← The Paid Search Podcast | A Weekly Podcast About Google Ads and Online Marketing
The Paid Search Podcast | A Weekly Podcast About Google Ads and Online Marketing
My 3 Favorite Google Ads POWER TOOLS (Episode 493)
00:25:15
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hello and welcome to the paid search podcast. My name is Chris and Merry Christmas. It is a few days before Christmas. Here I am here in Texas. I, I tried to wear a long sleeve shirt. I have a little vest on, trying to be in the Christmas spirit, winter spirit as it is. And now here I am in my office and I'm sweating and I had to turn the air conditioner on because it's too hot. It's, it's not cold, there's no snow. It's hard to pretend to be in the winter spirit here in Texas. I tried and now I'm hot. So forgive me if, if you're watching this on YouTube, you see me, you know, see my forehead glistening a bit. I'm sweating, it's hot and my AC hasn't kicked on yet. So anyway, we're going to continue on with the podcast. You can probably tell it's a little different feel this week. I'm going to be taking next week off. I'm recording this episode and, and I'm going to dedicate the entire episode to my three favorite things in the world of Google Ads management. There are three things that I really like, little power tools that I like to use. And I mean these are pretty special to me and to my surprise, a lot of people don't use them, don't realize the value of these tools and I'm going to discuss why I like them. You know what they are and you know how you can use them and why. I think you should, you should check them out. So before I jump into these three, I want to tell you about optio.com PSP now, Optio is not included in my, my list of three because you can guarantee you're going to hear about them on my show because they are the one thing that keeps this show going and they're a given. So Optio is the best power tool for managers both big and small. If you want to get more done in Google Ads, there's no better tool that than using Optio. Optio is a paid tool but for a limited time you can try it for free for 28 days. So if you, if you haven't nabbed your 28 day free trial, be sure and do so. You can grab your free trial@opteo.com PSP and I'll tell you it was about a year ago that they were giving away longer free trials and they shortened it about a year ago. So you know, if you're thinking about it, you might want to be sure and jump in now because they, they could change this offer. Again, the offer is not guaranteed, so be sure and try it for free@optio.com PSP right. So I'm going to tell you my, my three favorite things, my three favorite power tools in Google Ads, right up front and then I'm going to describe them. So the first one is Google Ads Editor. The next one is an MCC or a. My Client center is another term for it. My client center, MCC in Google Ads. And then last is Google Ads Scripts. I also have a bonus that I might mention at the end. I haven't decided if I, if I have time I'll mention it. But I have a bonus one as well that I'll mention. So what is Google Ads Editor? Let's go through these and these are in order of my favorite things in Google Ads, my favorite power tools. So let's start with Google Ads Editor. What is Google Ads Editor? Well, it's a free tool and all of these are free by the way. It's a free tool that you can download and it's made by Google. It is not a third party system. It's not made by anybody outside of Google. It is made by Google and it connects directly to your Google Ads campaigns, plural. So let me pitch you on why I think it's a great thing to use. Number one, I can copy and paste campaigns, ad groups, ads keywords, ad schedule. I mean just anything in Google Ads, just about I can copy and paste, not necessarily just from account, you know, within that one account I can copy from account to account. And this, this will come into play in my second favorite thing, which is MCC here. In a moment, we'll save that for a moment. But with Google Ads Editor, if there's one thing that makes it a power tool is the fact that I can copy and paste. So I'm looking at it now, I have it on screen. I'm not sharing my screen. No need to do that. I can just describe it. Let me pitch it to you. Let me explain why it's a great tool that you should try. Google Ads Editor. I can highlight a campaign, hit command C, right? I'm on Mac or Control C for those of you that still use a PC. Copy and then paste. Right, I can copy that campaign and then paste that campaign. Now that new pasted campaign is not immediately live. It's only right here on my computer. So I can, I can make changes to this, I can edit this, I can adjust it how I want. I could change some keywords, let's say my most immediate Time of using this was I had a client who runs a daycare, right? They run a daycare in a certain metro area in the US and they said, hey, we have another daycare we want you to start running. It's in this area. It's. It's the exact same thing, but it's in a different area. And, you know, you need to have some different geographic terms in it. You know, need to change the name and stuff like that. Little small things. So it took me all of a couple minutes to build this campaign for them. I copied and pasted the campaign and then went in after uploading, Right, you upload from Google Ads Editor. I then went into Google Ads, the UI, the interface, Google googleads.com, right, the actual interface, and made my geographical changes there, a few tweaks here and there, and I was done. It was launched. Took a couple minutes. So you say, well, Chris, I don't have additional locations that I need to launch. Why would I need this tool? Well, I'll tell you another reason that it could make a huge difference in your performance of, you know, launching campaigns, testing campaigns is do you have an idea you want to try? And does that idea never get launched because you're apprehensive about the time it would take to build it out? Google Ads Editor can help you just immediately copy the campaign you have and paste it. And then maybe you want to try running your exact campaign with broad match keywords, with a different bidding strategy, and you want to just run both campaigns at the same time. I mean, there's all kinds of crazy reasons that you might want to try something like that. Try it in a different area, try a different time of day. So you immediately copy and paste it right here in Google Ads Editor and it's done. I mean, it makes launching campaigns both big and small, so much faster. Another thing that I use it for is when I have a new account that I'm building and I know what kind of ad groups I want to build, I'll immediately create a campaign, create five, six, seven ad groups that are all blank, create a templated ad that I copy and paste into each one of the ad groups, throw a couple keywords into each of the ad groups, and then upload it. And now immediately, I have a kind of skeleton framework to start building on for a new campaign. So new client launches, new campaign launches from scratch are a hundred times faster because I don't have to use the clunky Google Ads ui. And anyone who is going to be nerdy enough to listen to A paid search podcast about Google Ads is going to know the Google UI is bloated with AI crap. And in fact, I think I've heard this is the, the term of the year, right? It's AI slop. Google Google Ads is not allergic or not immune, I should say to AI slop. They try and pre fill your, your ad copy. They try and pre fill your keywords. They try and choose your bidding strategy for you. They try and take over everything and say let, let our AI slop just cover it in filth and grime for you so that you'll have an absolute trash campaign. Right? I mean that's what, that's what AI is doing for us nowadays. It's the big, it's the big conquering, amazing tool that just throws slime and slop over the top of everything. It's absolute trash. You know how you can stop getting that AI slop showing up? Use Google Ads Editor. It doesn't pre fill your keywords, it doesn't pre fill your ad copy. It's wonderful. So I can build a skeleton kind of framework of, you know, a complex Google Ads campaign very quickly. It is phenomenal because I don't have to use the clunky, awful UI that Google's forcing us in down the AI pipe to be able to get this stuff done. I can avoid all of it. It's wonderful. So let's say maybe you don't have new campaigns to launch and instead, you know, you need to make seasonal changes, right? Once Christmas is over, once this whole shopping season, Christmas season stuff is done, maybe you need to change some pricing in your ads, you need to change the seasonal messaging in your ads, maybe change all of your 2025 over to 2026 when the new year comes. Okay. Google Ads Editor has a bulk edit feature. I can highlight all of my keywords, all of my ads and say every time there's the word 2025 or every time there's, you know, something that mentions this thing in the keyword or the ad, I can bulk change it to 2026 or whatever I want it to say. You're going to change your discount percentage. You know, maybe it's, maybe it's 35%, you know, during this last week of Christmas and then right after Christmas it's gonna drop, you know, getting to remove the percentage discount in your ads. Well, immediately you can do that. You can remove all of that in bulk. Done. Click upload, done. So bulk edits are available and I'm just scrapping, scratching the surface. I Mean, there's so many things that you can do with this tool. It is the ultimate number one Google Ads power tool out there. But let me draw a line in the sand and say here's where it fails. It is not for management. It is not for day to day tweaking. It is not a reliable system for you to jump in and see how your search terms look or see how your campaigns are performing. They added an overview screen for you to look at the overview metrics and you know, your impressions and your ctr. It's junk, it's stupid, it's, it takes, it's clunky, it's, it's too much work. You have to download it. It's not, you know, it's, it's not data that is updated until you download the update from your campaign. So I do not recommend it for maintenance day to day management work, but for launching, editing, copying campaigns, ad groups, keywords, ad copy. It is, it's phenomenal. It's phenomenal. I highly recommend it. So there you go. There's number one Google Ads power tool is Google Ads Editor. Download it. Just search on Google Google Ads Editor and download the tool right there on on google.com and let me know what you think about is it's a game changer for many people and I'm happy to highlight it for those of you that are, that are listening. During this time of year when most people aren't focused on Google Ads, right, you have a little treat here during the last of the year. So next, my favorite tool is my client center. That's mcc. That is a term that's been around for many, many years and it is a specific manager account. So let me explain what an MCC is and why you should have it. So the MCC is a tool designed for anyone that has more than one account. So if you have multiple businesses or you're an agency or freelancer or Google Ads Manager of some kind and you have multiple clients, you should set up an mcc. Okay, one, the number one reason why you should do this is because your columns, your settings, your personal customization to how your Google Ads looks is one and done. You set it up in your MCC and when you change over to different accounts, it looks the same for every account. I cannot stress enough how slow your management and optimization process will be if you do not have proper columns set up in your Google Ads. If you don't have clicks, impressions, click through rate absolute top percentages, conversions cost per conversion, conversion rate, your ROAS numbers, your search impression share numbers if you don't have all of that set up for your, all of your campaigns at a dashboard view, to be able to view immediately and be able to see what's happening, you're slowing down your optimization process, you're slowing down your management. You should have those perfectly and your eyes should know, should know where to look to see those numbers immediately. You shouldn't waste time adding columns or moving columns, you know, scrolling left and right, up and down on your, on your computer to try and see these metrics. They should be immediately visible and you should be able to hop through your campaigns quickly. If you're changing accounts to look at each client's account separately, you are not doing it right. You should always have an MCC if you have more than one account. Okay, so sign up for an MCC account. Link all of the accounts that you're managing into this one mcc. And now you can customize the way that your keywords look, the way that your ad copy looks, the way that your ad groups look, all of your columns, all of your columns, and the order of those columns, how wide each of the columns are. Your graph at the top of your MCC is going to be uniform so that it always shows the same metrics, the same colors, and every time you look at an account, it's always going to be there. I mean, this is, this is incredibly important that you have these things because it slows down your management if you don't. Let me give you the lamest reason of all about why you should have an mcc, right? But I need to mention this because maybe this is the trigger for you, some of you who don't know this, but one reason to have an MCC is because it is the first step to becoming a certified Google Partner, right? I could not tell you one discernible advantage of being a Google Ads Partner. It is the even me a premier partner. I cannot tell you one discernible advantage. But maybe that's a goal. Maybe that's something you want to attain, you know, just for clout, just for the ability to put something on your website. That is the first step. You must hit a certain spend volume level in order to attain your Google Ads Partner status. And that spend level must be done through an mcc. Google doesn't recognize you as a manager. If you have multiple accounts under one email and you're just flipping through those accounts, it must be through an mcc. That's how you get your certification. Your certification is done through that. You take your test through that mcc. Your Google Partner status is determined through all of that so, I mean, I don't know if anybody cares about Google Partner status anymore. It's kind of a joke. I maintain mine. I don't really know why, but that is one reason. Like I said, it's the lamest reason of all, but that's one reason to maintain your mcc. So last, I want to tell you about my favorite tool, my third favorite. So this is, this is a distant third. It's a distant third. But Google Ads Scripts, I would say, are power tools for Google Ads. Now. I use them very sparingly and this year was the very first time that I actually invited someone and had someone on my podcast. Artur McClellan is the gentleman that I had on my show and he has what's called a negative keyword script. So this is a tool that runs and constantly adds negative keywords according to a specific protocol to your campaigns. So it can be a wonderful tool. You can go back and listen to my episode. I sorry, I do not have the number for you at the moment, but it was this year, 2025. You can go back and listen about Google Ads scripts. There are innumerable scripts out there. So my bigger point is this. I'm not a big scripts fan, but I realize I probably should put a bit more energy into learning about them and trying them. But I just, I just don't really find a whole, a lot of a place for them. But it is absolutely a power tool that some people can absolutely use. So if you want to have some kind of, you know, power tool that can do bulk actions for you, can add negative keywords, can adjust budgets, can, you know, change and pause keywords for you, adjust bids. I mean, there's an endless number of scripts that, that can be applied to your campaigns, your accounts using these Google Ads Word scripts. Try it out. It might be something that you want to, you know, to try out for specific clients, for maybe all of your clients, you know. But do be careful because I don't talk about scripts a lot because I'm not a big shortcut guy. All right, you might have gotten that impression for me. But I'm not much of a guy that believes in, you know, hey, there's a, there's an easier way to do this. No, I'm pretty old fashioned in the way that I think that some of the best management, some of the best results, some of the best work that you can do is not done through AI slop, that's for sure. It's not done through bulk actions, it's not done through shortcuts it's done through genuine Knowledge Skills application in your Google Ads accounts. And that's how I've always run my accounts. And sometimes I find that scripts run outside of that window. You know, they push people towards shortcuts and you know, making, making adjustments that are, you know, purposely designed just to, just to save time, cut responsibility and you know, be able to help you manage more, get to get more done in a, in a shorter, short amount of time by actually being responsible for less and outsourcing it to, to the robots, to the programs, to the scripts. Not something I really get behind. So do be cautious there. Don't over apply it. But I do, I do think there's something to explore there, particularly Artur McClellan. He, he had a really good script that I thought was very basic and helped me. It did help me. So I appreciate him being on the show earlier this year and yeah, I think I'm gonna leave it there. That is, that's gonna be my final show for the year. I'm gonna be taking some time. I'm actually gonna be. When you're listening to this, I'm going to be on the ski slopes. I'm going to be. I'm a skier. I've always been just a normal two skis kind of guy. I'm going to try snowboarding. So for the first time, I'm gonna try snowboarding. My wife kind of pushed me towards it. You know, I'm a strong guy, work out, do CrossFit, lift tremendous amount of weight. I should be strong enough to handle a little board. Yeah, we'll find out. We'll find out whether I, whether the board's going to handle me or I'm going to handle the board. I might go back to my skis, but we'll see if failure is in store with, for me, for this, for this Christmas trip. But I appreciate you guys being with me this year. I, of course, do not plan on stopping. This is just a short break. I'm going to take a short break for Christmas being with my family as we ski. And of course we're not skiing here. As I said, I'm sweating here. I'm still sweating in my office. It's, it's, it's hot still with my, my, my winter apparel on. But we'll be out in Colorado. But this is not, this is, this is just a short break. I will be back in 2026, so you can reach out to me. In the meantime, if you have questions about your Google Ads campaigns, you can send an email to the show, paid search podcastmail.com or if you'd like to reach out to me for management coaching. One on one coaching is something that's very popular. I book a lot of those sessions every single day. I help. I've helped thousands and thousands of people through these sessions. I promise you'll be very pleased with the hour consulting that I do. I've had, I've helped many, many people and never, literally never had a complaint or anybody say that it wasn't worth it. I can guarantee that it is. So reach out to me chrishaeffer.com to learn about that. Otherwise, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and I'll see you guys in a couple weeks.