PPC Managers never have any time to spare. The job is a hectic one, but by changing a few approaches it is possible to find a less stressful way of working and to free up some time during your day for a proper lunch.
Quite simply, one of the best time-saving tips for a PPC Manager to take note of is to free up time wasted from unnecessary admin tasks and the best way of doing this is to begin using a PPC desktop editor.
PPC managers normally have to juggle several campaigns at once, but with the use of either the AdWords Editor or the adCenter Desktop, bulk changes to accounts can be made much more easily. Simple time-saving tips, like this one, to the way in which we approach our administrative tasks in this industry can save us huge amounts of time every single day.
What follows is an examination of both PPC desktops in detail in order to fully illustrate how our time-saving tips help to create a more constructive PPC management environment on a daily basis.
AdWords Editor 9.8.1
The AdWords Editor is a free, downloadable desktop application for managing your Google advertising campaigns and there are various features which help you to save time with daily and other routine tasks.
1. Doing it in Bulk
The best way to save time as a PPC Manager is to be able to do things in bulk. With the AdWords Editor 9.8.1 you can add, edit and delete campaigns in bulk. You can work on ad groups and keywords in bulk. You can also make changes to your placements in bulk.
When you are working via the AdWords interface, editing tends to be a lot more difficult. This is particularly true when dealing with an endless list of keywords. The AdWords Editor 9.8.1 stylishly removes this problem and saves you lots of time.
2. Copy and Paste it
The AdWords Editor 9.8.1 allows you to copy campaign information to an Excel worksheet, which is great for reporting to clients, sharing information with others in your team and self-assessing each campaign in order to begin further optimizing and making effective changes.
If you continue to work in the AdWords Interface, you have to download everything. The cut and paste option is not available. Downloading is annoying and takes up a lot of time when we add all those minutes of waiting together.
3. Location Targets
Recent developments now mean that you can also add, copy and update location targets via the AdWords Editor 9.8.1. You can copy and paste between a number of campaigns and you can specify default target locations for new campaigns too. It is a really useful feature and there for the taking to save you some more valuable time.
4. Duplicate Keywords Cannot Escape
When you use the AdWords Editor 9.8.1, duplicate keywords cannot slip through the net. If you go to the “tools” drop-down menu, you will be able to find all duplicate keywords and you have the option to delete them as and when you wish.
Normally, if you have to search for these manually in Excel your time is severely wasted. With the AdWords Editor 9.8.1, time is gained thanks to a single change to your administrative routine.
adCenter Desktop 8.5
The adCenter Desktop is also a free, downloadable tool that you can use when you are advertising via Bing/Yahoo. Just like the AdWords Editor, you can make changes to all levels of your account in order to save more time for other more important tasks on your PPC management to-do list.
The following two ideas for saving time with the adCenter Desktop 8.5 are the best of the bunch.
1. Automatic Performance Alerts
The adCenter Desktop 8.5 will send you automatic notifications which tell you when you need to adjust your budgets, ad groups and keywords, for example. If you are managing lots of accounts at once, these kind of automatic notifications can be really, really helpful. You do not have to manually check the system for what needs updating. The adCenter does it for you and in this way it saves you a lot of time during the day so that you can get on with other important PPC management matters.
2. New Keyword Research
The adCenter Desktop 8.5 has an integrated keyword research tool. The tool allows you to search for keywords based on a word, a phrase or even a website address. Adding these new keywords to your account is seamlessly done via this tool and less time is wasted learning how to use third party keyword research tools to enhance your campaigns. It is a big time saver and a really creative time saver too.
David Chapman is Director of Marketing at Webrageous, a PPC Management Company in Reno Nevada which specializes in the management of Google AdWords Campaigns.
