By Alan Coleman on 24 Jun 2013
It seems like ages since Google announced the launch of enhanced campaigns. We were eagerly awaiting the announcement of the finalists of the Digital Media Awards. We were yet to relocate Wolfgang HQ to Clanwilliam Square, near Google. Siobhan had only been with us a week, and we were about to say goodbye to our friend, Paul, who left for pastures new.
It’s hard to believe the “mid-2013” that Google spoke of its announcement of Enhanced campaigns, and that seemed so far away, is almost here. I guess time flies when you’re having fun!
A rake of Digital Media Awards, two new team members and a new home later; here we are. July 22nd looms. On July 22nd ‘Legacy’ campaigns will become a thing of the past and all of our lives will be ‘Enhanced’. During the last 4 months we’ve worked closely with Google in bringing all of our clients’ AdWords accounts up to date and upgrading them to Enhanced campaigns. Google have come into our office and shared their wisdom and expertise with us, and this has really helped us make a smooth transition from Legacy to Enhanced. “But what if I haven’t made the switch over to Enhanced campaigns yet?” you ask, “Is it too late?” “Sit down and relax.” I say, “You’re getting hysterical”. You still have a few weeks until your campaigns are switched over automatically. At that time Google will switch all of your campaigns over for you. Sounds great, doesn’t it? It’s not.
If you allow your campaigns to be switched over automatically you lose control of certain important aspects of the new Enhanced campaigns. Your new campaigns will have certain default settings which may not be right for your business. Google have said that they will base things like mobile bid adjustments on what similar advertisers are doing. When you spend as much time as we do using Google Adwords and managing lots of different types of accounts, one thing becomes obvious: every AdWords account is different. Although the automatic changeover may not make too much of a difference to the set-it-and-forget-it Adwords campaigns (this is mainly due to the fact that these accounts aren’t performing to their potential anyway), we would STRONGLY recommend making the changeover manually. By looking at your account’s stats and analysing its performance you can make decisions that are best for your business. You have a few short weeks to do it. Do it. Don’t let Google decide your account settings “based on similar advertisers”. If you’re just doing what everyone else is doing, how are you going to stand out and get noticed? Rob
