Every once in a while here at PPC Hero, we like to ask big questions. Questions so big they have numerous answers. And then our writing staff gets together and each offers their own thoughts and perspectives on the answer to that question.
This is one of those moments.
Earlier this month, in our Series posts, we asked our writers to write about what was on their wish list — that feature or function they wish they had, but didn’t.
So this roundtable acts as a followup. The question became, what’s on your anti-wishlist — something you have that you wish you didn’t. Below are our answers.
The Question
As a PPC expert, what is something you have (or have to do) that you wish you didn’t, and how do you work around it or make it more efficient?
The Answers
Amanda West-Bookwalter: One thing that can be time consuming in AdWords is to sift through large amounts of data in large accounts when needing a report like a keyword report. What I do to get around freezing my Excel or having lots of data to sift through that I don’t need is to think of all the possible filters I could use to get only the data I need BEFORE I download the report. This makes files smaller and data easier to sift through.
Carrie Albright: I love the ad extensions that Google makes available, but I would LOVE if they included a “Suggested Sitelinks” tab. In this dream world, AdWords would provide, similar to the Display Ad generator or Keyword Planner, a list of potential pages that would be relevant to that particular campaign or ad group. This would not only save time, but it would help with ensuring that your sitelinks and destination URL are all unique. Till then? Till then I just try to make sure that in onboarding a new account, I comb the website and identify all pages that may be relevant to those searching my keywords. Then I proceed to chose what I assume to be the best and then test! test! test! to see which are mybest performing sitelinks!
Kayla Kurtz: I love how much digital advertising is growing, but I wish it wasn’t causing so much confusion when it comes to discussing what our team does! For example, you can say paid search and for some people that doesn’t include display, even if it’s display campaigns in a Google account. The way I try to work around this is to ask a lot of qualifying questions early on about what we’re discussing – so when someone says PPC, I know if they mean any channel you can pay for a click from or only search-based campaigns, for example.
Sam Owen: At the moment I have to bid on tablets – I kind of wish I didn’t. It would be really nice if Google opened up the bid adjustment options we have for mobile to tablet too. Other than that, I wish I didn’t have to manually enter all of the labels I want to use in my AdWords account as it’s very time consuming.
“Secret” Jake Fairclough: I’d love too see greater support for automation. As an agency it would be helpful to have MCC level scripting to automate tasks at a higher level and allow multiple people to access the same scripts without having to implement and authorize the script in every sub account. I also want to see Google to expand the scripting limits to help with account managers who work on very large accounts, keeping them form having to break the script down and run it over and over again until finished.
Cassie Oumedian: Lately I’ve been finding AdWords remarketing disapprovals to be a bit challenging. I’ve always found great success with remarketing campaigns in the past but lately Google has been tightening up their policies (especially on sensitive categories) and they give little explanation on how to correct the situation. A few workarounds that I’ve found to be pretty successful include venturing out into other networks like AdRoll, Facebook and even Twitter Retargeting. If your campaign has fallen victim to the dreaded AdWords Remarketing List Disapproval fairies don’t be scared, there are other options.
