The Quick Guide to AdWords IF Statements

The Quick Guide to AdWords IF Statements

If you’re looking to simplify your paid advertising structure and cut costs at the same time, then we’ve got a way for you to boost your efforts with some minimal effort in the form of using IF statements. This is something that Google rolled out earlier this year, and so we’ve put together a quick guide below to how to get started with using IF statements, cut your ad creation time, and reduce the number of campaigns you have running.

What is an IF statement

IF statements are simple conditionals based on some fairly basic parameters. Essentially, if a condition is met, then the IF statement displays one thing, e.g. “Shop from your mobile device”, and if the condition isn’t met, then it displays another thing, e.g. “Buy from us today”. You’ve probably encountered them before when using Excel or another piece of spreadsheet software, but if you’ve not, then you don’t need to worry as they’re not hard to use.

Using IF statements instead of separate RLSA campaigns

These Ads below are using the new IF function which allows you to target audiences (& mobile devices) within the ad copy. In certain scenarios, they allow you to do away with separate RLSA campaigns as you can use them within standard campaigns with bid-only RLSA targeting. The copy adapts according to your IF statement, allowing you to tidy up your campaigns a lot and cut out any unnecessary campaigns that might be wasting PPC spend, so they’re ideal for keeping your costs down.

These types of ads really come into their own when you can hit the target audience with offers e.g., “Basket abandoners – Save 10% off your basket” vs a generic buy online now or you can show 2 different discount levels based on how the audience has previously interacted on the site, making IF statements ideal to cover every aspect of your paid marketing.

How the IF statement works

The example below is targeting a specific RLSA audience, in this case anyone that’s visited Marvel branded pages.

{=IF(audience IN(Marvel Visitors 365), See Our Even Bigger Range Now): Huge Range of Super Hero Tees}

– Section 1 – the red section within the first closed brackets is your audience name
– Section 2 – the orange section is the text that shows to the audience specified
– The last section in purple is your default text, this will show to everyone that is not the audience you identified in section 1

Examples of IF statements

Full Example Text

Headline 1	Headline 2	Description	Path
Official Marvel T-Shirts	{=IF(audience IN(Marvel Visitors 365), See Our Even Bigger Range Now): Huge Range of Super Hero Tees}	Official Superhero Merchandise. Order by 4pm for Next Day UK Delivery!	Marvel

You can use the IF statement in either the headline or description but not in the final URL due to Google’s rules. You can use it to target mobile devices or remarketing audiences as well, as shown below.

An example IF Statement for targeting mobile and non-mobile devices:

Headline 1	Headline 2	Description	Path
Official Marvel T-Shirts	{=IF(device=mobile,Shop Our Mobile Friendly Site):Shop Online Now}	Huge Range of Official Superhero Merchandise. Free Delivery on All Orders Over £40	Marvel

We hope you found these tips and examples useful and can put them into practice with your paid advertising campaigns. If you have any questions about how to implement IF statements in your paid advertising, or are struggling to optimise your PPC accounts, then we’d love to hear from you. Drop us an email at chat@infinitynation.com or call01793 238 697