AdWords Is Now Called Google Ads

The Google Ads program pages and strategies remain the same for Google Search Ads. I renamed my website from AdWords GamePlan to The Rich Bruns Guide and Coaching for Google Ads — my Member instructions keep up-to-date with changes in the Google program, but the same Method = Strategy continues to be the same as it was for AdWords GamePlan, PlayBook and Recipe ten years ago. Only Google search ads let you precisely target your best customers, if you set up your ads properly. No other Internet advertising solution provides small businesses such low costs with minimal time invested. And that’s what my Method does for you.

Convert to the New AdWords Interface Now

AdWords GamePlan shows step-by-step instructions for the new interface. 

• Main Menu items have moved from the top of the AdWords page to the left column.

• Settings, Ad Groups and Ads pages still contain all the selections we need to precisely target customers, but some have moved. GamePlan shows where to find them.

• AdWords has "optimized" some bids, ads, daily spend without asking your permission. These optimizations can dramatically increase costs. GamePlan shows warnings, when you need to change them.

AdWords Can Increase Bids Higher Than Your Manual Cost Per Click Setting

In Settings > Bidding, you properly selected Manual CPC. However, AdWords just changed this to "Help increase conversions with Enhanced CPC" if you use Conversion Tracking. Click on down arrow, to unselect this "Enhanced CPC" setting, which dramatically increases your costs and distorts the Ad Group Bids that we need to control bid costs. See GamePlan Settings & Tune Bids pages.

AdWords Can Bill You More Per Day Than Your Average Daily Budget Setting

For the month, you won't pay more than your daily budget times the average number of days in a month. Some days you might spend less than your daily budget, and on others you might spend up to twice as much.

When you first start up your new campaign, set daily budget lower until you see results. Otherwise, you can spend too much before you know competitive bids and how many people put your words into Google search. Tune your Ad Group bids down until your actual daily spend is less than your daily budget. Then you know you know that Google is running your ads all day, since you set Delivery to "Accelerated"  Google will average your spend throughout your month, so your ads run all month.

Are You Smarter Than AdWords?

You know your customers better than AdWords. You know which customers make you money. You know words they put into Google search. And you know sales pitches that your best customers like to hear before they buy.

It pays to run ads yourself. My GamePlan for AdWords website helps you to precisely target customers that you know will make you money month after month. You run the right ads to the right customers. You pay Google less for ads and you don't pay for ads to the wrong people.

AdWords Changed Ad Rotation Settings

AdWords converted the "Rotate Ads Evenly" setting to "Optimize for Clicks" which will grossly distort Ad Testing. Go to Settings/Ad Rotation and select "Rotate indefinitely - will deliver ads more evenly for an indefinite amount of time"  When you run two test ads inside an Ad Group, you want to run both ads at least 200 hundred times for statistical accuracy. If we don't change the default setting "Optimize for Clicks", AdWords would stop running one of the ads before both ads had run 200 times. So AdWords could stop running the better ad, before the test is complete.

AdWords Rolls Out New User Interface

Campaigns, Settings, Ad Groups and Ads folders move from the top of the AdWords page to the left column. When you click to go to these standard pages you see the same familiar selections in a streamlined format. All AdWords GamePlan instructions remain the same.  

Why It Pays to Run AdWords Yourself

No one knows your business like you do. Ad agencies use "optimized" settings designed to run big-budget corporate campaigns the make it easy for them, but cost you much more money. They run ads to everyone, everywhere at the top of Google search. You end up with an expensive mess that you can't understand, improve or afford. AdWords GamePlan show 20 ways to apply your business judgment to dramatically lower costs and get the customers you want.

Why Keyword Insertion {keyword: default text} Doesn't Work As Well As GamePlan

When you create a new ad, you can choose Keyword Insertion. AdWords will insert a keyword into the ad from the same Ad Group that caused the ad to run. This makes it easy for ad agencies to dump huge numbers of keywords into each Ad Group -- corporations often run 100,000+ keywords that relate to their brand or product line, like Home Depot for example.

With GamePlan, we only put one set of specific keywords into each Ad Group. So people see the precise keywords they just put into search in the ad text along with a custom sales pitch for those specific words. We totally control the text of a compelling ad. More importantly, our Ad Group reports show precisely which specific keywords were put into search, the ad text they saw, the bid for those specific words and the average ad position that bid earned. 

With Keyword Insertion, some nonsense ads are generated and the ad contains a generic sales pitch not specific for the keyword inserted. Worst of all, reports give us confusing, inaccurate information that we cannot use to improve bids or test ads.

As small business entrepreneurs, we have focused products with a small number of keywords. Creating PRECISE Ad Groups for those words dramatically lowers ad costs and gets more customers to our website.

AdWords Introduces Expanded Text Ad Format

Convert your ads to the new expanded ad format immediately. It really works. It gives you almost twice the ad space to explain your product. It dramatically increased my ads' Click Thru Rates.

Expanded text ads are the standard format, when you create new ads. AdWords says they will continue to run your old ads for some indefinite time, but it really pays to convert them ASAP. 

AdWords Only Shows Seven Ads on Google Search Instead of Twelve

When twelve ads were shown on Google search, a low bid ran ads low on the page. If your bid got average Ad Position 6 from top of search results, your ads ran almost every search.

Today, you must bid higher to get average Ad Position 4 to run almost every search. Many of your small business competitors will disappear, because they can't afford the top seven ad positions.

Because you tune your ad performance with GamePlan, you pay a fraction of what your competitors pay. So you can afford to stay in the game. And you have fewer competitors.