In PPC, juggling thousands of data from giant spreadsheets and finding meaning to your numbers can take a long time. Efficiency and time management are two essential factors for any account manager, knowing the fastest way to analyse data and create new AdWords campaigns it can lead to greater performance of the same and together a better use of time.
Excel is one of the most powerful tools at the moment to be efficient in account management. It can help you to create campaigns more quickly and systematically, and you can also use them on many levels during the configuration.
In this post we present a series of Excel functions for Adwords that will make your account management much easier from the construction of campaigns, the copies of ads and the analysis of data sets.
Here are some of the tricks to shoot your productivity and take your PPC management to the next level. Don’t miss them!
Tabla de contenidos
= IF. ERROR (argument; value_if_error)
We often produce reports of our campaigns that return us to illegible values.
The formula IF. ERROR intercepts and controls these errors in the cells, and it is very useful because if we want to make a visually attractive presentation to share with a client, it is a quick way to clean this data that does not give us any information.
Simply we have to write to the formula what you want Excel to show in cells that contain bugs, such as a hyphen.
= Replace (text, original_text, new_text)
This feature allows you to replace text in a cell, and from a PPC perspective, you can use it to transform keywords into wide-match modified keywords.
There is no easy way to do this in the AdWords Editor, but Excel can make this work easier for you. To do this, copy and paste the keywords you want to convert to a modified broad match in Excel, and in the next column apply this formula.
Adding the “+” at the front of the formula, we add the first sign +, and then the formula looks for any space and replaces it with a “space +”.
While this is possible in AdWords Editor, it can take a long time and be a bit laborious.
= Concatenate (Text _1; Text _ 2;…)
When campaigns require repetitive tasks related to keywords, using Excel is the perfect way to stay organised.
For this reason, this formula is your best friend when it comes to building a campaign from the beginning. It is used to combine the contents of two or more cells, along with any other text constant if necessary.
When you need to make variations of keywords This concatenation formula will be a time saver, because it will allow you to combine the terms very quickly.
Also with it you can also create modified broad concordance keywords by adding the plus sign to the exact concordance type keywords.
Note: Concatenate will not add spaces. If you want to include a space you will have to put,» «, between the two cells that you want to combine. If you want to add text, you also have to put it in quotation marks.
= Len (cell)
This formula is very simple and useful when it comes to creating ads because, as in AdWords there are character limits, it will allow us to make sure that we conform to these editorial norms.
Google has recently introduced expanded text ads (ETA), which feature 2 headlines – with 30 characters available – and a description section of 80 characters.
This function (used as = LONG (cell number)) counts the characters thus facilitating the calculation of those that are available to us not to exceed the limit.
It can also be used if we want to make changes to the texts of the ads, if we download them and re-upload them to AdWords directly from Excel.
= VLOOKUP (search_value; matrice_search_in; indicator_columns)
This formula allows us to find a value within a range of data, that is, we can look for a value within a table and know if that value exists or not, and is extremely useful to search through hundreds of rows of data and compare multiple sets.
The best use of this feature for PPC is to compare data from multiple date intervals. By looking at the results month after month, you can find out what has changed in your accounts to help you identify opportunities or solve problems within a campaign.
For example, if you want to compare month-to-month conversions for your keywords, once you have those reports, you can easily use this formula to find out which ones have had better performance and whether it has increased or decreased.
To use it it is necessary to have the information organised vertically, by columns, because it traverses the data in this way until finding the searched value.
= COUNT.IF (range, condition)
This formula serves to count cells in a range that meet the specified condition.
= PROPER CAPITALIZES (text)
Part of creating the an effective copy for an ad implies that it excels visually. With that in mind, it’s very common to capitalize every word in an ad.
Thanks to this practical formula you won’t have to capitalize all the text manually. When you enter the cell, the phrase will become a fully capitalised text block.
And finally…
Don’t underestimate the time savings you’ll get with keyboard shortcuts, they can be your best friend once you learn them.
There is a big chance to have worked with Excel for years and not knowing them all. As a rule, don’t waste time using the mouse if you don’t have to. Use shortcuts as a natural part of your work process, and you’ll be surprised how much time you can save to devote to other tasks.
The most known are to cut (CTRL + X), copy (Ctrl + C) and paste (CTRL + V), in addition to the most used.
These are some of the less obvious that you will appreciate having learned:
(Alt + D + f + f) = Creates filters at the top of each column.
(Alt + W + F + R) = freezes the top row in the Excel sheet.
(Ctrl + SHIFT + 4) = Changes the values of the selected cells to the currency format.
(Ctrl + SHIFT + 5) = It gives format to a number as a percentage.
(Ctrl + H) = Find and Replace.
(Ctrl + D) = Copies the formula or values from the top cell of the selected range to the lower cell in the selected range.
(Sum () WITH ALT +) = automatically adds () a full column or row by clicking the first empty cell in the column. Then press the ALT and = button to summarise the numbers in the previous cells.
Even the best professionals in the PPC admit that some of their tasks are annoying and take a long time if you do not use these Excel tricks. Mastering them can make the tuning and optimisation of campaigns much less complicated.
We hope that these Excel functions for AdWords will help you from now on to get the most out Of your AdWords campaigns and that you can apply them in your day to day. Now your PPC scan will be faster than ever.
If you want to know more tricks to manage your AdWords campaigns do not hesitate to visit our blog in the coming weeks. We’re waiting for you!
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