Setting up currency and time zone in Google AdWords

When you assemble  your Awards account, you'll be asked to pick a currency type and your time zone. You'll only be able to change your time zone once, so choose these settings carefully. They're used to determine how you're billed.

Choosing your currency

You should select the currency that you want to use to pay your advertising costs. In addition, your choice of currency can affect your choices for paying your bills. For example, if you select Euros as your currency, you'll only be able to pay in Euros and you might not be able to use certain credit cards.

Choosing your account time zone

Your reports, statistics, and billing are all affected by the time zone you select. For example, settings such as your daily budget run on a 24-hour schedule. With more than 200 time zones to choose from, an AdWords account can be set for most of the world's standard time zones. We recommend you select your local time zone so your budget cycle ends when your day ends.

All time zones must be in full hour or half-hour increments relative to Greenwich Mean Time. If your local time zone is one of the few offset a quarter-hour from GMT, the AdWords system can't support your time zone. Please choose a different time zone for your account. Time zone selection affects only the administration of your account. Your selection doesn't affect the locations where your ad may show.

AdWords Enhanced Campaigns

Google’s latest upgrade to AdWords, “AdWords Enhanced Campaigns,” alters the way that campaigns are managed across multiple devices. Google has recognized that users are “multi-screeners,” meaning that, or “media time,” is being spent in front of multiple screens, simultaneously including mobile, tablet, laptop and television. This makes it challenging to recognize one device from another. Basically it distinguishes within campaigns, separate bidding for location, time of day and device type, thus employing more intelligent AdWords campaign management.

Search results need to be as relevant as possible for the person performing the search. It’s important to know where the users are, what is the time of day  and what device they are on at that very moment. New AdWords Enhanced Campaigns allow marketers to manage bidding across all devices. This means bidding higher or lower at particular times of day on smartphones. A bid multiplier can target high converting areas. All adjustments can apply to ads and keywords, all in the same campaign.

Less “work-around” campaigns, time or device specific, are necessary with AdWords Enhanced Campaigns. Pay per Click Marketers  in the past, have had to create multiple campaigns to achieve what these new enhancements provide within one campaign. Bidding for local businesses makes more sense with the new enhancements. f people are searching locally, bids could be 40% higher for ½ mile away and 20% more for 1 mile away. A lunch establishment could make bids 30% lower after 2 p.m.

Site links will now have the ability to differ at the ad group level. This has been a need for some time now. Text ad copy can be defined by the links, thereby improving the ability to be relevant. The other major change to extensions is call extension scheduling which allows you to shut off the call extension after business hours.

In regards to separate device bidding, if a mobile user is searching for a retail store, they want the closest location, If the same user is at home on a laptop, they are more likely to want to visit the retailer’s site. Google now will auto-detect AdWords ads based on device. Behavior data has shown Google that Tablet users are so similar to desktop users, they will now be grouped. The result is that some keywords are more valuable to mobile, and some more valuable to home and tablet, optimizing their rewards, Google is the winner again.

Facebook Introduces Graph Search

Facebook has introduced a new feature called Graph Search, allowing people to more easily find your business. Facebook has been making many changes lately which will directly help many businesses. Aside from Graph Search, Facebook has recently made adjustments to their Cover-Photo Settings.  Graph search is personalized to each individual user on Facebook based on information they have shared. It essentially answers questions asked by users rather than giving them a list of links. On a regular web search, people searching for the same keywords will most likely get very similar results. Facebook has become so personalized that your result can be catered to you and yourself only. This has the potential to change the way consumers search online.  Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said “Graph Search isn't Web search. We aren't duplicating what Bing does and what Google does, but rather we are making things easier for people to find on Facebook.”

Have you noticed that people are more willing to try something if their friends have done it in the past? I am sure we can all agree that a little nudge from our friends can make us trust something more. The same thing goes with users on Facebook and that is exactly what Graph Search is all about. Users can now search for activities, events, companies, and restaurants that their friends have interacted with. For example, if I am on vacation in Los Angeles, I can do a search for friends of mine who are a fan of certain sushi restaurants in the area. From there, Facebook will generate a list which only includes sushi restaurants my Facebook friends are a fan of. Before your business can benefit from Graph Search there are some things you must do.

Getting your Business Ready for Graph Search

Create a company Facebook Page.

Regularly update your page and engage with community.

Encourage existing customers to “like” and “check in” at your business.

Post status’ that are share worthy and engaging.

What This Means to Marketers

With Graph Search, Facebook is going to share businesses that are very active in regards to gaining likes and being talked about by your friends. If you simply have a page set up and don’t maintain it on a regular basis then you will not succeed with Graph Search. Facebook wants to show pages that your friends have interacted with.  Building relationships with your current customers will be crucial in your success with Graph Search. Below are some ways in which you can increase your chances of appearing on Facebook searches.

Ways to be Successful on Facebook Graph Search

Understand what your fans want to see from you.

Research what your competition is doing.

Know your Buyer Personas.

Provide lots of visuals such as pictures and videos.

Like many new things on the internet, Graph Search is likely to make many changes after its initial launch. We will be sure to update you with anything new that may affect your business in any way. The future of Graph Search is currently unknown at the moment but it is important to be ready. Privacy issues for individual users are a potential concern that should be monitored as Graph Search is introduced. The chances of it becoming widely popular are fairly high and we would not want your company to miss out on the potential benefit.

Should You Advertise on Facebook?

A big challenge for a lot of advertisers is determining how allocate their online budgets. Should we advertise just on Twitter, Facebook, Google or all of the above? These are all great questions and I don’t have a specific answer. Every media platform has its own competitive advantages. In order to effectively utilize any of their strengths, you need to first know the goals for your campaign and then identify what your key performance indicators (KPI) will be. For example, are you looking to create buzz and brand awareness and want a lot of engagement or do you want to increase sales for a particular product and are more interested in high CTR’s? Once you have answered these questions, you can determine which platform makes the most sense.

What I do know is, online advertising has been on the rise and social advertising is no exception. Facebook is very aware of this opportunity for growth and has been determined to capture as much of these ad dollars as possible. This is especially the case with mobile advertising. Facebook is the number 2 mobile ad publisher in the country and is expected to take 13.2 perfect of all mobile ad revenues (source: eMarketer). Although they are still dwarfed by Google, Facebook continues to chomp off more and more market share.

To remain competitive, Facebook is constantly upgrading their ad platform to strengthen user targeting. In fact, Facebook provides one of the most targeted advertising opportunities today.  How so? Let’s start with the fact that Facebook has over 1 billion users, where in most cases, they know the member’s age, sex, location, likes and interests.

We can now even take that a few steps further. Facebook rolled out with something called “Custom Audiences” which gives brands the ability to target their ads in conjunction with their offline customer lists. This offline list can includes: email addresses, phone or Facebook user ID list.

The most recent way Facebook has refined their ad targeting is through their latest feature called “Partner Categories”. This feature allows advertisers to more accurately pinpoint their ads to specific categories of people based on their purchase history. To do this, Facebook has partnered up with third party data from Axciom, Datalogix and Epsilon. Companies have long used this type of targeting off of Facebook with great success, so this is definitely a power move for Facebook. The depth of Facebook’s ad targeting is pretty amazing. If you were to use Partner Categories in addition to some of Facebook’s other targeting options, you have the opportunity to produce an ad with a great ROI.

Other advantages of Facebook advertising are…

You are allowed to set, monitor and update your daily budget at any time. You can also choose to pay only when people click (CPC) or only when people see your ad (CPM).

Facebook’s ad platform allows you to perform A/B testing for your ads. You can run multiple versions of a given ad at once and analyze their performance to determine which add generated the best results. When somebody engages with your ad, all of their friends who also fall under your target marketing will see that activity in their newsfeed. This not only increases your ads reach, it also increases the chances of attracting new “likes” and engagement. This is because of what we call “social proof” — the positive influence created when someone finds out that others are doing something. This influence is further intensified when it’s somebody that you know. The social reach of Facebook ads can almost be as much as the reach you are actually paying for.

One of the advantages Google advertising has over Facebook is that you are bidding on keywords people are actually searching for. With Facebook advertising, you are bidding on a users “likes” and interests and they may not be actively seeking out your product or service at that given time. This is where lead nurturing plays a crucial role with the effectiveness of your social media strategy. Once you get a new fan to “like” your page or opt in to your email list, your job isn’t done. You need to continually provide value to them to develop a long-term relationship, so when they need your product or service, you are the one they turn to.

There is no perfect answer. Whether you choose to advertise on Facebook or Google AdWords should be based on testing and the overall goals for your campaign. The best approach is to continuously run A/B test ads within each platform and then analyze your KPI’s. How much revenue did the clicks generate? How many people saw your ad? What was the CTR? What was the amount of engagement? All of these are potential KPI’s that you may attribute to the failure or success of a given digital campaign. Remember, KPI’s should reflect the particular stage of the purchase funnel your target customer is at!

Your Company's Reach with Google Places

Google has a great feature called Places which allows consumers to find local businesses in their area. With Google Places, consumers can search for businesses and the results will be featured on a map that is in your surrounding geographic location. Setting up an account for your business is easy and free! Google automatically makes accounts for some companies so check to make sure yours hasn’t been created yet. If they have, you can contact Google to claim the page and make changes to it. Understanding your buyer personas will help in designing the page by catering to their needs. Once you create an account, your business will appear on Google’s organic search and map.

You can add information about your company onto the page such as:

Address, Site URL, Phone number, Hours of operation, Map, Photos, Reviews and more.

This is great for consumers on the go who want to quickly look up information about your business. Users on their cell phone will be able to call your business directly without having to deal with loading a webpage. When optimized properly, your page will appear on the top of Google. This will definitely expand your reach to new customers making searches related to your business. People tend to trust online reviews, so if your company reviews are positive, it will greatly benefit you. With high rating  reviews your page will quickly climb up in Google’s page rank. You can even include coupons that customers can cut out and bring to your store.

Google offers both free and premium services depending on what your business is looking to gain from places.

Being found across Google

Improving your company information

Responding to local reviews by customers

Adwords Express: Allows you to reach customers searching on their mobile phone for companies like yours. Your ads will only reachusers who are nearby your business so they are more willing to call or travel to your office or store. This feature is similar to Google ads words for computers

This feature allows you to connect with users on their mobile phone by offering discounts and promoting your business. We have seen a shift in recent years with a drastic increase in the number of smart phone users. With people spending more time on cell phones it is important for your business to be where your customers are at all times.

Having a Google Places account is essential in today’s technically advanced world. Places works on both computers and cell phones so you will always be available to customers wherever they are. We will now leave you with some of the main reasons why your company should use Google Places:

Your Customers are using Google Places

You can monitor reviews from customers

Google Places Allows you to expand your reach

Consumers tend to trust word of mouth reviews

Helps increase Page Rank

Easy and Free!

If you have any questions about Google Places please contact  Key Performance Indicator!