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Free Cheap Insurance Guides for Google Adwords Managing Client Accounts

Managing Client Accounts

9a. My Client Center

Objective: With My Client Center, client managers (such as agencies, search engine marketers, and automated bid managers) can more efficiently manage multiple AdWords accounts or large campaigns. Learn more about My Client Center, including steps to setting one up.

Your My Client Center account, also called a client manager account or MCC, is an umbrella account containing access to individual AdWords accounts and other client manager accounts. It acts as a shell account that links individual AdWords accounts in one location. The look and feel of My Client Center is very similar to individual AdWords accounts, with greater functionality.

With My Client Center, you can access multiple AdWords accounts via the client manager account login - no more logging in and out to switch between AdWords accounts. In addition, client managers can see all their individual and client manager AdWords accounts in one place via the My Client Center view. With a My Client Center account, you can:

Easily view up to 1,000 linked AdWords accounts, including other client manager accounts, via the My Client Center view.
See relevant information for all linked AdWords accounts in one place.
Use a single login to access all AdWords accounts.
Generate reports across multiple client accounts at once, or download the client "dashboard" into a .csv file.
Invite a client to be managed through an automated message.
Create AdWords accounts in your MCC, and automatically link them to your master account upon creation.
Manage clients running on the same keywords under different accounts.
Create separate billing for each client and edit your client's billing information as needed.

You can get a My Client Center by becoming a Google Advertising Professional. This is a great way to get Google recognition and acquire resources that help you become a better client manager.

Visit the Google Advertising Professionals homepage to become a Google Advertising Professional for free. Upon enrollment, you'll receive your My Client Center account.

To learn more about this program, visit the Google Advertising Professionals Help Center.

You can easily link an existing or new AdWords account to yours.

Linking an existing AdWords account

Retrieve your client's AdWords external Customer ID and account password (which establishes your client's permission to link the account to yours).
Log in to your MCC.
Click the Link existing account link above your client accounts table.
Enter your new client's Customer ID and account password into the appropriate fields.
Click Submit.

Alternatively, if you don't have your client's login password, you can simply enter his/her login email into the corresponding field for Link existing account. When you hit Submit, the client receives a notification that invites him/her to link to your account. During this process, you'll see a pending notification for the client account in your MCC. Upon the client's acceptance, you'll receive a confirmation notification and the client account will be automatically linked to your account.

Linking a new AdWords account

Log in to your MCC.
Click the Create new account link above your client accounts table.
Complete the form, and click Create Account.
Click Create a campaign to create your client's campaign in the AdWords sign-up wizard. Then, return to your MCC to enter your client's billing information. You'll need to enter this information to activate your new client account. You can also return to this step later by clicking the client's account in your main MCC view.

When logged in to your My Client Center account, you can navigate to any linked accounts by using the Jump to client drop-down menu located at the top the page. This will show you all the accounts linked to your My Client Center account.

Alternatively, you can select an account by clicking on the account name in your My Client Center view. To return to your main view, click on the My Client Center link at the top of any page in your account.

Your My Client Center (MCC) not only allows you to manage multiple accounts easily: It also features a "dashboard" view of your managed accounts with alerts for important account issues, and provides easy access to robust performance reporting tools.

When you log in to your MCC account, you'll see a snapshot (dashboard) overview of your AdWords client accounts information, including account names, descriptions, budgets, start- and end-dates, and amounts spent by each account for 7, 30, and 90 days. You can view up to 30 client accounts per page. To download the information available through your dashboard view, click the link to Download as .csv above the list of accounts.

Through MCC Alerts, you'll receive important client account alerts about issues such as stopped ad delivery, payments declined, account and budget end-dates nearing, and low account budgets. To enable alerts for your MCC, log into your MCC account and go to the 'Account Preferences' section of the tabbed My Account section. Click the edit link in the Alerts section and you'll be taken to a preferences page where you can select your chosen alerts. Please read our MCC Alerts FAQ to learn more about this important feature.

Your MCC also lets you run reports for multiple clients through your Client Reports tab. Using this feature, you can generate many different report types, including Account, Campaign, Ad Group, Keyword, URL and others. You can also run individual reports for a client by clicking the Reports tab from within the client's account. For more details on reports, see the Reports lesson.

Although My Client Center offers similar functionality as your AdWords account, you currently cannot edit your clients' login information. If you'd like to edit your client's information, you'll need to first log in to your client's individual account via adwords.google.com using the account's associated email and password. Then, you can change individual login preferences from the client's My Account tab.

9b. Selling AdWords

Objective: Learn how to explain the advantages of Google search, distinguish search results from AdWords ads, and outline key points for making a successful AdWords sale.

Search results on Google are generated automatically. No company can buy placement in Google's search results (also known as the 'natural search results'). AdWords ads, which companies can purchase on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis, are clearly marked as 'sponsored links' and appear above and beside the search results. These ads are ranked by performance - that is, their positions are determined by both cost-per-click amounts and clickthrough rates. Therefore, advertisers can't remain in the top position(s) unless their ads are relevant. (For more information on this topic, please see the Pricing and Ranking lesson.)

With traditional advertising and most forms of online advertising, ads are simply broadcasted to a wide range of audiences. Google AdWords ads, however, are targeted to people's specific interests.

When a user enters a search query on Google, they'll see the natural search results for that query, along with AdWords ads that are highly targeted to the search topic. Thus, AdWords ads are as relevant and useful as Google's search results. Your ads will reach users at the precise moment when they're looking for your product or service.

Targeted, relevant AdWords ads appear on Google properties, thousands of partner search sites and content sites (such as How Stuff Works and the New York Times) in the Google Network, and newsletters and email. These ads are seen by over 80% of internet users in the United States alone, and our global network provides extensive ad exposure across the world. (Please see the Ad Distribution lesson for more information about where ads can appear.)

AdWords advertisers can choose cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-impression (CPM) pricing, whichever best suits their needs.

Under the Google AdWords CPC pricing model, advertisers pay for ad clicks, not impressions. If an advertiser's ads appear 50 times and receive five clicks, the advertiser is charged only for those five clicks. With CPM pricing, advertisers who prefer impression-based pricing can set their own price and receive traditional CPM metrics.

AdWords advertisers enjoy a tremendous level of control over their costs. They can set a maximum daily budget and specific amounts they're wiling to pay per click or per thousand impressions, which the AdWords system will never exceed.

AdWords advertisers can also set up Google's free conversion tracking tool and receive account reports by email so they can monitor their sales conversions and return on investment. (Please see the Reports and ROI lessons for more information.)

Because Google AdWords offers such a high degree of flexibility and control, it's an especially effective marketing tool to help advertisers:

Generate leads
Generate sales or conversions
Create brand awareness

Learn how to explain how to get started with the AdWords program, how Google advertising can drive profits, and what steps constitute a successful sale.

Here's an example of how AdWords ads can pay for themselves and eventually lead to increasing returns:

Your client invests US$1,000 in AdWords ads with a US$1 maximum CPC. Because your client only pays for ad clicks, he or she is assured of receiving at least 1,000 clicks (with the AdWords Discounter, your client may receive substantially more clicks at a lower CPC).

If 10% of these clicks result in sales, your client would have made 100 sales. If the average sale amount is one hundred dollars, your client's initial US$1000 investment will have returned US$10,000 in sales. In these cases, your client should advertise on a larger scale and reinvest the profits into his or her AdWords budget, which can increase potential profits even more.

You can design a profitable AdWords program for your clients in four simple steps:

Identify your client's advertising goals, then create relevant keywords and ads for each of these goals.
Run 'pilot' campaigns to test the ads and keywords.
Set up the AdWords conversion tracking tool and reporting tools to analyze the performance of your client's ads.
Modify and test your client's campaign until you reach a desired ROI. Retain only the most successful ads.

Here's a sample timeline of events that should occur as you and your client plan to start using AdWords:


Action Item	Owner	Completion Date

1. Identify client and opportunity with Google.	You	Day 1

2. Define marketing objectives, metrics, and budget.	You & Client	Day 7

3. Deliver a written proposal, including sample ads, keywords, and daily budget options.	You	Day 14

4. Client approval and sign-off.	Client	Day 21

5. Launch, monitor, & modify campaigns to meet objectives.	You	Day 28

6. Report findings regularly to your client, and expand and refine their campaigns to increase their ROI	You	On-going

Learn how to describe Google's position in the marketplace, explain the effectiveness of search advertising compared to other types of advertising, and address common questions and sales objections.

Your clients may ask why Google is preferred over other search marketing organizations. According to a recent Standard & Poor's survey of search engine usage, including Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, Lycos, and MSN, Google was the most widely used search engine in the United States. 48% of the survey respondents indicated that they used Google most often-a percentage almost two and half times more than the second place runner up.

Additionally, in a recent survey conducted by Vividence Corporation, people were asked to rate their experience with select search engine sites. 89% of the respondents reported a 'strongly positive' experience with Google, far surpassing the competition.

Your client may ask why search marketing is appropriate for them. Search marketing offers significant advantages over other media, such as outdoor, radio, TV and print, particularly in the areas of customer education/information and direct response. If your clients are interested in targeting these two media categories, it's clear AdWords is right for them.

We asked our AdWords clients to rate all forms of advertising they've used and/or are currently using. The results showed that satisfaction with Google AdWords is up to 57% higher than all other marketing media.

Source: Google AdWords Customer Satisfaction Survey:12/03-01/04, --U.S./Canadian advertisers

Before beginning your sales process, you can prepare to address common concerns or objections from potential clients. Here are a few examples:

'I don't have the budget' or 'I don't need to advertise.'

You can address this concern by offering to start your client's advertising on a smaller scale. For example, you can start a test campaign with a budget as low as just one dollar per day, then monitor the results to show your client how they can achieve significant ROI without incurring high costs.

You may also inform them about AdWords Smart Pricing, which lowers CPCs to the expected value of a click. Please refer to the Pricing and Ranking lesson to learn more about how AdWords pricing works.

'This sounds too complicated.'

If your client is concerned that search marketing sounds too complicated, offer to design an AdWords marketing program for them. Use conversion tracking and AdWords reporting to show the progress they're making. You can manage a client's account continually, or, once the account is running smoothly, transition the account management to your client.

With one Google AdWords media buy, your client can single-handedly accomplish what used to take a whole team of media planners. AdWords ads can appear virtually anywhere online worldwide, yet remain targeted and relevant. And because your clients can view, monitor, measure, and edit their AdWords campaigns at any time on their own, they can enjoy unprecedented levels of control over their advertising spending and reach.

9c. The AdWords API

Objective: Learn about the API and whether or not it's for you. We'll cover some basic features and benefits of using it. We recommend that only developers or advertisers with a solid understanding of AdWords follow this lesson.

To access AdWords accounts programmatically, the developer builds web service clients that connect to one or more of the standardized AdWords API Web Services. Developers must have both an approved Developer Token and Application Token to access the API.

The AdWords API utilizes SOAP and WSDL, which support a growing number of languages - including Java, .NET, Perl, PHP, and XML.

Code samples for each of these languages are available on the AdWords API homepage.

The AdWords API is designed for developers representing large, tech-savvy advertisers and third parties who want to automate reporting or campaign management. This includes SEMs (search engine marketers), agencies, and other online marketing professionals who manage multiple client accounts and/or large campaigns.

Since the AdWords API takes technical know-how and programming skills, advertisers with programming knowledge, or who employ developers, will achieve the best results.

To access the AdWords API, you must be an AdWords advertiser, or a developer who represents one, with a My Client Center account.

The AdWords API is extremely flexible and functional. It gives you the ability to design new and creative ways to use AdWords. What you can do with the AdWords API depends on your programming skills and advertising needs. Here are just some of the possibilities:

Create and manage campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and ad text (creatives)
Get traffic and performance estimates
View clicks, clickthrough rates, and your ad's average position
Retrieve reports on account performance
Access and modify ad syndication preferences and login information
View basic API usage information
Generate custom, keywords, ad text, and URL reports automatically
Integrate AdWords data with databases, such as inventory systems
Develop additional tools and applications to help you manage accounts

In addition, the API is a great substitute for screenscraping, which eventually won't be allowed.

Objective: Learn how to sign up for the AdWords API and receive a Developer Token and an Application Token for use in accessing the AdWords API.

To sign up for the AdWords API, you'll need a My Client Center (MCC) account (if you don't have one, you'll create one during the sign-up process). You'll register for the API by providing information about your company, applications and clients. You will also be asked to agree to the AdWords API Terms & Conditions, and to provide payment information for billing purposes.

Here's how to sign up and register for the AdWords API:

Visit https://adwords.google.com/select/ApiWelcome and log in with your MCC account information or, if you don't have one, with another Google Account. If you don't yet have a Google Account, you can create one from this page as well.

If you don't already have an MCC account, you'll be taken to a page where you can create one. After signing in with your MCC account information, you'll then go to a page where you provide information about your company, clients, and the applications with which you'll be accessing the API. Please provide as much information as possible, as we'll be reviewing your input during our approval process.

Next, you'll agree to the AdWords API Terms & Conditions and provide your billing information. Though some advertisers may be eligible for free quota, we still need you to complete this process so we can approve your tokens and allow you to access the API.

After registration, you'll be taken to your new AdWords API Center within your My Client Center. Here, you can view status messages about your token approval, see your Developer Token and Application Token information, and view API usage stats.

After we have reviewed your registration information, we'll inform you of your approval status for a Developer Token and Application Token. Both tokens are required to access the AdWords API.

To access the AdWords API, you need two tokens: A Developer Token (which identifies an approved developer for the API) and an Application Token (which identifies an approved application for API usage). Each token is a unique text string of letters, numbers and symbols that you'll need to include in the header of all your API requests in order to talk to the AdWords server.

All tokens are subject to approval by the AdWords API teams. Once your tokens have been approved, you'll find them listed at your AdWords API Center page in your My Client Center. You should treat your tokens with at least the same level of security as your account log-in and password information.

If you need additional Application Tokens because you plan to access the API with more than one application, you can apply for additional tokens by clicking the 'add' link in the Application Tokens section of your AdWords API Center. Only one Developer Token will be assigned to each developer, however.

With your approved Developer Token and Application Token, you can start writing programs. To get started writing programs in compliance with API standards, refer to the sample code and Developer's Guide, available on the Google AdWords API homepage.

The AdWords API manages traffic through our fee-based API unit system. Developers are charged a rate of $0.25 per 1,000 API units consumed. Some advertisers who access the API solely to manage their own accounts may be eligible for free API unit allocations

API operations consume varying amounts of API units, based on the complexity of each operation (an operation is considered a single action taken upon an AdWords account). For example, requesting the status of a single ad group would be considered one operation. In this case, this operation would consume one API unit. Requesting the status of 1,000 ad groups would therefore utilize 1,000 API units (and cost a developer $.25).

Please review the AdWords API Operations Rate Sheet to learn more.

Developers are charged at a rate of $0.25 per 1,000 API units consumed for their AdWords API usage. The AdWords API system assigns different API unit values to different types of operations. While some types of operations may consume just one API unit, others may consume more. Please view our rate sheet for specific charges per operation. And please read our FAQ about credit card billing for the API to learn about API billing cycles.

Advertisers who develop API applications solely to advertise their own businesses may be eligible for a limited allocation of free API units. API developers will be notified if they qualify for the free API unit allocation after their registration information has been reviewed.

Objective: Get an overview of the AdWords API data web services. While this information will help you develop programs, more comprehensive documents can be found on the Google AdWords API homepage.

The AdWords API provides a set of web services that give programmatic access to AdWords accounts. To access AdWords accounts programmatically, you build web service clients that connect to one or more of the AdWords API Web Services.

AdWords provides the following API Web Services:

CampaignService
AdGroupService
KeywordService
CreativeService
CriterionService
KeywordToolService
AccountService
InfoService
TrafficEstimatorService
ReportService

The CampaignService, AdGroupService, KeywordToolService, CriterionService and CreativeService are collectively known as data services. They have operations that let you manage your AdWords campaigns, ad groups, keywords, ad text and targeting by making requests using data objects, or a list of data objects. In turn, the service typically returns a data object or a list of data objects. When creating the data object, you set fields on it.

Using batch operations (lists) is more efficient than using a single operation. Therefore, we encourage you to use the batch operation wherever possible. For example, the CreativeService provides the addCreative operation for adding a single creative and the addCreativeList operation for adding a batch of creatives.

Campaigns, Ad Groups, Keywords, and Creatives all have IDs that are set by the AdWords API Web Services. Keyword and Creative IDs are unique only within their Ad Group, while Campaign and Ad Group IDs are globally unique.

A campaign is represented by a campaign data structure that has fields describing the campaign, such as startDate, endDate, name, status, dailyBudget, and so on. To use the CampaignService, you should send requests that pass in or return a single Campaign data object or any array of them.

The CampaignService lets you create, update, access, list, and perform campaign-wide operations such as pausing a campaign or adding new ad groups to a campaign. To make updates or perform operations for an ad group, use the AdGroupService.

An ad group is represented by an ad group data structure that has fields describing the ad group, such as name, status, and maxCPC. In addition, it includes an ID that uniquely identifies it.

An ad group consists of a set of keywords and one or more creatives (ad text) that are triggered by those keywords. The AdGroupService handles all operations that pertain to an ad group as a whole, such as creating ad groups, updating ad groups, adding keywords and creatives, and getting information from ad groups.

A keyword is represented by a keyword data structure that has fields describing the keyword, such as destinationURLM, language, maxCPC, text, and type.

Each ad group has one or more keywords that are used to trigger an ad. The KeywordService lets you create keywords, update keywords, specify keyword text and type, and get information about keywords.

A creative (ad text) is represented by a creative data structure that has fields describing the creative, such as description1, description2, destinationURL, displayURL, and headline.

Each ad group is comprised of one or more creatives (sets of ad text). The CreativeService lets you create, update, and get information about creatives.

The Criterion Service lets you get information about targeting criteria. For example, you can get the keywords for a keyword-targeted campaign or the websites for placement-targeted campaigns. You can create and modify keyword and webplacement targeting criteria.

Each ad group has one or more keywords that are used to trigger an ad. The Keyword Tool Service lets you generate keywords based on a seed keyword or on the words found on a web page or web site that you provide.

Objective: In addition to the data services covered in topic three, the AdWords API offers the AccountService, InfoService, TrafficEstimatorService, and ReportService, which give you programmatic access to general AdWords information and features. Learn about these services and where to find additional help resources.

The AccountService provides operations for creating and modifying AdWords accounts. The AccountService lets you:

Create and change your login information
Set the email and language preference
Return the billing and currency information of an account
Set the credit card information
Create new AdWords accounts

For billing and currency information, credit card numbers are not returned. You will need explicit permission from Google to make credit card edits and to create new AdWords accounts.

The InfoService allows you to obtain basic information about your API usage, including method and operation costs and unit counts.

The TrafficEstimatorService provides operations that allow you to estimate traffic for various components of your AdWords account. Using this service, you can estimate traffic for keywords, campaigns, and ad groups.

The ReportService allows you to request a report about the performance of your AdWords campaigns. It currently supports Keyword, Ad Text, URL, and Custom Reports.

The ReportService generates and stores a report in XML format and returns the URL of the report. The report is available in the Report Center of the AdWords user interface. You can also programmatically get the report by downloading the given URL.

The AdWords API homepage provides helpful documentation for getting started. This page is constantly refreshed to keep you updated on new web services, features, and more. The following resources are accessible on this page:

Developer's Guide: Provides information about the AdWords API Services, SOAP requests, and more.
Developer's Forum: Gives AdWords API developers a place to share thoughts, questions, and read posts.
Sample Code: Offers code samples in five programming languages.
AdWords API FAQ: Provides answers to commonly asked questions about the AdWords API.
AdWords API Blog: Used by the AdWords API team to make announcements to the AdWords development community.
Featured Use Cases: Highlights popular uses for the AdWords API.

2008/04/12

posted by The Author @ 20:13

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