AdWords 101: What’s in my account? (Part 1 of 3)

Your AdWords account is organized in a series of tabs that allow you to manage your campaigns, create reports, control your Analytics tracking, and manage your billing information and preferences. In the first of three lessons covering the various components of your account, we’ll go over what's contained within the first tabbed page known as "Campaign Management." The Campaign Management tab houses much of what you'll need to set up and run your AdWords campaigns, so it's important for you to understand all the different features and tools available to you on this page.

When you log in to your AdWords account, you are automatically taken to the main Campaign Summary page of the Campaign Management tab. You can think of this page as the main dashboard for your account—all of your campaigns are listed with summarized statistics (such as campaign status, impressions, and CTR, to name a few) for your quick perusal. In addition, you can also perform the following functions from the Campaign Summary page:

• Access your campaigns - click on any campaign name to be taken into the Campaign Details page.
  
  
• Search your campaigns – use the handy search box on the upper right corner to locate campaigns, Ad Groups, ads or keywords in your account.
  
  
• View alerts – messages will appear on your Campaign Summary page above the table when we have important notifications about things that may affect your account.
  
  
• Create a new campaign – use the links above the table on the left hand side to create a new keyword- or site-targeted campaign.
  
  
• Change campaign status(es) – need to pause, resume or delete one of your campaigns? Want to change your campaign settings? You can do this easily by clicking the check boxes beside the relevant campaign(s) and then select the appropriate action buttons in the first row of the table.
  
  
• Change the date range - select the time frame for which you'd like to see your statistics reported in the table, be it a pre-defined period such as "last 7 days" or "yesterday", or a custom date range which you specify.
  

Also within the Campaign Management tab are links to Tools and Conversion Tracking. You’ll find these links in the green tab directly under the words "Campaign Management." The tools you’ll find will help you better optimize your ads and analyze your performance. There are even tools to help you more easily modify your campaigns. Some of the tools that we’ve featured on the Inside AdWords blog in the past include the Keyword Tool, Copy or Move Keywords or Ad Text, and the Ads Diagnostic Tool. (We've listed the links to those posts below.)

Conversion tracking is another useful tool for those of you who want to better track the performance of your campaign. You can read more about conversion track in one of our previous posts listed below.

Homework: use the following resources to help you navigate and make the most of out of the tools and features found in the Campaign Management tab.

Learning Center
Navigating the Tabs
Campaign Management

Help Center – FAQ
Account Navigation Demo
Tools
Deciding whether to use Conversion Tracking

Previous Inside AdWords posts
Keyword Tool
Find / Edit Tools
Conversion Tracking

Next time, we'll discuss the next two tabs: Reports and Analytics. Until then, take some time to explore all the links and pages with Campaign Management—you'll be glad that you did!

Posted by Vivian, Inside AdWords crew