With Google’s new Adwords Express Plus rollout another piece of the coming SMB Business Builder Portal has fallen into place. Dan Petrovic of DejanSEO noted over the weekend that Google had started pitching Adwords Express to G+ Local Page owners. It turns out that what they are actually offering is a newly revamped & enhanced version of the product called Adwords Express Plus. The product includes a totally revised interface as well as product enhancements that make the product more functional in many situations than the existing product.
New features:
- Ability to identify a radius (up to 40 miles) within which the ad will be shown
- Ability to send the ad to a custom landing page instead of just the home page
- More Ad types
- Ability to preview the ads in a sample page
- Cleaner and easier to understand self serve interface that is similar to the new G+Page dashboard
Step one: Select your audience geography and primary sales category. Note that when you type “engagement rings” it offers top level categories only.
It was never clear in the previous version of Adwords Express that ads would appear on Google’s ad network. That has been made much more obvious in this version with an appealing eye candy to make it seem like a real plus. There is no option to choose not to do so. Thats one way to expand ad inventory at the expense of unwitting SMBs.
Since April when Adwords Express was removed from the Places Dashboard and given its own home as a subdirectory of Adwords, little has been heard of the product. There was no way for businesses to easily access its interface either via the dashboard or the G+ Local social interface. In September the product was promoted via an email & a $100 coupon to businesses that had claimed their listings. It has been assumed but never confirmed by Google that their simplified Adwords product would show up again more prominently once Google had rolled out its “Business Builder” smb social local portal. While that has been a long time coming this AdWords Express upgrade along with the recent G+ page management interface upgrade seem to be part and parcel of a bigger upgrade and monetization process that is gradually taking shape.
Here are screen shots of the new interface and process:
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- If you follow this link on a G+ Local page it will take you to the new Adwords Express Plus
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- The sales funnel to sell you on the idea of Adwords Express Plus
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- The standard login scree
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- You are offered to option to take out ads for any Page that you own but not pages that you manage.
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- Step one: Select your audience geography and primary sales category
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- Step Two: Set the budget
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- Step Three: Create your Add
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- Step Three: Review the ad displays
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- Each ad type is display in context. Although it is odd that the address is cut off in this display. A problem with the real ad? Not sure
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- Final Step: Checkout. This account already had a credit card on file so the process was a single click.
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- New Home Page/ Analtyics Summary
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- The current analtyics for AdWords Express
It will help develop awareness of adwords. I would be concerned that people will try it and PROVE adwords does not work by implementing it wrong. Ultimately it may help develop business for those who know how to run an account, experiments, measure conversions and return on investment.
If the customer fails will it be that much harder to sell them in the future
Comment by David Cox (6 comments) — January 28, 2013 @ 9:41 am
But from this it looks like it’s still very limited vs the full AdWords – such as no way to add negative keywords. Also expensive: in my experience with it in the past, CPC was at least 40% higher with Express vs AdWords for the same keyword.
Comment by Joe Bavonese (1 comments) — January 28, 2013 @ 10:03 am
So in terms of targeting, you control geography and top level category. Not great options if you’re really concerned about driving converting traffic, not just traffic.
Comment by Chad Kimball (26 comments) — January 28, 2013 @ 10:07 am
It’s nice to see that you are able to target a specific area however will the adds only show when people are logged into their G+ account?
What about pricing per click? Has anyone compared the price per click for this vs Google adwords?
Do you think that this will eventually replace Google adwords?
Comment by Nathan K Smith (4 comments) — January 28, 2013 @ 10:57 am
Good start, however this aspect still needs to be worked out, for those who ‘manage’ Local Pages: “You are offered to option to take out ads for any Page that you own but not pages that you manage”
Comment by Andy Kuiper (232 comments) — January 28, 2013 @ 11:08 am
Good start: “AdWords for the novice”… for those who don’t mind spending more for the privilege of not having to learn the AdWords skill set.
However one aspect still needs to be worked out, for those who ‘manage’ Local Pages: “You are offered the option to take out ads for any Page that you own but not pages that you manage”
Comment by Andy Kuiper (232 comments) — January 28, 2013 @ 11:10 am
@Joe
It is very limited and you are right about the pricing. NO question there. But it is simple and it is self serve. Both goals of Google’s for this product.
Comment by Mike Blumenthal (1947 comments) — January 28, 2013 @ 11:11 am
@Chad
You do have limited ability to provide feed back on the types of keywords that are showing and the longer tail ones seem to mirror ad content but you are certainly correct as to some of its limitations.
Comment by Mike Blumenthal (1947 comments) — January 28, 2013 @ 11:12 am
@Nathan
This is no replacement for adwords. It provdes way too few options to improve your ads, their targeting and bidding. The price per click because of these limits tend to be higher than a well managed campaign. It will show to any searcher on Google, Google Maps and on their content network.
Comment by Mike Blumenthal (1947 comments) — January 28, 2013 @ 11:14 am
@Andy
Yes it would be nice of an owner could allocate different privileges to different managers… one could see analtyics, one could see adwords and another could do everything. But not with this release.
Comment by Mike Blumenthal (1947 comments) — January 28, 2013 @ 11:15 am
@David
I think Google sees it as a way to touch the customer. Note that the 800 number for service is front and center. So I am sure some folks will upgrade, some with hire an SEM and some will abandon it. Thats the price I think of a self serve model.
Comment by Mike Blumenthal (1947 comments) — January 28, 2013 @ 11:16 am
Wow. A far cry from Facebook’s one-click “Promote this post” ad offering.
Comment by David Mihm (168 comments) — January 28, 2013 @ 11:39 am
@David M
You’re right about that!
Comment by Mike Blumenthal (1947 comments) — January 28, 2013 @ 11:53 am
Mike: Haven’t run an adwords express campaign. I assume it doesn’t allow for [exact match ] phrases and the campaigns are all running on broad phrase.
Have you cross checked this between adwords express reports and analytics? If so, and if its running on broad phrase you’ll see details in analytics that don’t match up.
I’d simply suggest if it doesn’t include exact phrase its not an optimal campaign by any means for an smb.
Okay, the tradeoff is simplicity for an adwords campaign easily designed.
A broad phrase campaign can work and it can be remarkably unsuccessful.
I’d be careful.
Comment by earlpearl (784 comments) — January 28, 2013 @ 1:06 pm
Thanks for pointing this one out Mike. Is this all about promoting your own Google+ Local page as the landing page? That is how I am reading it.
which happens)
I think the concept has merit. It obviously means your Google+ local page has to be rocking already and ready for the paid traffic.
I also wonder if this will show up in search differently? will there be a separate section of results for Google+ (I’ve seen Google+ pages integrated and as far as I know it hasn’t changed or I haven’t noticed.
Anyway thanks. Good heads up and I look forward to seeing how this pans out.
Comment by Freddie Fulton (2 comments) — January 28, 2013 @ 2:50 pm
@Freddie
Google would love for you to pay to send a searcher from the Search results to the Plus page but Adwords Express Plus works equally well to send users to a landing page on your site. That is what I would recommend.
Comment by Mike Blumenthal (1947 comments) — January 28, 2013 @ 3:01 pm