Question 1

How long will it take to see results?

Accepted Answer

Technically, you'll start to see results right away; however, it takes time for a campaign to "normalize" to the point of understanding how it will perform long term.

You're probably aware that we are very transparent about how long it takes to see results from your PPC campaign. Our goal is to provide you with realistic expectations, rather than selling you the moon. This is for the benefit of both agency and client to ensure both a highly effective and professional working relationship.

Important update to the "90-Day Rule of Thumb"

In the past, our rule of thumb was 90 days for a campaign to be fully optimized. This meant that after 90 days, we would typically have enough data to know whether or not the campaign would work long term.

With the introduction of Performance Max, the 90-day guideline no longer applies in most cases. Instead, it takes roughly 45 days just to see what we've built and how it's going to work.

Essentially, Day 46 is now Day 0.

This new campaign type is seven campaigns in one—Search, Shopping, YouTube, GSP, Discover, Display, Local, and Remarketing—and all of them are being optimized at the same time. Once Google has gathered and analyzed the available data, then we can start to see how the foundation we've put into place will perform over time.

Put simply, it takes time to successfully optimize a campaign and position it to scale. But more often than not, being patient during that initial learning period pays off in the long run.

How do we "Optimize" the campaign?

When you hear the term "optimization" that means that we are going to work towards generating more conversions for less cost per conversion. These results will be more frequent the more data that we collect.

We work off of a base 100-point data set when performing optimizations. What this means, is that when there are 100 points of data for an action, whether that be impressions, clicks, conversions, or simply the most appropriate data point for a particular campaign, we make a decision on what to do with that asset.

For example, if we see a group of keywords in an Ad Group that all have 100 impressions, we are going to look to see what has the highest Click Through Rate (CTR) and place more spend towards those higher-relevant keywords. Then, once each keyword generates 100 clicks, we are going to look to see which keyword resulted in the most amount of conversions, and place more spend in the keywords that have generated the most amount of conversions.

There are many more data points that are taken into consideration when talking about optimizations, but this will help you understand how optimizations work in the most basic form.

We also listen to every phone call that is generated from the campaign to ensure that when the phone rings, its a relevant person ready to talk to you on the other end. The results of these phone calls, directly affect the optimizations of your campaign, since we manually count those as conversions so we can identify which campaign is generating the most amount of relevant phone calls.

What You Can Expect In The First 90 Days

Within the first few days of the campaign launch, you will experience real results, however, it will not be the most optimized results. The conversions may be a bit more expensive in the beginning, or they may not be as frequent as you may like them to be, but rest assured, with each passing day, the campaign is going through changes to see those results increase. The first second month will be better than the first and the third month will be better than the second.

We will be reaching out to you very frequently and checking in on the quality of the conversions, plus giving you insight as to what optimizations have been made and what future optimizations we are planning to make in the near future.

Each month, you will receive a detailed report, extracted directly out of your AdWords campaign that we will review together. We review all data together so that you can offer your feedback regarding our strategies. There may be times where we rely on you as a subject matter expert and we truly value your input.

In Summary...

While there are very few campaigns that launch perfectly optimized, we do need time to assess where the conversions are coming from and make changes to the campaign to spend more ad spend in the Campaigns and Ad Groups that are performing well.

Our goal is to deliver to you a very high performing campaign within the first 90 days.

If you have any other comments, questions, or concerns, please feel free to click on the chat button in the bottom-right corner of this screen and reach out!

Question 2

Why do I need a Branded Search Campaign/Why do I need to spend money when someone is searching for my brand name?

Accepted Answer

The common thought process is “why are we allocating budget in order for an ad to appear when someone is already searching for our brand? It seems like a waste of budget.”

Here’s why:

Don’t Leave the Hot Leads Exposed to Competitors:

You don’t want to leave the brand exposed to competitor campaigns. When a lead searches for the brand name, you don’t want a competitor ad to be the first thing they see (and you especially don’t want that lead to click on the competitor ad).

Gain Extra Data For Optimization Opportunities:

Statistically it takes 2.5 clicks on average before someone is able to convert. Most people come back later. Without a branded campaign, you can see which keywords developed a conversion, but you can’t see how long it took them to convert and what path they took to come back (meaning did they Google your brand name or simply go back to your website, did they sign up for an email marketing campaign and then click on a link in an email, did they find a social media ad instead and click from there to convert, etc.).
This is because Google isn’t able to re-tie all the session data from the first interaction to the subsequent interactions.
If you set up a branded campaign, then you’re able to optimize fully because you can see which keywords have a shorter time lag, which have a heightened time decay, what is their top conversion path, etc.
Branded campaigns usually see about a 50% click-through rate and a 30% conversion rate, so they manage to catch a good chunk of the hot leads to help you see this data.
So, if you’re wondering how well the other campaigns are at driving traffic to make a return visit, you will need to raise the bid on the branded campaign.

Question 3

What are Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) Campaigns? When should I use DSA?

Accepted Answer

DSA Campaigns are used as learning experiments - You may choose to build dynamic search ad campaigns because they help you learn what ad copy & keywords to use in the other campaigns, in case you missed any important and effective words. Adding new words to the other campaigns can be helpful to optimize -- and it can be especially helpful if you’re hitting a spend ceiling and would like to raise the budget. It’s a way to identify, rather than guess, which keywords to target.

When to use - These campaigns are 100% created by the algorithm based on the words used in the landing page -- the algorithm decides what ad text and what keywords to use. These are only good for websites that are extremely specific and have content centered on a set of keywords.

How to use - Give the campaign a small budget. These campaigns have the ability to spend a lot of money very quickly, and DSA campaigns usually have a lower conversion rate than other types of campaigns, so it’s okay to let it be in the “limited by budget” status.

Optimize - When you’re ready to see it’s results, go to the DSA campaign and click on Search Terms. Sort by impressions to see which terms have a high amount of search volume. From there, find the ones that are actually getting clicks. Use those terms in the other campaigns.