This month’s new features help search engine marketers to get their ad in the number 1 slot of the Google search results, reach existing customers by uploading email lists and promote Android apps within Google Play.
How to Get Your Ad to Number 1 on Google Search
The ad in the number 1 slot in Google search results (generally) achieves a higher click-through rate than ads in lower positions. It’s worth testing in your account to see which position is most effective for you, but on average, the ads on the first page that appear above the organic search results achieve a significantly higher CTR.
Previously, there were 2 types of bid estimates available. These both provide an indication of the cost-per-click bid estimate for appearing in different positions in the search results when a query exactly matches a specific keyword. These are “First page bid estimate” and “Top of page bid estimate”. These do exactly what they say on the tin and provide a bid estimate to be shown anywhere either on the first page of the search results or an estimate to be shown among the top ad slots. These are useful features, but a lot of advertisers aim to be in position 1 for specific phrases.
From the 5th of October, advertisers will now be able to view “First position bid estimates”, to see what bid AdWords predicts would show an ad in the top position for an exact keyword. You won’t have to change anything in your AdWords account to set this up, but in order to view your “First page bid estimate” you’ll need to navigate to the keywords tab, click the columns button, select modify columns and in the attributes menu you should be able to add “Est. first pos. bid”. Click save and you’ll be able to see this column.
Finally, if either you set your bid to the suggested bid estimate and you don’t achieve the top position or your estimate is very high, it may mean that your keywords quality score is low. Here are some resources for improving quality score and increasing your AdRank.
How to Reach Existing Customers with Email Lists
Customer Match is an exciting new AdWords feature, that enables advertisers or PPC managers to upload an email list and target these users with ads whenever they’re signed into Google Search, YouTube or Gmail. This works by matching the email addresses uploaded to Google IDs. Once they’ve been matched, the emails will then be deleted after 7 days without being shown to anyone.
If you’re not sure how this feature could be useful for your company here’s an example of one way it could work. If you run an eCommerce website and are launching a new product, creating a Customer Match campaign, will help to inform existing customer of your new offering. In order to set up the campaign, first of all, you’ll need to create an email list from the ones you’re customers have provided you with. Navigate to the Shared Library, select audience and create a new list by selecting “Customer Emails” and “Create list”. Upload your list, making sure that all characters are lowercase and any extra spaces are removed. Choose your duration (no more than 180 days) and ensure that you add a link to a page with an email opt-out link present. Next, you’ll need to create a new campaign (to target Gmail you’ll need to set the campaign type to “Display Network only”) that’s set to target the email list. Create your ads and you’re ready to go.
How to Promote Your Android App through Google Play
From 12th of October, Android developers will be able to promote their new app without leaving the Google Play Developer Console. For many app developers, this will make it much easier to set-up and manage their advertisements without having to step over to AdWords.
Other than that they’ll function in the same way as a “Mobile App Installs” campaign in AdWords with the default bid strategy set to Cost per acquisition bid. If you have conversion tracking set-up AdWords will match the CPA to your apps cost per install, and can help to optimize your bids to get the most downloads for your budget.
If you’re familiar with promoting apps through AdWords, there a few differences between running ads through the Google Play Developer Console and AdWords. Simply, they’ve been designed to make AdWords management smoother for app developers.
For more information on how to set-up universal app campaigns directly from the Google Play Developer Console watch this video: