition’ button and search for the above from the drop-down menus. 

4. Set the frequency 

Now the hard part of the rule is done, we have to set how often Adzooma should check this rule. For this rule, we’d recommend setting it to run daily at a time you’re most likely to be online. 

For this example, we’ll set it to run every day at 10am, but you’re free to choose a time that works best for you. 

With the above in place, you’re ready to go! All you need to do now is click save. 

Low Quality Score warning 

Quality Score is a number between 1 and 10 that looks at how relevant your ads are to your keywords, how many clicks they’re expected to get and what experience users will get from your website. 

Your Quality Score is a big factor in where your ads are shown and how much you have to pay for them. The better your Quality Score (i.e. closer to 10), the cheaper your ads, so it’s a big one to pay attention to. 

With this rule, you will get alerted if any of your keywords have a low Quality Score so you can take action. To set it up, you’ll need to click ‘New Automation Rule’ from the Automation tab, then click ‘Create Custom Rule’ like before. 

1. Give the rule a name 

First up, the rule needs a name. We’re calling it ‘Low Quality Score Warning’ here. 

If you want to add a description to give extra context, you can enter that in the box below. 

2. Select all active keywords 

In the ‘Apply To’ stage, you can select which campaigns you want the rule to check. Because this rule is a great all-rounder, we’re going to apply it to any active keyword that you are running in all your campaigns. 

To do this, just select ‘Keywords’ on the first drop-down menu and ‘All Active Keywords’ on the second. 

3. Create our actions 

Now it’s time to tell Adzooma what we want the rule to do. 

• Firstly, under the action, you need to select ‘Notify me’ from the drop-down menu. This will make sure you are alerted as soon as the Quality Score drops. 
• Secondly, you want to select ‘Last Week’ from the time period menu for accurate results. 

Next, it’s time to add our conditions. There’s only one thing we’re looking for in case – keywords with a Quality Score that’s 3 and under. 

• Click the blue ‘+ Add Condition’ button
• Search for Quality Score in the first box
• Select ‘Less Than Or Equal To’ in the second
• Enter 3 in the final box.  

4. Set the frequency 

At this point, we set how often we want Adzooma to check our Quality Scores, which can be as often as every 30 minutes. 

However, in this case, we’re going to set it to run every Wednesday at 11.00am, which is a day we have time dedicated to make any changes to our campaigns. 

And that’s it! Click save and you’re done. 

Pause underperforming keywords

Keywords are the foundations of your campaigns. If there’s a weak spot, the whole structure becomes a little shaky. 

With this rule, you can make sure that you’re always building on solid ground. It will identify the keywords that are affecting your performance and pause them on your behalf to save money and deliver more clicks. 

To get started, click ‘New Automation Rule’ from the Automation tab, then click ‘Create Custom Rule’ as normal. 

1. Give the rule a name

Following the same drill as the other rules, your first step is to give this rule a name. We’ve called ours Pause Underperforming Keywords. It does what it says on the tin. 

If you want to add any extra information to this rule, just fill out the optional description box underneath it. 

2. Select all active keywords 

Same as the last rule, we want to apply this to any active keyword that you are running in all your campaigns. This gives great all-round protection to every campaign that you’re running. 

Select ‘Keywords’ on the first drop-down menu and ‘All active Keywords’ on the second. 

3. Create our actions 

In the ‘Conditions’ stage, we set the nitty-gritty details about what we want the rule to check and the action we want it to take. 

In this case, we want it to pause any keyword that isn’t performing. To do that, we need to: 

• Choose ‘Change Status’ from the Action drop-down menu, then select pause. 
• Select ‘Custom’ in the Time Period data menu, then type in 90 days. This will give us a better scope to understand and measure your keyword performance. 

Now, we define what bad performance is for your keywords. You can customize this to suit your business, but we’d recommend the following settings to get started. 

• CTR is less than 1%
• Impressions are greater than or equal to 200
• Clicks are greater than or equal to 15

These conditions are chosen to target keywords with a bad clickthrough rate, but avoid any keywords that are new or haven’t had time to collect data yet. They need to have been seen, but not clicked. 

Use the drop-down menus to enter the above information, using the blue ‘+’ button to add a new row. 

4. Set the frequency 

Finally, we need to set how often the rule runs. 

For this rule, we’re going to set it to run every half an hour, every day of the week. That gives us 24/7 protection over our accounts. 

When this rule runs, your keyword will be paused but you’ll also be notified so you can optimize your accounts. Want to swap these keywords out with new ones? Take a look at our PPC keyword research guide for more expert tips and advice.  

Set rules in a click with Adzooma Plus 

We’ve detailed how to manually set up these rules inside Adzooma. But if you would rather set these rules in a single click, you’ll need Adzooma Plus.

With your Adzooma Plus subscription, you’ll gain access to 81 automation templates created by PPC experts, including the three above. All you need to do is find the one you want, then click apply. 

To upgrade to Adzooma Plus, login to your account and click billing from the right-hand menu. Or get in touch with our team to get a tour of what’s on offer. 

So we decided to speak to a number of SMB owners and employees about their biggest timesaps at work and what tools they’re using to streamline the more manual side of their business.

In each section, we’ll give a bit of a rundown of why the software’s so good, how much it costs (almost all of them come with a free trial or free option), how much time it’s likely to save you, and a quote from an SMB owner/employee about why they like it so much.

Quickbooks – Finance & Bookkeeping

“I used Quickbooks when I first started my company on the advice of an accountant friend who said I would be thankful I started tracking all of my finances come tax time, and he was absolutely right. 

“Startup businesses would do well not to neglect accounting software from the get-go, because expenses and revenue can become a nightmare to keep track of once your business really hits its stride.”

Trevor Larson, CEO at Nectar

Quickbooks has rapidly become the go-to place for SMBs and sole traders to manage their finances.

The reason is that it lets you manage pretty much anything from a financial perspective – expenses, payslips and pensions, taxes, while it also integrates with your bank and business apps.

For those who struggle with their bookkeeping or want an easier way to do it, this piece of software is a must.

Price: From $7.50 per month

Estimated Time Saving: 8 hours a month (per website)

HR Locker – Recruitment & HR

“The benefits of this product are amazing for me. I can now run reports at the touch of a button and don’t have to use lots of excel sheets, which I was previously using.  I love the help function. I could go on and on about my plans for the usage.”

Anita Walsh, Head of People at Ward Solutions

There are a lot of HR tools out there (we’ve been through a lot of them at Adzooma!), but from our experience nothing comes close to HR Locker.

From managing staff’s time to getting a handle on recruitment, HR Locker is a great all in one software.

HR fundamentals, recruitment and onboarding, staff development and happiness, performance management, and more, HR Locker has it all in its… locker (sorry).

Price: Free for > 4 employees per month, $3.50 per additional employee

Estimated Time Saving: 90% of your time (per website)

Monday.com – Project Management

“Monday.com is an incredibly effective tool that helps our team to streamline and tackle projects as they come. Their social media managing feature has been a game-changer for us!”

Christian Adams, Co-Founder at Coffee Affection

Whether you’re a plumbing business or a digital marketing business, managing your projects and tasks isn’t easy. 

But that’s where Monday.com comes in, as it allows you to easily build, run and scale your workflows in one beautifully designed platform.

Project management platforms are another thing we’ve been through a lot at Adzooma, but Monday.com is by far our favorite. That’s almost entirely down to the stunningly intuitive interface which almost makes project management seem fun (or at least a lot more fun than it used to be). 

Price: Free for up to 2 users. $8 per user after that

Estimated Time Saving: Not stated

Hubspot – Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

“Among all CRMs I have tried, HubSpot has a friendly user-interface that allows new users to easily navigate the software. 

“What I like most about it is how I can jump from creating a sales funnel to creating email campaigns and landing pages in a short amount of time. It is innovative, and just the right software SMBs need to grow their business.”

Nate Tsang, CEO of WallStreetZen

Hubspot is one of the most respectable software companies out there and for good reason, because the products they offer are nothing short of outstanding.

Live chat integrations, customer service ticketing software, email marketing templates, call recording; if you’re looking for a piece of software that can help with every touch point of your CRM journey then you can’t look beyond Hubspot.

From marketing to sales, operations to customer service, Hubspot has all the tools to help keep your current customers happy and get new ones through the door.

Price: Number of free tools. Bundles start from $45 per month

Estimated Time Saving: 250 hours a year (per case study)

Survey Sparrow – Experience Management 

“We have been very satisfied with SurveySparrow and their customer support. The survey platform has helped us to gather user feedback in a very efficient way and their customer support has been very helpful and fast with any questions or problems.”

Jaako Jalkanen, Business Manager at Brella

Now, compared to some of the others on this list Survey Sparrow may seem a little bit basic, but the word I’d use is specialist.

Because what Survey Sparrow concentrates on is delivering on customer feedback, and the way it does this is by making sure you can be present with your feedback across a whole range of touchpoints – email, QR code, web link, chatbots, embeds, SMS, etc.

We all know how important getting feedback is, whether it’s for your product/service, your website, your marketing, or for something else, Survey Sparrow does this better than anyone whether you’re looking for customer reviews or conducting consumer research.

Price: Free

Estimated Time Saving: Not stated

Shopify – eCommerce

“We’ve been able to build something in 3 years that a lot of brands haven’t actually gotten to in 10 years. 

“You don’t need to go into debt trying to launch your brand.”

Chimo Ngwudo, Owner of Cee Cee’s Closet

If you’re a company that sells products online then Shopify is your Holy Grail.

Why? Because it offers everything you need, from building your website to processing payments, from managing orders to marketing your business. And it makes all of this so easy too.

Shopify is King for eCommerce businesses, it’s used by nearly 2 million businesses worldwide and over $200 billion has been made in sales through the platform. Honestly, it’s just magnificent.  

Price: 14 day free trial, then from $29 per month 

Estimated Time Saving: Not stated

SEMrush – Digital Marketing

“I’m a small business owner, and SEMrush is what helps me compete with larger firms while sticking to my smaller budget. 

“I have a marketing background, so I want to handle as much in-house as I can, and SEMrush makes all of it easy, especially with all of the new features that are constantly being released.”

Bryce Walker, CEO of CPA Exam Guy

So far we’ve concentrated mostly on the day-to-day running of your business, but now I think it’s time to concentrate on the marketing. 

SEMrush is the ultimate platform for SMBs looking to take a data-led approach to their digital marketing because quite simply, it is a treasure trove full of data.

Whether you’re looking for how many people search for the products you sell on Google every month or you want to know how much search engine traffic your competitor is receiving, SEMrush will be on hand to help. Quite simply, it’s the ultimate tool to help you plan and monitor your online marketing strategy.

Price: Free Trial, then from $199.50 per month

Estimated Time Saving: Not stated

Adzooma – Paid Marketing

“Adzooma is a phenomenal platform that can really be able to save you time and resources, evaluate what is performing and what is not performing, giving you the right suggestions. 

“With the help of Adzooma, I feel like I have a team backing me to make educated decisions to build a strong campaign.”

Alejandra Perdomo, Digital Marketing Manager at Flooret

For those managing paid ads on Google, Microsoft, or Facebook, there is no time-saving platform out there like Adzooma.

Adzooma takes all the manual side out of paid ad management and turns all the overwhelming data into bite-size chunks of information – which you can then action with just a single click. Certain ads wasting money? Adzooma will tell you that and you can sort it out right away.

Adzooma has over 50+ single-click optimizations to help you with your day-to-day work, plus there’s in-built reporting, automation, and SEO capabilities built-in on top. Adzooma really is a no-brainer.

Price: Free

Estimated Time Saving: A day a week (per case study)

AWeber – Email Marketing

“I use Aweber for all my email marketing needs and refer it to all my clients and students. I love their customer support, the ease of using their drag and drop campaign builder, the unlimited emails and their deliverability rates.”

Trent Jessee, Founder of Watchman Advisors

Email Marketing is a crucial weapon in an SMB’s armory and is something that needs to be deployed with poise and quality. We’ve been through a lot of different email marketing platforms at Adzooma, and AWeber is definitely something to help you with both.

Drag and drop editor, pre-built templates, automation, sequences, sales tracking; AWeber contains everything you come to expect from an email marketing platform in 2021, but more than that, it also offers great landing page capabilities and a host of opportunities for ecommerce companies too.

For those looking to get into email marketing for the first time, or looking for an upgrade on their current platform, AWeber is the choice for you.

Price: Free for up to 500 subscribers, $26.15 per month up to 2,000

Estimated Time Saving: Not stated

Crowdfire – Social Media Management

“I have used Crowdfire since my initial days as a Digital Marketer. Since it is browser-friendly, it is possible to track all the social media mentions and manage posts from the browser itself. 

“It also offers automatic analytics updates weekly which is useful in understanding the social media audience reach and compare it across the platforms. Crowdfire doesn’t have any content limitations, unlike other social media management tools.”

Nathan Hughes, SEO Manager at Diggity Marketing

In 2021, it’s crucially important to have a presence on social media. Even if you’re not super busy, it does a lot for your credibility just to have a profile to make you look legitimate.

But social media management can be a timesap, so that’s why using something like Crowdfire is great because it allows you to manage your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram pages all from the same place. 

From there you can also schedule posts, receive recommended content to post, analyze your competitors, and more. It’s a great way to make social media management a breeze.

Price: Free

Estimated Time Saving: 30 minutes a day (per case study)

Why Productivity Tools?

Productivity tools come in all shapes and sizes, and what’s great about most on this list is that they almost always come with a free trial or freemium option.

Now, tech truly is starting to really take over – from the stock market to how we spend our downtime – it means that the tools that are becoming accessible to SMBs are just getting better and better.

The technology is being taken to new heights, and that’s what you see with the tools on this list. From helping your day-to-day project management to helping you manage your paid advertising, every single part of your working life can be transformed by productivity tools.

Try them out, if they’re not for you, they’re not for you. 

But with more tools popping every single day, there’s definitely going to be a tool that will solve a huge problem for you in the future.

What are image extensions?

Image extensions are a new feature in Google Ads that allows you to upload visual media to responsive search text ads and according to Google, they “help drive performance for advertisers, with compelling visuals of products or services that enhance the message of their text ads”.

When a user conducts a search using Google, they will be displayed with:

• Headlines
• Descriptions
• URLs
• Images (usually on the right-hand side of the text)

If you’re going to use them, however, make sure you are compliant with all of Google’s policies and have an active account.

You can read more, here.

Do they really improve performance?

Although Google says that they enhance the performance, I really put this to the test with my client UK Kiosks.

Picture this… it’s a warm summer morning and you’ve just logged onto your manager’s account and doing daily due diligence on your clients’ ad accounts when you realize that there is a recommendation for a new ad extension!

I confidently added them to 5 of the search campaigns my agency runs for them and checked back to see the results after a month or so.

This screengrab is from the account itself (don’t worry, I have had permission to scream and shout about this) and after adjusting the timescales to a ‘past 30 day’ period, I was shocked to see the results…

In just 30 days, the ads with image extensions yielded; 1.34k impressions, 114 clicks and not only that but the CTR (click-through rate) was 9%! 

After doing some light research, I was amazed that no one was really talking about this but I did find, from PPC Protect, that they wrote a blog post about ‘what is a good CTR with Google Ads’ and they found that the average CTR is 1.91% in September 2019.

How can I add image extensions to my ads?

It’s actually really simple to add image extensions to your Ads, but there are some guidelines to follow before you even add them to your account.

Firstly, Google Ads will recommend that you upload two different sized images: Square (1×1) and Landscape (1.91 x 1), both of which in a PNG, JPEG or static GIF format at no larger than 5120 KB (about 5MB).

Secondly, you have the option to select up to 20 media formats that are high in quality and relevant to your keywords. You can read more about the creative guidelines from Google support, here.

Right, now down to business. 

Navigate the sub-menu on your ads account to the ads and extensions section – you should already see a list of site links and extensions present – then, click the ‘+’ button in the circle and select ‘Add image extension’ from the drop-down list.

Then, you can select as many search campaigns to add image extensions to as you like. You’re then able to create and upload new images or use your existing assets that you may have used for Display campaigns.

Click save once you’ve uploaded your images and you’re done. It’s that easy!

What is best practise for setting them up in Google Ads?

Adding images is cool and exciting because of what they could do to boost your ad performance, but you should follow best practices when setting up image extensions so that they do perform to the best of their ability.

1. Create the right image extensions based on how your account is structured – all I mean here is keep in mind the type of audiences you have in the ad group/campaign, as an irrelevant image to an irrelevant audience could lead to a pointless click.
2. Add at least 3 unique images – this gives you a fine balance of content to work with when your ads are in rotation.
3. Focus on good quality – this means making sure the USP you’re trying to promote is featured in the image.
4. Don’t be afraid to experiment – when you’re seeing results, it’s good to chop and change your images to see what works better. It’s amazing what different colours can do to increase click through rates.

When viewing on mobile, this is most likely what you will be displayed with when searching on Google:

Looks good, right?

If you’re managing both Google and Microsoft campaigns, you’ll know the headache of optimizing one and then painstakingly having to replicate your work over to the other account. 

And if you’re just using Google, you’re missing out on new audiences, improved results, and a better reach because you just don’t have the time to set up and manage both accounts. Until now. 

Thanks to AdSync by Adzooma, you can reach new audiences while saving time. 

This brand new feature imports your Google Ads campaigns into Microsoft Ads – and keeps them updated. Any improvements to your campaigns, including adding new keywords, adjusting for better ad copy, etc, will be automatically copied over to the same campaigns on Microsoft. That’s two advertising accounts managed at once. 

And if you’re new to Microsoft, we’ll also give you $125 free ad spend to get started. 

Same campaigns, different advertising accounts 

Our new AdSync feature allows you to import your campaigns into Microsoft advertising in a few easy steps. With it, you can: 

• Import every campaign in your account, or just select your best ones. 
• Adjust bids and budgets, allowing you to reduce or increase your budget for Microsoft. 
• Edit the status of your campaigns, so you can pause them until you’ve done the final checks. 

Optimizations automatically synced to Microsoft 

Two birds, one stone. With AdSync, every change you make to your Google campaigns is copied over to Microsoft. 

Whatever optimizations, new keywords, ad copy or alterations you make, we’ll copy them. And don’t worry – if you’ve altered your bid or budget for Microsoft we’ll keep this up to date as well. 

If you’re spending £500 on a Google campaign and set up a decrease in budget of 10%, your Microsoft campaign will be £450. If you update your Google budget to £1000, we’ll change your Microsoft one to £900, making sure you always spend 10% less. 

Every change is covered in AdSync, so you can manage two campaigns at once. 

Why sync your campaigns to Microsoft?

Microsoft Advertising may not have the biggest share of the global search market. But like most underdogs, it shouldn’t be overlooked. 

Ignoring Microsoft is like owning a gas station and not offering diesel because you already sell petrol. 

Put plainly, Microsoft reaches 63 million users that Google doesn’t, giving you access to a whole new audience that would have just been forgotten about. What’s more, because there’s less competition, you’ll also get cheaper clicks, giving you a better return on your investment. 

And in case you think that’s too good to be true, we ran these tests on our own campaigns. Overall, we found that: 

• Cost Per Click on Google was an average of £5.15 compared to Microsoft’s £1.17.
• Comparing 44 randomly selected keywords, the average CPC for Google is £11.76 while Microsoft is £2.06.

With AdSync by Adzooma, you get access to these amazing results and cost savings without having to manually manage your Microsoft campaigns. 

New to Microsoft? Get $125 free ad spend. 

We’re proud to offer all new customers $125 in extra advertising when you spend $25.

That’s $150 of advertising, for $25.

To claim your free spend, you just need to: 

1. Sign up to Microsoft using this link
2. Add $25 of credit to your account 

Once done, you’ll have $150 of spend to use on your first Microsoft campaigns. And with AdSync by Adzooma, you’ll be able to synchronize your Google campaigns over for hands-free campaign management. 

Turn on Adzooma Adsync today

Ready to double your advertising success? 

Just click on the AdSync banner from your accounts page. Then, just follow the 4 step instructions to get your Adsync setup and running. 

During this setup, you’ll select which campaigns you want to sync and any adjustments in your budget or bids. If you missed a campaign or want to link to more than one account, just follow the same process as many times as you need. There’s no limit. 

Once done, just sit back and manage your campaigns as normal. We’ll copy all the changes over and ensure your Microsoft campaigns are running as smoothly as your Google ones.

And remember, if you’re new to Microsoft Advertising, you can get $125 of free advertising spend by signing up today.