Quick Way to Create Fifty Campaigns?

Localized campaigns with state names in headlines

[swoop]

I would like to have multiple campaigns, each very similar but targeted to a particular locality. Say, a campaign for "Alabama Widgets" and one for "Arizona Widgets" and one for "Arkansas Widgets," etc. The state name in the headline would be the only difference in the ads. The keyword would be "widgets" for every campaign.

Is there an easier way to do this than creating the campaigns one-at-a-time? Do I really need to create 50 separate campaigns?

[inasisi]

Assuming that you have enough spend to create 50 Campaigns(the normal limit is only 25 campaigns), then this is the only way to target 50 different states. If you do use the Adwords API, this is a very straight forward exercise. Otherwise you might be able to send the Excel file to your Adwords Account Managemr and have him upload it. But I am not sure whether you would be able to create campaigns through that approach.

[eWhisper]

If you have access to bulk upload, you should be able to dynamically generate (or even hand generate) an excel sheet to handle this fairly easily.

Before you do it, you should weight the pros and cons of such a structure:

Pros:
1. Ads are very targeted. Being able to write 'Arkansas Widgets' in an copy for the keyword widgets is very powerful.
2. Ability to bring visitors to geo targeted landing pages.

Cons:
1. If a keyword is disabled in one campaign, it could quickly spread throughout your entire system. Therefore, instead of making a keyword work in one place in your campaign, you have to make sure it works in 50. This is one of the biggest weaknesses of the current Google system.

2. You have to use a linked account to accomplish this. This means data is separated into multiple places. It can be difficult for 3rd party tools to properly automatically update this information, and if you're doing it by hand, you have to really export everything and look at it through spreadsheets.

3. Competing with yourself. If you also run a national campaign using geo targeted keywords (i.e. the keyword is Arkansas widget), you could start competing with yourself on certain keywords. In addition, if you run a national account to hit those individuals that Google can't identify to a specific area, your ads will compete with your ads.(I've had my own ads drive up my own ad click prices in the past - very annoying).

There are definitely advantages to setting up accounts in this fashion, and I'm a big fan of it, but making sure that your own organization doesn't actually hurt you needs to be taking into consideration first.

[mark1111]

>If you have access to bulk upload, you should be able to dynamically generate (or even hand generate) an excel sheet to handle this fairly easily.

Didn't know it was available with Google. How do you do it? By sending to a rep, as mentioned above, or is there another way?

[HitProf]

Cons:
1. If a keyword is disabled in one campaign, it could quickly spread throughout your entire system. Therefore, instead of making a keyword work in one place in your campaign, you have to make sure it works in 50. This is one of the biggest weaknesses of the current Google system.

eWhisper, are you sure this is still the case? I thought I've seen keywords disabled recently in one campaign but not in another.

@swoop:
Even if you can't bulk upload, it's not so hard to create those campaigns manually if you have everything ready for copy/paste. The number could be a problem though, best contact Google.

[eWhisper]

eWhisper, are you sure this is still the case? I thought I've seen keywords disabled recently in one campaign but not in another.

I've seen this go back and forth a few times recently. That's why I used the qualifier could in the statement. While it might not be happening to everyone right now (and I know of some people who it is still happening to), one change to the algo could bring the scenario back overnight.

[swoop]

Even if you can't bulk upload, it's not so hard to create those campaigns manually if you have everything ready for copy/paste.

It always takes me awhile to create a campaign, because the workflow is not intuitive...I never know which link to go to next. Of course, if I sit down and create 25 campaigns the steps will probably become pretty automatic :)