Google AdWords Integration Guide - Improving Existing AdWords Accounts with WordStream
WordStream is a great tool for organizing and managing PPC campaigns.
But what if you already have a pay-per click marketing campaign in operation?
You very well may be happy with part or all of that campaign, and you may not be interested in completely reorganizing (or scrapping) your existing Google AdWords account structure and contents.
This guide will deal with a few issues surrounding this particular scenario, specifically with regards to getting started with your WordStream free trial:
- How can I implement a free trial of WordStream?
- How do I use WordStream if I don't want to "map" a Keyword Group to an Ad Group?
- Does WordStream know what keywords are already in my AdWords campaigns?
- If not, how do I ensure that I'm not running the same keyword in two different groups?
What's the Best Way to Get Going with a Free Trial of WordStream if I Have an Existing AdWords Account?
We recommend either of two tactics:
- Pause an existing area of your account and create WordStream groupings in its place.
- Find a totally new keyword vertical with WordStream's keyword research capabilities.
Pausing Existing Groups
The first option is to pause an Ad Group, a campaign, or a collection of Ad Groups that focus on the same basic theme.
Say we have a campaign built for our IT consulting company. We can first go in and pause a single Ad Group or a few groups within a campaign within our AdWords account:
Next, you'd create a group or a collection of groups within WordStream based around the same theme.
So in this example, let's say that we offer various kinds of IT consulting, but we just want to trial WordStream on our content management services. We could create some groupings around these terms by utilizing the keyword grouping tools and by learning how to create Keyword Groups:
Having paused your "content management" Ad Group or campaign, you can now trial the WordStream product without "blowing up" your current PPC campaign. This can be applied at as large or as small of a scale as you feel comfortable with.
Finding a New Keyword Vertical
An alternative might be to take a look at the keyword data WordStream's analytics (and actalytics) tools have accumulated for you, and identifying a new keyword opportunity to create a themed keyword group or campaign around.
Continuing with the above example, we might find that though we offer some consulting services surrounding "wireless" technologies, we haven't yet created any Ad Groups that speak to it. But, we mention our services on our site, so WordStream shows us a nice collection of keywords for this service.
We could then create a few keyword and Ad Groups around this offering; maybe even generating ad text and a landing page or two. Creating and tracking these groups would allow us to get a feel for how useful and effective the tool is.
How do I use WordStream if I don't want to "map" a Keyword Group to an Ad Group?
Even if you don't make use of WordStream's AdWords integration functionality, you can still make use of the tool for:
- Keyword Suggestion & Discovery
- Campaign Organization & Keyword Segmentation
To do this, you simply get started by mining your log data or importing your keywords, then create keyword segmentations.
If you're not interested in turning your keyword groups into Ad Groups within WordStream for any reason, you can export keywords to Excel very easily, and simply upload those keywords into AdWords Editor or the AdWords Web interface.
Simply highlight the group whose keywords you'd like to export:
You will then be shown a list of keywords in the bottom right hand side of your screen (known as your WordStream keyword grid).
In the left hand corner of that portion of the screen, click "select all":
Now, you can easily export all of the keywords in this Keyword group by right clicking and clicking the "Copy Selected Keywords" option:
That's it. You now have a portable data set that you can move to Excel, or anywhere else you might like to store your keyword list.
Does WordStream know what keywords are already in my AdWords campaigns?
No. The software has no way of knowing which keywords are already in your AdWords pay per click account.
You can view which Keyword Groups in WordStream have been associated with Ad Groups by clicking the "highlight groups used by AdWords" check box, as illustrated:
But there is no way to view this information at the keyword or query level.
If not, how do I ensure that I'm not running the same keyword in two different groups?
While there's no finite way to determine this, it's worth noting that WordStream creates segmentations based on rules and filters.
What this means is that WordStream Keyword Groups are very transparent. You know that the "content management system" group will allow only terms that contain content, management, and systems in some order to be grouped there, as is illustrated in the short sampling of the keyword list above.
Additionally, you can create your own custom filters to include or exclude any terms you want.
As a result, you probably won't have to sift through your entire campaign to determine if "content management system" and other related keywords will be located somewhere.
You will likely have some idea of what portion of the campaign will contain these keyword variations, and you can look there to ensure there's no overlap, if that's important to you.
As we stated earlier in the guide, we suggest pausing the portion of your AdWords account that is themed around "content management" and running a series of WordStream groupings in its place to best avoid this overlap.
If you have questions about other aspects of utilizing WordStream, please take a look at our other Best Practice Guides:
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