Prepare for the holiday season

Summer is a good time to review your account structure, both in preparation for back-to-school and to make sure it's in shape for the 2008 holiday season.

We've put together some recommendations for developing an effective account structure:

• Break your campaigns out so they fit in categories. Often the best place to get ideas for this category structure is from the structure of the website itself.
• For a neatly structured and highly targeted account, create a separate campaign for each product you sell. Then organize each of those campaigns into separate ad groups, each focusing on a specific theme.
• Brand keywords and non-brand can perform quite differently. Consider separating them into different campaigns.
• Use targeted landing pages to send customers directly to the information highlighted in your ad.
• Summer is a great time to test different ad variations. Refine your campaigns by trying out various ad formats, contextual targeting and placement targeting on Google's content network. Then take the combinations that work best and apply them to your holiday campaigns.
• Consider creating targeted ad variations, such as local business ads that show in Google Maps results and can help drive consumers to your store.
• Use Google Analytics to gain insight into key campaign metrics, such as the Keyword Positions and the Geo-Targeting Overlay.

For example, if you sell different types of backpacks, your campaign and ad groups might look like this:

Benefits

Organizing your account into different campaigns with highly specific ad groups will:

	Allow you to see which keyword and ad text themes are leading to clicks and conversions
	Ensure your keyword themes are clearer and your ad text more relevant
	Make it easier to add new campaigns and ad groups by following the same clear structure
	Give you more control over your costs, since you can set different budgets for each campaign

For more information on account structure, visit our Retail Industry Knowledge Center.