How to Manage Multiple Ad Accounts and Rock It!

Campaign Management PPC PPC Basics

Managing multiple accounts is not an easy thing to do and rocking it is even harder. As Head of Digital Advertising at Adcore, I have experienced and faced many kinds of challenges. One of the biggest challenges agencies face is how to be profitable these days. On the one hand, salaries are increasing (in order to keep the good employees in) and on the other hand, the market is becoming very competitive forcing agencies to lower their fees.

This is indeed an unsettling situation forcing us to increase the number of accounts each of our employees manages. In this article, I will talk about six useful tips that helped me and my team to manage multiple accounts efficiently and rock it!

1. Use bid automation – thank me later

Bid Automation has been introduced slowly in the last years, bid strategy at a time, and completely transformed the way digital marketers work since it is a perfect example of a win-win situation. The bid automation manages the bids and bid adjustments while taking into consideration millions of signals with that even getting better results. Of course, like any tool, you need to master it! – understand each algorithm, follow the rules, and give it time to breathe.

So, if you do, the impact will be mind-blowing and will increase profitability for you and your client.

2. Consolidate data!

We can’t talk about bid automation without talking about consolidation as they must go hand in hand. While many of us were taught to create many different campaigns and Single Keyword ad groups (SKAG’s), once bid automation came knocking on our door this world came to an end.

Bid Automation needs big amounts of data for excellent results. The first thing you must do before applying bid automation is to make sure you have enough data in the selected campaigns and ad groups. To summarize it – consolidate and automate!

3. Creative A/B testing is dead. Long live creative automation

One of the first things they teach you in Digital Marketing is to show the right message to the right audience. Doing so on multiple accounts can be challenging and at times even impossible. Thanks to our friends in Google, this is no longer an issue – except for the Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) that have been around for many years, we now also have Responsive Display Ads (RDA) and Responsive Search Ads (RSA) at our disposal.

These types of ads allow us to insert many different text, images & videos in them and they will do the A/B testing themselves. In the next few months, Google will supposedly launch a “creative center” within each account in which every creative will receive a score and we will be able to mix, match and replace the creatives. Not only this will make our life easier but also will improve the results.

4. Save your time – Work with Smart campaigns

Smart shopping and smart display are all types of fully automated campaigns in which, with only a few settings and creatives/feed, the campaign is set and you are good to go.

DSA will save you time and will point you in the right direction by scanning the content of your site and matching relevant search terms with an automatically created ad. Not only that, you will benefit by harvesting low-hanging fruit (i.e search terms that would get “low search volume” typically) you will also get ideas of new keywords to target.

Smart shopping is a new fully automated campaign that made its public debut two years ago. This is a campaign in which all you need to do is to connect the feed from the merchant center, add some settings, and the goal and you are all set. The only issue with this campaign, like all other smart campaigns, is that the campaign is a black box – the amount of data that is shared with the client/digital marketeer is low. Google promises to be more transparent in the future but so far, no news.

The Smart Display campaign is a great way to break out of the old Search-Shopping safe world and still bring good numbers. Smart Display like smart shopping needs a few settings and in a few days, the campaign will start running. The added value of the smart display campaign is that it finds the right audience for you – a task that can be a challenge for many clients.

It is important to know that Smart Display campaigns work especially well with lead generation accounts so if you haven’t tried it yet, you are missing out on sales.

5. Get an advantage by using ad-tech software

All the tools that we have talked about so far are Google tools but, in order to manage multiple accounts and rock it, you need to have an ace down your sleeve. Ad-tech Software can help you in many time-consuming tasks and free you to do what really matters.

Some of the functions are campaign creation, bid automation strategies, feed optimization, report builders, adding search terms, excluding negative search terms, and many more. Most of the ad-tech software costs a few hundred dollars, but they improve results, save valuable time for the digital marketer and allow them to manage more clients in their new free time.

6. Focus on what matters – not just another cliche

Managing time while managing multiple accounts is a very difficult job to do and sometimes you feel overwhelmed. My tip is to focus on the platforms, channels, and tasks that are responsible for the majority of the value (the famous 20% that brings 80% of the value approach). The logic is simple – you need to focus on what will have a big impact. After all, time is money.

Final Thoughts

These are the tools that helped us manage multiple accounts and rock it, and by doing so, improve profitability and results. We face a very difficult task but no need to worry- by applying the tools above, whether it’s Google Automation tools, utilizing the ad-tech software, or combining them, you will reduce your workload and improve the results tremendously.

Manage multiple accounts and rock it may be hard but if you made it so far in the article you’re on the right path already.

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