Welcome to the latest issue of our monthly newsletter which focuses on news, tips and advice for effective website marketing, with particular attention on Google and best practice search engine marketing techniques, plus current trends in the market.
In our first article this month we take a look at Google’s new AdWords ‘experience’ interface and the additional features that are available to advertisers who migrate across to this version. We also look at some analytics and reporting issues, with the new user management options in Google Analytics and, finally, the closer integration of Data Studio with AdWords.
You can read more below, or you can also browse through previous editions of the newsletter by month. You can also follow us on Twitter for the latest developments during the month, or follow our Facebook page or Google+ page for updates.
On to this month’s edition…
New Innovations with the AdWords Experience
All AdWords advertisers are now being moved over to the new look ‘AdWords Experience’ and this is being encouraged by Google with some new innovations that are only available to users of the new interface.
The default view for many AdWords account is now the new designed interface which has quite notable differences in layout and function, so it can be quite a ‘culture shock’ for regular AdWords users. There are also issues of speed and functionality with the new interface which need to be resolved, and there is still the option to switch back to the old view if required.
However, AdWords is trying to encourage more users to move over to the new ‘experience’ interface, including the following developments:
- Testing ad variations at scale – sometimes small changes to ad text, or using a different call to action, can dramatically affect performance. Google is rolling out ad variations in the new AdWords experience, which provides a fast and easy way to test changes across text ads at scale. The ad variations tool allows advertisers to test changes across thousands of ads in just a few clicks, with the test results shown when they’re statistically significant and simple implementation of the winning option.
- Evaluate ads and extensions in one place – the new combined section for ads and extensions enables advertisers to see extensions as ads are created, to ensure that the messaging makes sense as a complete unit.
- Manage call bid adjustments – this new bid adjustment option allows advertisers to increase how many calls might be received without the risk of paying too much for a standard click, and determines how often the call extension appears with the ads on mobile.
- Take advantage of Showcase Shopping ads – for ecommerce retailers, Showcase Shopping ads enable the grouping together a selection of related products and present them to introduce a brand or business. These ads help the user decide where to buy when they search for more general terms like “skincare” or “furniture”.
- Utilise promotion extensions – this option makes it easy for advertisers to keep promotions up to date without the need to create new ads. They also free up the rest of the ad for more unique content, like the brand terms or a clear call to action.
- Manage all audiences in one place – for display advertisers this helps to improve campaigns by managing targeted audiences with a new unified workflow in the new interface. For ecommerce stores, the new custom intent audiences make it easier to reach people who want to buy specific products based on data from the advertiser’s own campaigns, website and YouTube channel.
All the above features are new options available to AdWords advertisers and worth testing if relevant to a particular campaign or market. The new ‘experience’ interface is a new way to work in AdWords but the above options should be an incentive to start using the new look and the new tools.
If you’d like more information about the new AdWords interface and how to get the most from it, please contact us for details.
New Tools For Managing Google Analytics Users
In October, Google announced new account management tools for businesses using Google Analytics in response to feedback about the need for simple but powerful tools to manage access to important analytics data. Near the start of November it introduced another round of improvements, which over the coming months, will centralise user management across a company’s many Google Analytics accounts and launch user groups to simplify the task of managing permissions for multiple teams of users.
Centralised user management for an organisation
Administrators can now centrally manage users across all Google Analytics accounts linked to an organisation. If there are many accounts, and users need to be added across them, there will ‘huge’ time- savings. For example, if a new team member needs access to 25 accounts, it was previously necessary to visit every account to get them set up. Now this task can be completed from one place.
It’s also possible to:
- View rich cross product and cross account details for users
- Manage a user’s access across many Analytics accounts in one console
- See new details about how a user inherits their permissions
- Get clear in-product explanations of different access levels and privileges
If you’re just using Google Analytics and don’t need to manage users across accounts, these same improvements will be seen inside of Google Analytics. All of the navigation and documentation improvements are present in both places.
User Groups in Google Analytics
Organisation administrators often need to manage access for hundreds of users. This process can be tedious, especially when dealing with multiple Analytics accounts. Now it’s possible to more easily manage large teams of users by creating a group, placing the appropriate people inside it, and granting the groups access to the appropriate Analytics accounts. A group can even be placed inside a group if a hierarchy of teams needs to be managed. To do this, an organisation will need to be created. You can read more about that here.
Combined with existing features like the ability to centrally audit and set policies for users, these new features bring enterprise grade controls to organisations. They also pave the way for future enhancements, such as bringing centralised user management and user groups to more products.
If you want more information about how these new tools for managing Google Analytics users can help to improve the resource management within your organisation, contact us now for details.
Google Simplifies Data Studio Reports With AdWords Data Control
In response to Google’s research that 61% of marketing decision makers struggled to access or integrate the data they needed last year, they created Data Studio as a solution.
This solved the problem of it previously not being easy to pull reports in all kinds of formats, import them into spreadsheets or databases, calculate and derive fields and then share it all with stakeholders. It’s a dashboarding and reporting tool for data from Google AdWords, Google Analytics, DoubleClick Campaign Manager, Google Sheets and more that can produce dynamic, self-updating reports that are easy to understand and share.
The new development includes a new feature in Data Studio that makes sharing even more powerful: AdWords Data Control. This lets each user choose the source accounts for the data they want to see in any report. There’s no need to build separate reports for every user and account.
Suppose you have set data that’s monitored every day in AdWords accounts. With Data Studio, it’s possible to build a report, then use AdWords Data Control to populate the report with data from the other active accounts. That makes it easy to monitor all the data for a business while also seeing individual accounts that are of interest.
This enables large organisations with many websites for different brands, regions, or business units to unify AdWords reporting and team KPIs across them all. Also to share data, collaborate, and add or revoke permissions at any time. A template report can be built in Data Studio to do this and by adding the AdWords Data Control, the report can be shared across the organisation. Every user will then see the AdWords data in the curated report.
As always with Data Studio, it’s possible to pull data from over 127 AdWords dimensions and metrics, from CTR to conversions and average position. The reports are easy to share with a whole team or company, so everyone can make better decisions.
Data Studio comes with sample reports and templates to make it easy to get started. Multiple data connectors help to import data from multiple sources, like Google AdWords and Google Analytics, into a single report and now Data Control makes gathering and sharing data even easier.
You can see more about Data Control here, or Data Studio here.
If you want more details about how Data Studio can help to improve your business, contact us now for information.