| > | | | | competitors and vice versa if you use the |
| | | | automatic optimisation feature. |
| Tip #1 — Disabling Advert Optimisation | | | | You have the choice to set and forget letting |
| Disable the automatic advert optimisation feature | | | | Adwords do it's job but if you want total control |
| (set in your campaign settings) to avoid giving | | | | and are in a market that is highly competitive, |
| away valuable IP to your competitors. | | | | you may want to manage your campaigns in a |
| Visit the following link for an example: | | | | more hands-on fashion. |
| Why would you want to do this? | | | | There is a trade-off for sure but it's up to you as |
| Ok - Let's say you are diligently testing 2 adverts | | | | a business owner to make that decision based on |
| side by side within an ad-group | | | | your own risk management criteria. |
| (as you should always be btw). | | | | In marketing there is only one genius - your |
| With optimisation turned on, eventually 1 advert | | | | customer. |
| will be deemed the leader and shown more. | | | | You can always hire someone to create great |
| For arguments sake — we will take the | | | | ads but you have no guarantees they will produce |
| keyword marketing’. Your competitor | | | | a winner straight off the bat. |
| has 2 split tested Google Adwords adverts which | | | | Only putting the ad into the wild will you |
| will show (in a round robin manner) whenever this | | | | determine results. |
| keyword is searched for. | | | | Sidebar |
| You can find out useful information regarding | | | | You may peak in terms of achieving as high a |
| which of the adverts is performing better by | | | | CTR as you can for a particular advert and this |
| searching for the keyword marketing, noting the | | | | could mean you get lazy and only show the |
| ad results and refreshing the search results. | | | | winner all the time. To help keep your |
| Because you get to know the best copy | | | | competitors guessing you should continually try |
| Suppose you do this 4 times (by reloading your | | | | new ads intermittently though. |
| webpage) - and 3 times advert 1 is shown, but | | | | Indeed therein lies some very valuable self help |
| advert 2 is shown once - you now know which of | | | | tips when it comes to keeping the competitors |
| these adverts is the best. | | | | guessing: |
| Knowing what adverts are working for your | | | | Believe it or not you may want to put a 'worse' |
| competitors allows you to start to understand the | | | | advert up to reduce your CTR thus dropping you |
| mindset of your potential prospects (what's | | | | down the adwords advert list to help improve |
| working and what's not to encourage | | | | your ROI! |
| click-throughs). | | | | Recommendation |
| This of course is very valuable intelligence to have | | | | You are best using ad optimisation for most of |
| for you to construct your own adverts - which | | | | your terms - set it, forget it. Some may need to |
| means you can ultimately have higher click | | | | be broken out into their own campaigns to give |
| through rates and as a direct result pay less. | | | | you the granularity you require. It’s a |
| Because ads in Adwords are in the public domain, | | | | question of finding out which keywords warrant |
| your marketing efforts can be gleaned by your | | | | the extra effort. |