Now that we have had AdWords enhanced campaigns for a week now, we have been able to learn – Not much… At least, not much more than was known for certain after day 1.
There is still no way to create a mobile call only campaign. There have been several theories as to how to do this, but so far, when implemented none work in comparison to legacy click-to-call only campaigns. You can try to use the tools available to emphasize mobile targeting and phone calls, but you still have to incur desktop/tablet clicks and costs. Unfortunately there’s just no way around it, and so far, Google has not backed off their position. However, there is a feedback on enhanced campaigns form that you can fill out to let Google know how you feel about these changes. Interestingly, only a few days ago the form was closed to further input – So if you want to express yourself, do it now before the form gets closed again!
The one new option released this week is a new bid adjustment calculator. For people like me who are absolutely terrible at math 🙂 at least now we have a tool to calculate the combined percentage adjustments, based on all the factors that go into the calculations. Ginny Marvin of Search Engine Land wrote a great piece on the topic. There is actually some insight in her post that was not included in the Inside AdWords post. The tool is kind of hidden in the UI, so definitely check out the posts to figure out how and where to find it.
Without a doubt one of the best pieces on whether or not you should switch to enhanced campaigns came from Brad Geddes of Certified Knowledge (once again published at Search Engine Land). If you are not yet aware of Brad’s work, follow him on social media, sign up for the Certified Knowledge newsletter, and the BG theory daily email. Get yourself as much Brad as you can! He is without a doubt one of if not the best in the SEM/SEO industry.
I am still being cautious, and taking the transition to enhanced campaigns as carefully as possible. This is going to happen, whether we want it to or not, but why rush into “fixing” your account if it’s not broken? Experiment to learn as much as you can in the interim, to be prepared for the transition. Once again respond to Google, and ask them to please give us some more flexibility! Or better yet, give us back our advanced device targeting options! Perhaps there is still a chance that if enough of us provide feedback, someone might actually listen. 🙂
Thanks for reading. Hopefully by the time we have a month of enhanced campaigns data, and the month 1 post is written, there will be some more positive changes to report! If there are any questions you have, please fell free to ask in the comments section. Perhaps together we can help each other solve some of our enhanced campaign problems. 🙂
