Common Usage Questions

  1. Why don’t my tokens work properly in the text ads? I’m using different tokens but they are parsing the same values.

    This topic is covered in Chapter 10 of the User Guide. You can also view our training video on Grouping Methods and Token Usage that complements this chapter.

    The tokens may be working correctly, however if different tokens are inserting the same value what it’s telling you is that certain token keys are unable to be identified under the current ad grouping. An exception is adgroup, where adgroup might legitimately be the same value as seed, expansion or final if you used that grouping method.

    By default, if SpeedPPC cannot identify the token’s value (because there’s more than one value), it will insert the singular value of the token it does know, hence it appears the same values are being used for different tokens. This is done for flexibility. This feature allows you to enter generic ad templates so that if you convert between campaign types and groupings, you can still use the same templates without altering the tokens.

    What you could do if you want to use {seed}, {expansion} and {final} tokens is to group ‘By Final’. Because each ad group is based on each final combination, it contains only one value for seed, expansion or final. Each token can be easily identified because there are no multiple values to choose between. This and other examples are discussed in further detail in our User Guide and video.

  2. How can I add just the seed keywords on their own to my campaign, as well as combining with expansion keywords?

    On the keyword set-up tab under Mix type, select your preferred mix type and also tick the checkbox for ‘Include the root keyword without mixing for each group’.

    This will then perform the mix type you selected above, but will also include your seed keywords ‘as is’ without combining with expansion words.

  3. I want to change campaign types, what else should I change in the SpeedPPC campaign builder?

    When changing your campaign types, be sure to check the following and update it relevant to your new campaign:

    1. Check you are using the appropriate keywords in your Seed keyword list – this may not change between Single and Dual core, but will definitely change if you are moving to Domain type
    2. Check your expansion list if you are changing to Dual Core
    3. Re-assess your Grouping method (By seed, By Expansion, By Final, By Group name)
    4. Enter Mix type if you are changing to a Dual core campaign (Mix type is automatically disabled if you are changing to a Single Core or Domain type)
    5. Add an expansion list if you are changing to a Dual core campaign (if changing to single core, expansions are automatically disabled)
    6. Amend your ad creative to suit your new ad group level if this has changed
    7. Check your URLs to make sure the tracking tokens are still applicable and change them if they are not applicable for your new campaign type and grouping
    8. Update your Output and re-upload your files to the PPC Search Engines (remember to remove the old campaigns if they are no longer applicable)
    9. Double-check everything!

  4. Can I add negative keywords using SpeedPPC?

    Yes. Check the negative keywords tab within the main "Keywords" section.

  5. Can I also mix my seed list with more than one expansion list at a time?

    You can only combine one seed keyword list with one expansion list at a time.

    A similar outcome could be achieved by segregating your campaign structure and this set-up would also improve your tracking capability. Monitoring and distinguishing the performance metrics between different permutations can be much easier if they are not all combined in one varied list.

    For example, if you wanted to mix:

    Seed Keyword list:     Car audio search terms
    Expansion List 1:       Cheap, budget, low-cost search terms, Wholesale, Retail

    You could try these options:

    Option 1

    Mix one seed keyword list separately with 3 expansion lists under 3 different campaigns – a Budget Campaign, Wholesale Campaign, Retail Campaign

    Expansion List 1:      Cheap, budget, low-cost search terms
    Expansion List 2:      Wholesale Keywords
    Expansion List 3:      Retail

    Option 2

    Or using one campaign for ‘Car Audio’

    1. Use the car audio search terms as your expansion list
    2. Add all your cheap/budget keywords to the Seed Keyword list and assign Group name ‘Budget’
    3. Then add all your wholesale keywords to the Seed keyword list and assign Group name ‘Wholesale’
    4. Add your retail keywords to the Seed Keyword list and assign Group name ‘Retail’

    These then become 3 separate ad groups under one ‘car audio’ themed campaign and you can still track them easily and distinguish between performance.

    Option 3

    To combine your budget keywords with both wholesale and retail terms and also mix with car audio terms, eg. ‘Cheap Wholesale Car Audio’, ‘Budget Retail Car Audio’ then you could:

    1. Use car audio terms as your seed list
    2. Combine the different Budget terms with wholesale into one expansion list
    3. Combine the same Budget terms with retail into a second expansion list
    4. NB: This is because Budget is common between the two of them and the distinction you’d want to track is between wholesale and retail
    5. Mix the seed keyword list with one expansion at a time under two separate campaigns – Wholesale and Retail. You’d most likely want to track these two completely separately.
    6. If however, you did want to do this in one campaign, then follow a similar process to Option 2
    7. Use the car audio terms as your expansion and then enter the ‘budget wholesale’ terms into your seed list and assign a group name
    8. Then enter the ‘budget retail’ terms into the seed list and assign another group name
    9. Both groups exist under one campaign and can still be tracked separately

    When deciding between these options, consider what lists you can recycle in other campaigns (and whether they’d be in a seed or expansion incarnation). You don’t want to create more work for yourself by having to re-create or convert expansion lists into seed lists and vice versa, or assign group names that you’d pull apart in another campaign.

    If you can re-use the same seed and expansion lists as they are over several campaigns, you may save more time in the long run. Combining everything into one campaign by placing terms in the seed list that you’d normally use as an expansion list might only be quicker at the outset.

  6. Is there ever an instance where I would use expansion in a single core campaign?

    No, expansion lists are only ever used in Dual Core campaigns. In fact, the expansion feature is disabled in Single Core and Domain type campaigns.

  7. I can’t upload my campaign into Google Adwords because it exceeds my ad group limit, what do I do?

    Your first course of action could be to check the campaign structure is optimized and see if there are any refinements you can make, such as culling poor performing search terms or restructuring your ad groups.

    Secondly, you could consider opening up a new account to enable you to set up more campaigns and ad groups. Just remember if you do this that you will need to segment the campaigns in these accounts carefully. You do not want to be bidding on similar keywords in both accounts, competing with yourself and possibly putting yourself at risk of being banned by Google.

    You also need to consider that some people do in fact create multiple sites to bid against themselves on purpose. This way they take up more of the market share and squeeze out less sophisticated competitors.

    Lastly, if you still require higher limits then it might be worthwhile to speak with your PPC Search Engine representative about account limit options.

  8. What’s the best way to structure my campaign?

    When devising your campaign structure, it’s worthwhile planning it out on paper or computer (Excel works well) before you even open the SpeedPPC campaign builder. A carefully thought out campaign can save you heaps of time and will be much easier to change, update and monitor what’s happening.

    There’s no hard and fast rule for setting up your campaigns, although good segmentation is key in all campaigns. Segmentation can impact Quality Score and Tracking.

    Quality score is an issue that LOTS of our customers struggle with and it’s a hugely important aspect. The tighter the themes and the relevancy chain, the more you help your quality score and this can then lower your bid prices.

    Segmenting by product or theme teams topical ad groups with closely related keywords. Not only does this help with your quality score aspirations, it can be done while still allowing for your tracking requirements. In fact, you often want to measure your performance based on the same topical segmentation.

    When you consider how you want to track your campaign, think about what you want to measure. What figures do you want? What aspects do you want to distinguish from each other? List these down. This will then guide you in setting up your campaign as your structure will also need to support the statistics you’re after.

    For example:

    Say you sell 3 products through your website – wrist watches, desk clocks and wall clocks. You have two components to your site – you sell retail and you also have a log-in section where retailers can purchase your products wholesale.

    The items we want to distinguish between are:

    • Wrist Watches
    • Desk Clocks
    • Wall Clocks
    • Retail
    • Wholesale

    Because you want to measure your click-through rates, ad costs, conversion rates, and return on investment for each product (regardless of whether it was sold retail or wholesale) and also for all products under Retail and all products under Wholesale.

    So your campaign needs to have these items segmented in a way that makes tracking these metrics not only possible, but as convenient as possible.

    This could perhaps be done by creating two separate campaigns Retail and Wholesale, under which each has 3 ad groups for Wrist Watches, Desk Clocks and Wall Clocks

    Or

    You could create 3 separate campaigns for Wrist Watches, Desk Clocks and Wall clocks and then have retail and campaign ad groups under each. The first option would make more sense as you’re more likely to need to measure Retail and Wholesale completely separately and this is the best set-up to do that.

    Although the first option will give you an immediate view of Retail and Wholesale separately, if you wanted to see both Retail and Wholesale figures combined for one product you wouldn’t automatically see that in your search engine account home page.

    However, you can create a custom report (in Google Adwords) with say the ad group of Wrist watches from the Retail campaign and the ad group of Wrist Watches from the Wholesale campaign and the report will extract the metrics for these two ad groups, complete with totals and averages of the key metrics.

    You can only do this because you have segmented each product as well as Retail and Wholesale. If you had lumped everything into one campaign or ad group you’d have a difficult time making any sense of your statistics.

    Eg. If we simply created one campaign for our website and created 2 ad groups for Retail and Wholesale, and put the keywords for wrist watches, desk clocks and wall clocks all together under both ad groups. How would we tell what was more popular, desk clocks or wall clocks? You’d have to export a full report and manipulate the data to get the figures you were after. Much easier to segment at the start!

    This is a basic guide to get you started creating well-structured campaigns, however keep in mind each product offering is different and the metrics you want to measure may vary in terms of importance. When it comes down to it, a must-have for a good campaign is great tracking. If you’re monitoring what’s happening you can refine your campaign structure to possibly give you the information you’re not seeing or want more specifics on in future.

  9. How do I decide what to use as my seed keywords and my expansion keywords?

    As with campaigns structure above, this is going to vary with each campaign and the bottom line is you want to make things easier for yourself. There a couple of ways you can look at it.

    First perspective

    If you are creating a dual core campaign and wondering which list to use as what, have a think about which terms, if any, you might re-use for another campaign down the track.

    If your business is in training and education, then it’s a good chance the main search terms you will re-use centre around training, education, classes, courses, etc. Wouldn’t it be handy to create one list containing all of your main keywords and re-use it with each new course you want to advertise?

    So in this example, an expansion list with all your ‘education’ terms would be a good idea, and then your seed keyword lists could contain your course topics, maybe Business, Graphic Design, Website Development terms could all comprise different seed keywords lists. Then all you need to do is match them with your one custom expansion list.

    Second perspective

    Maybe in some cases, you’re not going to re-use either seed or xpansion list. Another line of thought is to pick a select few of your highest volume keywords (possibly ones that are very general or expensive), and these will become your seed keyword list.

    Your expansion keywords would then be chosen to turn these broader keywords into targeted keywords and capitalize on ‘long tail’ search terms.

  10. How do I know what to choose on the Grouping Method?

    Grouping method underpins all your campaign structures. Remember your grouping method decides your ad group level, which in turn is what the ads are created on (rather than keyword).

    Firstly, you may decide how you want to separate your ad groups – based on seed, expansion, final, or a custom group that you can assign a name to.

    Then to ‘cross-examine’ your decision, consider the ad variations you would create for these ad groups, complete with the tokens you intend to use. Ask yourself:

    1. Can I target my ads effectively within each ad group, based on this grouping method?
    2. Will this grouping method allow me to use the tokens I want to use?

    If you’re satisfied with these two considerations, then proceed with that Grouping method. Later if you find you’d be better served by a different grouping method, you may not even need to change your ad templates and URLs if they have been created generically.

    NB: For more on what tokens you can use for each grouping method, please see our Grouping video and also Chapter 10 of the User Guide.

  11. My SpeedPPC campaigns have poor conversion rates. What do I look at?

    It’s important to realize that the SpeedPPC is simply a tool to facilitate building your campaign quickly and easily.

    The contents of the campaign, the keywords you choose, the ad creative you write, the structure and the landing pages you send users to are all up to you. The software helps you put your building blocks together.

    Here’s where it’s especially important to track your campaign so you can see what components are performing poorly and work out what you need to improve. This may include writing more targeted creative or might simply be culling the low-performing keywords or ad groups.

    Once you identify these areas, you can use SpeedPPC to rebuild or refine your existing campaign and then make sure you monitor your updated campaign so you can improve on it further. You should always be examining your campaigns and continually enhancing them.

  12. When I use Don’t Mix Pair, what do I do if the fields are not pairing correctly?

    Firstly, go back to the source file and double-check that the columns you are pairing are matched correctly in the original file.

    Secondly, check each column has been copied (particularly the same number of rows) and pasted correctly into the SpeedPPC Campaign Builder.

    Lastly, make sure there are no extraneous characters in between row values that might be tripping up the software, eg. One value with a comma in the field will appear as two values.

  13. What are SpeedPPC’s maximum size limits for campaigns, keywords and ad groups?

    Our limits are huge! You are far more likely to run into the PPC search engines account limits before you hit ours. If you do find you’re reached your Google/Yahoo/MSN limit, then perhaps you could re-assess your campaign structure and the quality of the search terms included. Optimizing the campaign structure might solve the problem.

    If you still require a higher limit then it might be worthwhile to speak with your PPC Search Engine representative about account limit options.

    Likewise, in the unlikely case you are being limited on the SpeedPPC software, hop onto the SpeedPPC forums or submit a ticket for technical assistance.

  14. Why is MSN not accepting the output file I export from SpeedPPC?

    Even though MSN adCenter states that you can import both csv and Excel format files, it works best with a plain old Excel spreadsheet. So if you have any difficulties, make sure your MSN output is exported as an Excel file and then re-import it into the adCenter interface. It should work then.

  15. Can I add more domain variations to a domain type campaign?

    Not at this stage, however if there’s any you feel we may have missed let us know and we could include these in a future release.

  16. Can I track my campaigns in SpeedPPC?

    SpeedPPC is primarily a campaign building tool and is not a tracking tool in itself. By using the SpeedPPC software you can build a more optimized and structured campaign to make your campaigns more transparent and easy to track.

    You are also provided with tools and features to improve tracking such as creating customized landing pages and using custom URLs with token keys and tracking ids.


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