Google is making some big changes in AdWords right now — here are four updates that medical marketers should be aware of.
Google is constantly adding new features and making updates to the AdWords platform. Sometimes these changes are incredibly beneficial to digital marketers, and sometimes they necessitate a strategic shift to avoid penalization or diminished ROI. Either way, medical marketers need to stay on top of these changes in order to maximize the value of their digital campaigns and stay out in front of their competitors.
In the past month alone, Google has announced four AdWords updates that are highly relevant to medical marketers — here’s what you need know.
In an effort to provide more value to its users, Google assigns a “Quality Score” to every ad, which affects its overall visibility and cost per click. This score is based upon three components: clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience.
On May 15th, Google announced it will would be rolling out several improvements to Quality Score reporting that would allow for more visibility into these scores. First, Google will make it easier to review the three Quality Score components at scale, and to share them. You will now be able to add three new optional status columns (“Exp. CTR,” “Ad Relevance” and “Landing Page Exper”) to keyword reports for a more comprehensive snapshot of your current scores.
You’ll also be able to view historical Quality Score data to gain a better understanding into how strategic changes to your account, like ad optimization, impacted your score. According to Google, this data will be available via four new columns: “Qual. Score (hist.),” “Landing page exper. (hist.),” “Ad relevance (hist.)” and “Exp. CTR (hist.).”
When Google originally introduced Enhanced Cost Per Click (ECPC), it was designed to increase ROI by upping your CPC bid 30% in cases where you were more likely to get a conversion. Now, Google is removing that 30% bid cap to more fully account for different conversion rates across factors like audience demographics and geographic location. ECPC still doesn’t adjust for differences in conversion rates between mobile and other devices, so you may want to set a bid adjustment on your mobile ads. Expect to see these changes rolling out in early June.
Oftentimes, an ad click doesn’t immediately result in a conversion. Rather, it can trigger a series of events that might ultimately lead to an offline sale, possible over the phone or even in-person at your hospital or practice. Google already allows digital marketers to import offline conversions into AdWords, which helps you gain more insight into how your online ads affect offline sales.
Now, Google allows you to schedule these imports instead of uploading them manually, saving you time and reducing errors. You can opt to upload offline conversions from clicks and calls on a daily or weekly basis.
Recognizing that mobile has fundamentally changed the consumer journey, Google is rolling out a beta for its new Ads Data Hub, designed to “help advertisers get more detailed insights from their campaigns across screens while also protecting user privacy.”
Ads Data Hub will provide access to more detailed, impression-level data about media campaigns across multiple devices. It will also allow you to incorporate data from other marketing platforms, such as a CRM system or marketing database, as well. This more comprehensive view will allow medical marketers to connect the dots and get a better sense of their overall performance and ROI in an increasingly fragmented, omnichannel world.