Figuring Out Time Zones in PPC Campaigns Part 2

In Part One I showed how to know how to adjust Adwords campaign scheduling for time zones in the U.S.   But what if your client says:  "Can you show my ads in other countries, but ONLY during their 9am-5pm business hours?"  

Granted, its pretty straightforward to show your ads in other countries.   Simply go into your campaign setting in Adwords, click settings tab and select the countries you want to show up in.  You can also show your ads to only English speaking people in those countries.  

But only showing the ads during a specific time?  That's a little more involved, but no impossible.  Here's a real life example:

I had to show the campaigns in ads in the following countries:  UK, India, S. Africa, Australia, Italy.  English speaking people only, 9am-5pm local time in each country.

1.  Use Adwords Editor and copy the campaigns you want to show in other countries.  This awesome tool allows you to make many changes to your Adwords account.  

2.  Change the name of the campaigns.  For instance if you campaign is Mens Shoes you might add Mens Shoes-UK so you know what country you're targeting.  

3.  Upload the campaigns to Adwords.  

4.  Figure out what 9-5 is in each country.  For little countries like UK, it has only one time zone.  Even bigger countries like India have one.  You may have to do a search for "India time zones" to see if they country you're targeting has one or more time zones, like the U.S. has 4, not sure about AK or HI.  For instance I found that Australia has more than one.  So I found the cities at each end of Australia (Perth to the west and Brisbane to the far East of the continent).

5.  Important!  You can't just make a campaign in Australia and put the scheduling at 9am-5pm.  That won't work because Adwords uses YOUR time zone as the basis.  So you have to use your time zone and then figure our what that time is in the country you want to run ads in.  For example, 9am-5pm in Chicago is 3pm-11pm in the UK.  

How to do this:  Use a cool tool to see what your time zone is in that country.  Here's a cool one:  http://www.worldtimebuddy.com/

Go to that page, put in the city your Adwords time zone is set to.  Look in your billing section of Adwords to find this out.  So for example for Chicago, if that's where you're Adwords time zone was set, enter it as a city.  Then enter the city you want to find the time in.   Let's do Mumbai, India.  Then drag the little green box on 9am-5pm for Chicago.  You'll see that it shows what 9am-5pm is in Mumbai...

Write this down.  Repeat for all the countries you want to target.  

Here's what I got for the countries I wanted to show the client's ads in at only 9am-5pm their time:

Australia:  10pm-11am

UK:  3p-11pm

Italy:  4p-2a

India:  8:30pm-4:30am

S. Africa:  5p-3am

Now in Adwords, go to your newly uploaded campaigns for your countries for each country.  So for UK I'd go to Settings, Advanced Settings, Ad Scheduling, Edit.  I see that I have down that 9am-5pm the clients Adwords account time is 3p-11pm in the UK.  That's what I'd put down then click save.  

That's it!  Too Easy!  That's why they pay us the big bucks.  ; )

Did this help you?  Hope so!

Figuring Out Time Zones in PPC Campaigns Part 1

Have you ever had to run PPC campaigns outside the time zone you were in, but only for a specific time period.  For instance if you're targeting the entire U.S. with your campaign yet are based in New York, how would this work?  

Its called Adwords Dayparting or Ad Scheduling.  You can set the days or times of the day your ads show.  To learn how, go here:  http://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2404244?hl=en

P.S.:  This is Part 1 of a 2 Part Series

First of all, why would you want to do this?

1.   You can save money.  You might not want to waste money and clicks on people who are awake at 2 am and click on your ad when you're not at work to answer the phone.  

2.  You can get better performance.  People might click on your ads on Saturday when you're not there to respond, or your ads may show and show and no one is going to buy a new office IT system at 4 am.  So because you ad shows but no one clicks, your performance goes down and cost goes up.  

Things you might not know:

If you are using Adwords, you set up the the time zone when you set up the account.  And once its set, you can't change it.  

So taking the above example:  

Let's say you want to target the entire U.S., but only during normal office hours of 9am-5pm and again your based in NYC:  

You would look and see that Pacific Time Zone is 3 hours before you.  So to target the whole of the U.S. 9am-5pm you would schedule as follows:  9am Eastern Time to 8pm Eastern Time.  Why?  Because you're starting at 9 am EST but if you shut it off at 5pm EST that would be 2pm PST and your ads wouldn't show in Los Angeles all the way to 5pm L.A. time.  So to do this you'd have to figure in the addition 3 hours and based on your time that would be 8pm.  

Confused yet?  Wait till the next article when you see how to show your ads at a specific time in other countries!

How Import Adwords Campaigns Into Microsoft AdCenter (Part 4 of Series)

So, if you've read parts 1, 2 and three you've set up a main account, invited your clients and got access to their accounts and then created and assigned users to manage those accounts.  Now how do you get all the awesome work you did on their Adwords campaigns into Microsoft AdCenter?   Here's how:

1.  Download and Install Microsoft AdCenter Desktop.  If you're familiar with Adwords Editor, this is Microsoft's version of this.  Its basically a desktop program that allows you to make many bulk changes to your AdCenter PPC acounts quickly and effciently. 

If you're not using this program or Adwords Editor and are spending more than 1 hour a week in Adwords or AdCenter.  Download both of those programs now and start learning how to use them.  They will increase your productivity by a factor of at least 20, maybe 100 if you're a power user vs. going online and using the online interface.

That being said this assumes you already have downloaded Adwords Editor and know how to somewhat use it. 

2.  Once you install Microsoft AdCenter Desktop sign in with your user id & password.  This is the user you created to manage the account in part 3 or this series. 

3.  Search through All Accounts, and download this new account.  Even though its empty you have to download this account.

4.  Open Google Adwords Editor.  Export the campaigns you want to export as a csv.:  File>Export Spreadsheet>Export Selected Campaigns and Adgroups, Select the ones you want and click OK.  See this picture:

Very Important Note:  Adcenter accounts have a keyword limit of only 100K.  If you have more than that, you will first have to call adcenter and get them to upgrade the specific account's keyword limits.   Last check they will upgrade you to "self serve plus" with a 2 million keyword limit.

5.  Go back into Adcenter Desktop:  Import>Import from Google>Import from a File>  Find the file you saved using Adwords Editor and Choose file>Check over what is going to be imported carefully the different columns etc. > Import  See Pictures Below:

Note:  Adcenter will may import geo-targeting, languages and many other things.   Make sure you set these settings before activating the account.  See this picture:

6.  Check over the account for any errors.

7.  Set all campaigns to pause, then click Sync.  This will upload the campaigns to the web.

8.  Go into web interface and make sure all campaign settings are correct.  How to:  Click on a campaign, click on Edit Your Campaign Settings.  You may need to check geo targeting, language targeting, budgets and more.

9.  P.S.:  Be sure to set up conversion tracking!

Wow!  That's alot to set everything up and get your users going on Microsoft AdCenter!  But that's why they pay you the big bucks, right?

Please leave comments below if you need clarification.  Please let me know if this has helped you in any way.  Thanks!

How to Setup Up Microsoft AdCenter to Manage Clients Part 3

How to Setup Up Microsoft AdCenter to Manage Clients Part - Client Mangers and Users

In the previous two posts I showed how to 1.  Set up a main Microsoft AdCenter account to manage your clients with and 2.  How to invite a client to have their Microsoft AdCenter account managed by you. 

In part 3 you'll see how to set up users under that main account and assign them to manage your clients.  Note:  Even if you're the only person who will be managing the account you must set it up this way to have it work correctly. 

As we talked about before, Adwords has come a long way as far as being able to easily create an umbrella account where you can manage clients' account all in one place.  Microsoft AdCenter has made many strides recently in trying be easier to use so people will use their PPC platform. 

One source of frustration is how to set things up correctly so you can manage clients' accounts like Adwords MCC.  So, how do you do this?  To be honest, It took quite a bit of phone calls to Microsoft's AdCenter team, getting a person who actually knew what they were talking about and more to get this to work.  It's kind of convoluted, so much so that I actually wrote it down as I wouldn't remember it later.

So below is a brief, step by step account of how to do this.  Of course, Microsoft may change how they do things but this is the latest.  In the comments, please ask questions if you find something's not clear.

What you need to do:

1.  Set up a master account in MS AdCenter like yourbusinessname as the id & get a password. You're not using this to actually do any PPC, this is just a "shell acount".

2.  You need then create users that will be assigned to an account to manage it.  They won't need their own Microsoft AdCenter accounts. 

Here's how to do this:  In AdCenter:  

1. Accounts & Billing>Users>Create a User Profile>Account Roles>Client Admin>Select the Account(s) that you will manage.  Important:  Set the user who is a client manager as the following type of user:  Client Admin.  You'd think it would be Advertiser Campaign Manager since that's what you're doing but its not.  See this picture: 
2. 
3. Wait for the email verification.  When it comes, enter email verification code in, select password.  Sign into MS Adcenter.  You'll then see the accounts you'll have access to.  Select that account and you're in.

That's basically it.  Part 4 will show how to import your clients Adwords campaigns into Microsoft AdCenter. 

Did this help you?  Do you need clarification on this?  If so, please leave a comment below. 

How to Setup Up Microsoft AdCenter to Manage Clients Part 2

In the first post I showed how to set up the main account to manage your clients with.  The next thing you'll need to do is get invited by your clients to manage their accounts.  This is what I'll cover in part 2.

How to Invite Clients to Manage Their Microsoft AdCenter Accounts. 

1.  Before doing this you MUST find your Customer Number.  To do this:

A.  Login to your Microsoft AdCenter main account that you'll be using to manage your clients accounts.

B.  Click on the Accounts & Billing tab.  Click on Company Information Tab. 

C.  You'll see ther your Customer Number.  Write it down.  Very Important Note:  This number usually starts with a "C".  It is not the number that starts with an X and its not the Customer ID that you see below the Customer Number.  This was very frustrating to figure out.  See the picture below where it is highlighted in yellow:

2.  Also write down the email that is associated with this main account.

3.  Have your client (or your client may allow you to login to their account if they give you access) login to the Microsoft AdCenter account.  They'll go to Accounts & Billing> Agency Management> Click on Invite Agency.  See the picture here:

Then they click invite agency the pop window below will open.  This is where they or you will enter the Customer Number and email you wrote down from above and click Send Invitation:

4.  Once this invite has been sent you'll sign into your main account management account.  Go to Accounts & Billing> Agency Management, select client, Accept Invitation. Once you do they'll be in your list of clients you now have access to manage their accounts.

You'd think that's it and now you can get to work on your clients accounts.  Not so fast!  You actually have to create users under your main client manager account to manage the client's accounts.  This will be the subject of Part 3.

Let me know in the comment below if this has helped you or if you need any clarification.  Thanks!