Campaign hierarchy

I've just assumed the responsibility of an AdWords account that has been managed by several managers over the past years. It has got 597 campaigns and more than 48000 keywords. The account looks pretty clumsy and isn’t performing. The client sells PC utility software in most of the countries.

Previously, while some managers created campaigns with the Countries and then created product related ad groups, some created product related campaigns and simply included the targeted countries in the targeted country list in campaign settings.

I’m a bit confused with the campaign hierarchy. What would be a good and smart hierarchy? Should I create campaigns with product names and simply target countries using location settings, or should I create individual campaigns for all the countries we are catering to?

What would be a recommended hierarchy to manage the campaigns in a better way on a day to day basis?

Thanks in advance.

 

Usually when dealing with campaigns in different countries is to have one campaign for each country. There's a few reasons to do this.

One is that the ads can be more targeted, even if the countries all speak the same language. Think US vs UK spellings (favor vs favour) or different words for same thing (elevator vs lift). Some times it's just different ways of talking. The French in France is sligthly different than in Belgium and in Quebec it can be different still.

The hierarchy is not so much to manage the campaigns in a better way, although it can help. It's to take advantage of how the systems work, both the technology and the human element. You also don't mention if this is a search only campaign or if there's a display, shopping or remarketing campaigns. But each type of campaign also needs to be separate. I wrote a document for that about structure and naming conventions.

A question I would ask is why so many managers? I have had a few clients like this and typically, they just hired the wrong people, pretenders saying they know PPC. Sometimes it's the client's attitude in which case they don't remain my client very long. I try to nip those in the bud so I ask why they had many other managers and why did you fire them.

I suspect you may be working at a company where the manager's job has been passed from employee to employee. In this case, I suggest you hire someone to do this, someone who has done this before and is an expert. Otherwise, it's just going to be a revolving door with no clear direction and the campaign just spinning its wheels which is not going to help the company.