Google AdWords: Utilizing Shared Libraries to Increase Efficiency of Search Campaigns

The Shared libraries feature within AdWords is something that many advertisers still aren’t taking full advantage of. For those working within large accounts, the benefits are huge. Not only are you saving time by limiting the number of changes you make on a campaign by campaign basis, but it will help keep your account much more organized. Two of the Shared Library features that you’ll want to look into utilizing when running Search campaigns include Campaign Negative Keyword Lists and Shared Budgets.

Campaign Negative Keywords

In most accounts, especially the big ones, you’ll have negative keywords that are used throughout multiple campaigns. As an example, perhaps you have an ecommerce store selling both ‘new’ and ‘used’ items. Likely there are generic negatives common to all campaigns associated with each of these two categories. For ‘New’ campaigns, you may have negatives such as ‘used’, ‘pre-owned’ or ‘second hand’ which may need to be added to a dozen campaigns. By utilizing the Shared Library, you can consolidate negative keywords into lists and then attach them to the appropriate campaigns. As another example, perhaps you have an ecommerce store focused on Sports Apparel. Likely you’ll have negatives common to all of your ‘Basketball Jerseys’ campaigns or common to all of your ‘Basketball Shorts’ campaigns. Creating Shared Library lists help limit the number of times you go into each campaign on an individual basis. Not only will this make you more efficient, but it will make your account much tidier. You’ll reduce the likelihood of errors resulting from campaigns you missed adding negative keywords to. It will also help organization efforts by allowing you to effortlessly identify which negative keywords have already been added, making updates easier.

Shared Budgets

This is a feature that came out a few months ago, but was long sought after by account managers. In case you haven’t heard, Shared Budgets gives you the ability to set one budget for multiple campaigns across your account. As an example, let’s say that you’re running an account for a BMW dealership with campaigns targeting both New and Used models of BMWs. Now you have the ability to set one budget for all of the ‘New’ car campaigns, and another budget for all of the ‘Used’ car campaigns. If you have dozens of car models under the New and Used categories, this will help make budget management that much easier.