Archives for June 2012

Fun Times With Search Engines

Last night, our Google AdWords team treated myself, my team, and leaders from my employer to the Giants/Dodgers game. We had so much fun enjoying the game from Google’s luxury suite at AT&T park. It was honestly one of the best networking events I’ve experienced with Google. It was a great game too – The Giants won in an 8-0 victory. Thanks Google, we cannot thank you enough!

A few weeks ago, our Yahoo! account management team traveled to Silicon Valley and took us to a gourmet lunch (one of the best meals I have experienced in months). That day, we also spent hours planning strategies to grow our adCenter campaigns. Yahoo!, we cannot thank you enough, you rule! I am so thankful for the amazing friendships that I have made with Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft’s world class teams.

This is a quick post today since I was out late at the game last night. The main point: I have found in business that it’s all about building world class teams. Spend time to really get to know your search engine reps and support teams. They are amazing and I couldn’t imagine running enterprise SEM accounts without their support and guidance. As a team, you will uncover amazing opportunities and take your paid search engine accounts to new levels.

Image in this post © PPCIan.com

Business Gifts Go A Long Way

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 23 5

Whether you’re in the corporate world of online marketing, or any other industry for that matter, business gifts go a really long way. Just recently, I received two really amazing gifts. The first was from my great friends at Rocket Clicks SEM Agency. I had recently helped them out and they sent me an amazing gift and also a thank you note. I received it today and was so happy and excited. Thank you, Steve, Nicole, and the entire Rocket Clicks team, you rule! (Side note: If you’re looking for a great SEM agency, I can’t recommend Rocket Clicks enough.)

Business Gift

The second gift I received recently was from one of my good college friends. He now runs an investment fund and spent some time with my wife and I going over investment options. As a thank you for our time and also hospitality when he was in town, he sent us an amazing gift and thank you note in the mail. Again, we were super happy and impressed to receive such a great gift, how awesome!

A while back, I wrote a post about Online Marketing Business Etiquette. Both Rocket Clicks and my friend have so much business class and etiquette. Such etiquette goes a really long way, it sets them apart as people who truly care. They’re true business leaders.

The point of this post: When someone does something to help you out, send them a small gift in the mail. If you cannot afford a gift (or do not have the budget for it at your company), send a nice handwritten card. It’s not the size of the gift that matters. It’s the thought! Some other quick tips:

Send gifts and cards around the holidays. Take the time to write really nice and genuine notes. These days, corporate budgets are lower around the holidays. No problem! It’s the thought that matters.
If you manage a team, consider giving small gifts to those on your team who hit certain milestones. You need to stay within the guidelines of your company (many HR departments will place a limit on such gifts). This is a great way to Celebrate Success.
Always try to give as much as possible. There’s nothing more fun and rewarding than helping others, in life and business.

Image of business gift © Tomwang112

PPC Account Assignments As A Narrative

By Guest Blogger Leave a Comment Jun 19 0

Hey everyone, PPC Ian here. Today, I’m thrilled to share a guest post from my friend Todd Mintz from PPC Associates, Silicon Valley’s SEM Agency. You can read all about Todd in his bio at the end of the post. Todd, thanks for the great post and I hope you all enjoy.

“Buy the ticket, take the ride.” – Hunter S. Thompson

PPC Associates

I’m going to have a new paid search client assigned to me shortly. Each client offers a distinct set of challenges and objectives, but the general framework of every new engagement remains the same.

I will be dropped into the middle of an ongoing narrative, and I’m not only expected to learn the characters and become part of the story but actually take control of the plot and create a positive outcome where temporal happiness and satisfaction is achieved.

A basic narrative structure has three components: Setup, Conflict, and Resolution. Unless the account is brand new, chances are that most of the setup has happened well before the new account manager comes on the scene…and even with a new account, one could say that the setup that led up to the agency engagement occurred when the business was formed.

Now, if the setup was conflict-free and everyone was happy and content, the business wouldn’t need to engage an agency (or a new agency, as the case may be). The conflict facing the business could be any combination of poor PPC results coupled with failed relationships with consultants, less than stellar employee management/oversight, competitor conumdrums, overall lack of knowledge and experience, or a combination of all the above.

Much of the earlier pre-engagement narrative will be anecdotal to the new account manager. He/she must build relationships with each of the stakeholders in the story which will, in effect, be creating minor subplots leading to the creation of a solid structure for the plot to proceed comfortably without costly detours.

The expertise of the new account manager is his/her ability to write a positive outcome to the tale. What makes up account manager expertise? Part of it is his/her technical ability to manage the accounts in a profitable manner that meets the aims of the business. Part of it is to manage the personalities that are part of the process…getting them to contribute to the effort to the best of their ability while making sure they feel valued as people and as teammates. Part of it is to manage the internal stakeholders in the agency…in my case, our wonderful production staff, our design team, and the other office personnel who might interact with the account. Finally, part of it is totally out of the account manager’s control…things such as marketplace events or client circumstances that might impact the paid search efforts but can’t be helped by the consultant.

The skillful account manager can take any plot circumstances and weave an ending that can satisfy all the characters as well as most audiences. Hopefully, the ending will be “totally groovy and far out” for everyone involved, and all can live happily ever after.

Once in a while, the narrative doesn’t end in the manner hoped for…in those cases, everyone can learn from the poor outcome and take those lessons to apply to the next narrative…where I will be dropped into the middle of an ongoing narrative and I’m not only expected to learn the characters and become part of the story but actually take control of the plot and create a positive outcome where a sort of temporal happiness and satisfaction is achieved.

Todd Mintz

– Todd Mintz is a Senior Account Manager at PPC Associates, a digital marketing firm with offices in the Bay Area and downtown Chicago. Todd has over 10 years of experience in search marketing and has used Google AdWords since it began. He also is very visible in the SEM social media space and is a curator/contributor at MarketingLand and one of the founding members of SEMpdx (Portland’s Search Engine Marketing Group).

Images in this post © PPCAssociates.com

The Best PPC Benchmark Data Ever

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 18 2

A while back, I blogged about Marin Software’s Q4, 2011 Online Advertising Report. Today, I’m thrilled to share with you Marin Software’s Q1, 2012 Online Advertising Benchmark Report. In my opinion, this is the best PPC benchmark report ever!

If you’re in the corporate world of online marketing, it’s super important to keep a pulse on the market. You need to explain trends, predict the future, and understand how you stack up against the competition. Tools such as AdGooroo can help on a tactical, keyword-by-keyword level. Benchmarks from your reps at Google and Yahoo!/Bing can help with high level industry-specific trends (especially if you spend a lot of money and have dedicated reps at the search engines).

All of these data sources are awesome! However, let’s say you want a little more information. Let’s say you want data by industry that shows trends in major search metrics (such as impressions, clicks, CTR, CPCs, spend, and usage of match types). Let’s say you want to understand trends in clicks and spend by device. Let’s say you want to understand overall search marketing strategy from leading advertisers? You will find this information (and so much more) in Marin Software’s Q1 Online Advertising Benchmark Report. Marin is in a truly unique position (with over $3.5 billion annual spend being managed by their platform) to aggregate data anonymously and provide stellar search insights.

I highly recommend downloading this report (it’s free) and then sharing with your co-workers. There are some real interesting trends and insights that will help drive your overall business. At the end of the day, benchmarking is a critical part of the online marketing planning process. Leverage Marin’s report to benchmark and plan your search marketing strategy.

Image of pie chart © iStockPhoto – Violka08

My Friday Musings, It’s Been An Exciting Week

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 14 4

This has been a super exciting week. Just last week, I attended SMX Advanced Seattle. This week, I worked really hard, played in a golf tournament, met a domain industry guru for lunch, and attended the US Open. I’m excited to share my Friday musings…

PPC Ian and Work Colleagues in Randy Cross Invitational

Golf is a really great sport. On Monday this week, I played in the Randy Cross Invitational with three other colleagues from work. Our company was one of the event sponsors and we had a fantastic time. We played at the Stanford Golf Course and then enjoyed a reception (and charity raffle) after at the Rosewood Hotel, Sand Hill Road. The tournament raised money for the Ronald McDonald House, an amazing charity. (Side note: Charity is one of my huge goals this year, so I love how this event lined up with my goals and also provided some truly amazing times.)

This event was so much fun because I got to spend time with amazing co-workers/friends, help raise money for charity, and play golf. I have not played as much golf in recent years, but did better than expected (especially on my long game). I’m truly thankful that my parents got me playing golf from an early age, it’s an amazing sport (for fun and business). If you play golf, I highly recommend playing with co-workers. If you don’t, I recommend giving it a try! Golf is a great sport for fun, exercise, and business.

PPC Ian and Nima Jacob Nojoumi

I’m a huge fan of Nima Jacob Nojoumi (@domainadvisor). I have been chatting with Nima about domain names for years. He’s a real leader online in the domain industry. This week, I finally had the chance to meet Nima in-person. We grabbed lunch in downtown Mountain View and chatted domain names, websites, SEO, PPC, and so much more. If you ever have questions about domains, he’s the guy to ask on Twitter. My advice: Find influential people within online marketing and reach out to them! You will build some amazing connections and friendships.

It’s important to spend time with co-workers and partners at fun events. Today, our account executive at Marin Software treated a colleague and I to the US Open. It was truly an event to remember. We got to talk business but also so much more. It’s important to spend time with those you work with outside of the office. Marin went above and beyond with the US Open and it was such an amazing way to spend Thursday.

The last few weeks have been amazing. They have marked an incredible combination of fun, networking, and of course work. While it’s been a busy few weeks, I feel like my team and I have also made incredible progress on our “real work”. Sometimes it’s the “extra” activities that motivate excellence and push you even further. Wishing you a super Friday and weekend! (Note: Like my musings posts? You may want to check out my last one, my mid-week musings.)

Images in this post © PPCIan.com

SMX Advanced 2012 Pictures and Recap

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 8 5

Today, I’m excited to share a ton of pictures from SMX Advanced 2012. This great conference, hosted in Seattle, covers all sorts of advanced PPC and SEO topics. 2012 marks my third year at this search marketing conference, you can read my 2011 recap here and my 2010 recap here. Each year, I try to take more pictures and I think I accomplished just that with 14 in this year’s post! I hope you enjoy the recap and pictures…

Day 0: The Day Before The Conference

Ian, Nicole, and Andrew at Six Seven Restaurant

This year was the best yet because I attended the conference with my amazing wife, Nicole, and my teammate, Andrew. All three of us flew from San Francisco to Seattle mid-day on Monday. We took Virgin airlines, and it was quite a pleasant flight. I had never flown Virgin America before, and am really happy with the experience, I definitely plan on flying Virgin again.

Once we arrived in Seattle, we took a taxi over to our hotel, The Edgewater. The Edgewater is a really great hotel, and it’s the third year in a row I stayed there. Each time it’s so much fun, I really love this place! I especially enjoyed this year because Nicole and I had a room on the water side of the hotel (as opposed to the city view side) with a really cool balcony and nice water view. All the way at the end of this post, you can see a view of a sailboat going by from our balcony. After checking in, the three of us were so hungry so we headed over to restaurant Six Seven at the Edgewater. The food there is great and the atmosphere too. Each year, I always have to eat at Six Seven at least once. You can see a picture of Nicole, Andrew and I enjoying lunch to the right.

PPC Ian, Andrew, and Kenshoo - Geoff, Chad, and Claudia

By the time we had enjoyed a late lunch, it was time to head on over to the SMX Meet and Greet. It was totally packed there. Check out the picture all the way towards the end of this post (the first under the “More Pictures” section). As soon as I got into the Meet and Greet, I ran into the Kenshoo leadership crew – Geoff, Chad, and Claudia. I got a great picture with them to the right. It’s really funny because I got a similar picture way back in my 2010 SMX Advanced Post. I think we all aged quite well over the last two years, we all look the same!

PPC Ian and March Poirier from Acquisio

After chatting with Kenshoo and complementing Geoff on his amazing social media skills (make sure to follow @geoffshenk on Twitter), I bumped into my good friend Marc Poirier from Acquisio. (Later in the conference, I heard Marc speak about Retargeting, one of my favorite sessions in the entire conference.) After about an hour of networking, we were getting hungry again and decided to leave the Meet and Greet and find some dinner.

After searching restaurants not too far from the conference, we decided to go to Serious Pie. This place was amazing. There’s a reason it has four stars and 1,200+ reviews on Yelp – the food is so good (and not too expensive either). (There’s a picture of Serious Pie in the “More Pictures” section at the end of this post.) After Serious Pie, it was time to head back to The Edgewater, catch up on work, and then finally get some sleep! Search conferences are so much fun, but can be very tiring too. My advice: Make sure to pace yourself and get as much sleep as possible.

Day 1: An Action-Packed Day of SMX Advanced

PPC Ian and My Marin Software Friends

Before the Meet and Greet, I had picked up my SMX badge so the next morning I was able to get there right around 8:30, walk in and grab some breakfast, and then head into the SMX Advanced sessions. Day 1 was an awesome day – the sessions were great, the lunch was really good (SMX Advanced has much better food than other search marketing conferences), and I got to network like crazy at the expo hall. In terms of sessions, here are the ones I attended on the first day:

The Periodic Table of SEO – 2012 Edition
Perfecting Your PPC Landing Pages
Getting The Most Out of Retargeting From The Pros
Breaking The Speed Limit: Fast Sites Win!
You&A With Matt Cutts

How do [you] Kenshoo? PPC Ian and Chris Cohen

All of the sessions were good. I especially enjoyed the retargeting one because I got to hear my good friend Marc Poirier speak. He brought in great data from his own Acquisio retargeting experiments. Want to learn ore about retargeting? I highly recommend checking out Acquisio’s Retargeting eBook. I also enjoyed exposing myself to SEO sessions. While I’m PPC (pay per click) Ian, I also thoroughly enjoy the SEO discipline too. SEO is so engineering-focused, and I’m a Stanford CS graduate, so this stuff is right up my alley.

During day 1, I also spent a lot of time networking in the expo hall. I’m a huge fan of networking and really enjoy people, especially the amazing people in our industry. You’ll see a lot of pictures throughout this post from the expo hall. It’s become PPC Ian tradition to grab pictures with all of my friends, new and old, with the signature “thumbs up”.

PPC Ian and Adobe Digital Marketing, Ian and Julia

One of the first booths I stopped at was Marin Software. Marin Software is an amazing SEM platform. I’m friends with a ton of employees there and really enjoyed catching up with my good friends Samantha Lee (in the picture above) and also Matt Lawson, Marin’s VP of Marketing. Marin always has an impressive and crowded booth.

After spending some time with Marin, I headed over to the Kenshoo booth. The night before, I had spent some quality time with Geoff, Chad, and Claudia. On day 1, I ran into one of my other Kenshoo friend, Chris Cohen. you can see a picture of Chris and I above. I had a ton of fun with this picture because it was part of Kenshoo’s “How do [you] Kenshoo” campaign. That’s some really solid marketing, and I’m a huge fan of this amazing SEM software platform.

PPC Ian with The BrightEdge Marketing Team

Next, I found the Adobe booth. Adobe offers an amazing suite of online marketing platforms such as Efficient Frontier and Omniture. Adobe has been on a real great trajectory and has developed one of the leading offerings in our industry. At the Adobe booth, I got to meet Julia Soffa (check out the picture above). (Side note: I’m a huge fan of Adobe’s New Whitepaper.)

I’m so excited and proud: Nicole is now Product Marketing Manager at BrightEdge. This is a really exciting role. You may recall, I blogged about BrightEdge back in my SMX West 2012 Post. What is BrightEdge? It’s the leading platform for enterprise SEO. If you are responsible for managing SEO at a company, BrightEdge is the must-have platform. They are going places and growing at warp speed. Above, you can see a picture of me and the BrightEdge marketing team. To the right is a picture of my amazing wife, Nicole, at the BrightEdge booth. BrightEdge was a Gold Sponsor of the conference.

My Wife, Nicole, Product Marketing Manager at BrightEdge

After having a great time at the BrightEdge booth, it was time to hang out at the SEO Moz booth. I just had to grab a photo with the SEO Moz Bot. Later, I attended You&A With Matt Cutts, one of the highlights of the day! After an exciting day of sessions and networking, I enjoyed the Expo Hall Reception for a bit and then went back to my hotel room to rest for about 1/2 hour.

Then, it was time to head on over to The Purple Cafe for the Marin Software dinner. Marin Software really went all out on this dinner. They invited a lot of clients, both old and new, and treated us all to one of the best meals I have had in my life. The food was so amazing. The company was amazing too. Thank you so much, Marin, for treating us to this dinner, you rule! By the time dinner was over, we were close to 12:00 am. I went back to my hotel room. Nicole was still out at the BrightEdge dinner. I heard amazing things about their dinner too and know that BrightEdge employees and clients had an amazing time. Overall, day 1 of SMX Advanced Seattle 2012 was one of the best conference experiences ever!

Day Two: The Last Day of SMX Advanced 2012

PPC Ian and SEO Moz Bot

I had so much fun on day 1, that I felt a bit tired on day 2. As such, day 2 was a little slower paced but still super fun. It all started out with sessions. On day 2, I attended these ones:

Keynote with Bing’s Derrick Connell
Schema & Authorship: 1 Year Later
Pagination & Canonicalization For The Pros
Landing Pages & Conversion In A Smartphone & Tablet World

I really enjoyed all of the sessions, especially the SEO one on Schema & Authorship. The speakers in this sessions were really knowledgeable and provided a wealth of information and tools to help any SEO enterprise take their business to the next level. I really enjoyed the mobile landing page sessions too. The future is mobile and landing page strategy is especially important to mobile. Carlos del Rio from Unbounce did a great job presenting and I’m glad I got to meet him in-person at the Marin Software booth the day before. (Also, I enjoyed the landing page session from day 1. At that session, Carlos also spoke, in addition to Scott Brinker from ION Interactive.)

Marin Software Dinner The Purple Cafe

Of course, I also spent some great time networking on day 2 as well. I especially enjoyed running into my pal David Rodnitzky from PPC Associates. David is a leader in our industry and runs Silicon Valley’s SEM Agency. It’s always fun running into David.

At the end of day 2, Nicole, Andrew, and I took a towncar back to the airport. If you stay at The Edgewater, they can book you a towncar the night before for only $45, a real deal (considering a taxi would have cost a similar price). This is a super tip if you attend the conference in future years.

PPC Ian and David Rodnitzky

We rushed to the airport for nothing since our flight was delayed (airspace was restricted in San Francisco due to President Obama visiting), but we enjoyed all that the SeaTac airport has to offer. The flight back was full of SMX Advanced folks since San Francisco is such a hub for online marketing. I got back totally exhausted, but super happy that the conference was such a success.

I’m looking forward to future SMX Conferences and thank Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan, and SMX for putting on such an amazing conference. Until next time, SMX friends!

More Pictures From SMX Advanced Seattle 2012

SMX Advanced Seattle 2012 Opening Ceremony

Serious Pie Seattle

SMX Seattle The Edgewater Hotel

My Twitter Ads Experiment

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 5 2

I’m a huge fan of Twitter and use Twitter every single day (my handle is @ianlopuch). Twitter is a great way to stay connected with my readers, Find Inspiration, and also learn new stuff. In addition to all of that, Twitter is an open platform that can be crawled by search engines. From an SEO standpoint, it’s a channel that cannot and should not be ignored.

As such, I created a Twitter Advertising Challenge for myself back in January. There were several main goals of the challenge: follow no more than 200 people, redesign my Twitter background, and advertise to gain more followers. Back in February, I called my Twitter Challenge a Success since I had accomplished goals 1 and 2 (and also did a Facebook redesign too). At that time, I had no luck getting a Twitter Advertising account so I couldn’t do much towards goal 3. However, in May I got lucky and received my very own Twitter Advertising account (with $100 free credit) thanks to the Twitter/American Express partnership for small businesses.

Since one of my main 2012 Goals is saving money, I did not want to spend too much on Twitter. Last year, I spent a lot of money Getting Thousands of Facebook Fans for my portfolio of websites/Facebook Fan Pages so this year I’m trying to save and drive as much margin as possible. That said, the American Express coupon coupled with $60 of my own money did yield some interesting insights about Twitter and allowed me to cross this goal off of my list! Here are my findings (also please see screenshot below with stats from my Twitter Ads account):

Promoted Accounts offer a cheap way to drive incremental followers. I spent $110 on Promoted Accounts and got 115 incremental followers (only $0.96/follower). I actually started out bidding really high (I think ~$2.00/follower per Twitter’s suggested bid) but then bid down over time. I could have bid down even more and gotten followers even cheaper. The point here: You will be able to drive followers for $1.00 or probably even less as you lower your bids over time. As compared with my Facebook experience, this avenue seems cheaper than driving a Facebook Fan (although I feel the value of a FB Fan is higher). I have driven Fans as low as the $0.30 range on Facebook, but when I first started out, I remember the unit cost being higher than Twitter.
I especially like the Promoted Account option for newer accounts trying to build up a loyal following and credibility.
Your budget will go really quickly. I set daily budgets with my Twitter Ads test. The budget did not get deployed evenly over the course of the day. Rather, I blasted through my budget right away. Now, the UI I’m dealing with here is the American Express small business one, so I’m sure larger enterprise advertisers may have more options. However, in any event, the point here is to be careful. If you don’t want to spend your budget between midnight and 1:00 am, it will be important to either manually day part, leverage an online marketing platform to do this for you, or seek an enterprise account (not sure if they offer this but assuming they offer more control than my basic account).
Promoted Tweets offer the ability to do SO much more than simply drive clicks. More clicks/traffic is always great, but what I especially enjoyed about my Promoted Tweets test is the fact that I instantly started getting ore followers, retweets, favorites, and overall brand activity than ever before. These days, especially with the Panda and Penguin updates, Google is looking at one’s brand. With Promoted Tweets, you have the perfect tool to build your brand within online marketing. Personally, if I am to spend more money on Twitter, I will probably focus on Promoted Tweets due to the brand ramifications.
Overall, my basic account did not offer a huge amount of control. With Promoted Tweets, for example, I got to select 5 Tweets to promote and set a budget. Other than that, Twitter would just run with it. As a power user, I’m used to having a ton of control. More dials means more ability to optimize. My basic account experience offered little ability to optimize. That said, it was my true pleasure to get my feet wet with Twitter Ads and I’m excited in the future to build my expertise and get my hands on an enterprise account.

I’m a huge fan of Twitter and recommend that you too give Twitter Ads a try!

Google AdWords – Your AdWords Are Now Running

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 3 0

On 5/31, I got a bunch of emails from Google with the subject line, “Google AdWords – Your AdWords Are Now Running”. I have a lot of accounts with Google, many of which have been paused for years. Honestly, I didn’t have much time to look at it on 5/31, but just assumed it was a mistake and that Google would fix it. And, I knew I had already taken precautions to protect myself – I always set my daily budget to $1/day for all paused campaigns that I don’t anticipate reactivating right away. Following is the email I got from Google on 5/31 (I got this for several paused campaigns/accounts):

Dear AdWords Advertiser,
Your ads are now running.
Thank you for advertising with Google AdWords.
Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Team
————————
Your AdWords account number: xyz123

Today (6/3), I got some more emails from Google. This time, they said there had been a technical issue on 5/31 that is now fixed. They explained that they will be crediting back all money that may have been spent by the accidental reactivation. Here’s the email I received today:

Dear AdWords advertiser,

Because of a technical issue, some of your campaigns might have mistakenly resumed running on May 31, 2012. You might also have received an email titled, "Google AdWords – Your ads are now running."

We’ve fixed this issue and are crediting your account for the amount you accrued. Once it’s been applied, the credit will appear on the Transaction history page, located on the "Billing" tab of your AdWords account.

If you’d like your ads to run in the future, follow these steps to re-enable your form of payment:

1. Sign in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com.
2. Click the "Billing" tab, then the "Billing settings" link on the left.
3. Find your disabled form of payment on the page.
4. Check that the payment details are correct, then contact your bank or credit card provider to see if the form of payment can be used.
5. Click the "Re-enable form of payment" link to make it usable again.

After you re-enable your form of payment, your ads will start to run again. Keep in mind that once you re-enable your form of payment, you may be billed for unpaid advertising costs that you accrued before this error.

We apologize for the technical issue, and thank you for understanding.

Sincerely,
The AdWords Team

© 2012 Google Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043
You’ve received this email to update you about important changes to your AdWords account.

There are three main reasons I wanted to share this post with you. When you manage many Google AdWords accounts, you always want to take proper precautions with paused accounts/campaigns. If you have paused a campaign and don’t anticipate reactivating it in the near future, make sure to set a really low budget (I recommend $1/day). That way, you have a safety measure in place in case something ever happens. Sure, it’s likely you will get a refund if Google (or adCenter) ever makes a mistake, but why worry when you can mitigate risk. Also, you never know when that refund may come and you don’t want to have any cash flow issues should it take a while to process the refund.

Second, I wanted to share this post because it’s probably a good time to look through all of your old accounts and campaigns on Google AdWords. Do a thorough audit on Monday. Make sure to check if anything got reactivated accidentally. If yes, make sure you get the proper refund you are entitled to.

Third, always make sure to have an up-to-date email address in your search engine accounts. If your email is not up-to-date, you may be missing such messages. Hope you are having a super weekend!