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Get Started Australia: Campaign and Ad Group Structure, Settings and Strategy

In our last post, Creating Your Bing Ads Account Structure Using the Three S’s, we talked about the three common elements of a great account structure: Strategy, Settings and Structure. In this article, we will look at the 3 S’s in more detail, and how to apply the strategy and targeting to create the campaign and ad group structure.

Campaign Strategy

A campaign is not just about keywords. A good way to start off is to set objectives for your search engine marketing. Ideally, begin setting campaigns by categorizing keywords based on the following:

· Brand – Create a campaign out of your brand terms. This allows potential customers to easily find you when searching for your company name instead of finding your competitor’s sites. Typically, a brand campaign has relatively high Click-through-rate.

· Products or Services– If you have multiple product categories or services that you offer, by separating these into separate campaigns, this will make them easier for you to manage and optimize.

· Geography– Break out campaigns by target locations. If you target all of Australia, you will find that some states perform better for you than others. By separating your campaigns by state, you will be able to identify these quickly and optimize the under performing states.

· Seasonality – Have a campaign for specific seasons, promotions or holidays so that you can quickly activate or pause keywords according to your company’s timeline.

Campaign Settings and Structuring

The above image is a preview of the Campaign settings in the Bing Ads User Interface where you can choose a campaign name that describes your campaign objective. If you are targeting different locations and languages you should separate these campaigns as well. Your ads will appear to only those people in the area you have selected as the location target. Define your budget at the campaign level. By setting a budget, you are limiting how much you can spend per campaign. I recommend reviewing your campaign regularly to ensure you are not losing out on impressions or clicks due to budget limits.

I also recommend that you separate campaigns by device type. Desktop and Laptop searchers’ intent may differ from Mobile users. For instance, searchers looking for contact numbers or local addresses are more frequent on mobile devices in comparison to laptops. The better you understand the searchers intent, the better you can structure your campaign.

Ad Group Strategy

An Ad group is related to, but distinct from a campaign, which is related to a specific subject. An ad group is about a specific theme within that subject. It contains ads, keywords and links. Having a tightly themed ad group with specific ads and effective links addressing the searchers’ query, will have a high click-through-rate and strong quality score. For example, if your business sells baby clothes, you might have an ad that directs searchers’ to “new-born clothing” or “toddler clothing.” Ideally, these should be in separate ad groups with their own unique ads and links to the appropriate landing pages.

Ad Group Settings and Structure

The below image is a display of the Ad group settings. Preferably, you should name your ad group by themes, adjust the language and location depending on the target audience and placement. You can either enter a default ad group bid or have specific keyword level bids. Note that a keyword level bid will override your ad group default bid.

While structuring your ad group, do not duplicate your keywords across ad groups. It is tempting to include general terms, such as “baby clothing” on every keyword list. But then by adding duplicates, you are not only competing against your own keywords but also Bing will only display one of your ads per keyword. Make sure your ad copy is relevant to your keywords and that you send users to the correct landing page. For example, users looking for a spa outlet in Queensland should not be shown ads and sent to landing pages aimed at users in New South Wales.

Overall, to have a great campaign structure, think about the user experience starting from the search query all the way to the landing page. For example, a “Shoes” Campaign with Tennis Shoes ad group will only contain Tennis shoes related keywords and tennis shoes specific ads. So, if a user on Bing searches for “Tennis Shoes,” your relevant and specific ad about tennis shoe will appear, rather than a vague ad about Shoes. Ultimately, the users help you achieve your search goals by becoming your customers; ensure that your ads are simple and unique with a clear call to action and your landing pages are easy to navigate and relevant to the user’s query. By using the proper structure, you will enable users to find your business more easily and become new customers!