Thinking through your campaigns like an information architect is a useful way to plan and optimize your search marketing campaigns.
Like websites and applications, campaigns are more effective when they follow a logical flow. Solid IA is not only helpful when planning and classifying campaigns, it’s also useful in structuring the reporting framework. Logically ordered campaigns support more practical reporting and can help search marketers to optimize campaigns.
PPC campaigns follow a strict hierarchy. The top node, Account, contains the billing and administrative information for the account’s owner. Campaign is the next level. Google allows for up to twenty-five campaigns per account. Campaigns are structured around a specific product, concept, or theme. Meta data and setting like geographic targeting, language, and budget are set on the campaigns level.
A campaign may include dozens of specific Ad Groups. Ad Groups contains the components of campaigns, including ad creative (text, Flash, video, etc.) and the keywords and search phrases that will spawn the ads. Ad groups represent the campaigns sales concept. Consideration must go into their structure and organization—properly structure ad groups are the heart and soul of successful PPC campaign.
The lists below illustrate the high-level IA for two campaigns that are focused on the same concept: New England Patriots memorabilia. In the first instance, the ad groups are organized around the players and the memorabilia type constitutes the creative and keywords.
The second campaign structures ad groups around the memorabilia type with player names functioning as creative.
While I can’t say which approach would be more effective, ad group structure clearly plays a major part in campaign approach and, ultimately, the success of the PPC program.
Campaign: Patriots Memorabilia (V1)
Campaign: Patriots Memorabilia (V2)
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Ad Group One: Hats
- Ad Creative: Tom Brady, Randy Moss
- Ad Keywords: Tom Brady Keywords, Randy Moss Keywords
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Ad Group Two: T-Shirts
- Ad Creative: Tom Brady, Randy Moss
- Ad Keywords: Tom Brady Keywords, Randy Moss Keywords
Taking some time to map campaigns using basic information architecture can help advertisers structure their campaigns more effectively. At RDVO, we sketch out our campaigns using a basic hierarchical template that helps us visualize the information relationships in our campaign. By visualizing campaigns using an information architecture approach, we can better structure campaigns and ensure that the campaigns are logical and optimized. This technique also helps us communicate campaign strategy to clients.
Try it for yourself! You can download our PPC information architecture template:
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