Julie Friedman Bacchini provides strategies for organizing digital marketing account structures and naming conventions to maximize data analysis. She recommends including important data points like platform, topic, and geographic targeting in all element names. This allows filtering and segmenting data in platforms by these attributes. Proper tagging of links with parameters ensures all traffic is attributed correctly. Creating a "cheat sheet" legend standardizes naming for consistency across campaigns. Overall, the approach aims to structure accounts like a coder to gain powerful insights from organized data.
Think Like A Coder - A New Account Structure Framework
1. Think Like A Coder –
A New Account Structure Framework
Julie Friedman Bacchini
President, Neptune Moon LLC
2. When You Leave Today You’ll Know:
•How to maximize account performance
with better data organization
•What naming conventions are & why
they work
•Ways to leverage well-named & organized
account data in Google Analytics
3. Account Structure Assumptions
A.K.A. - Things You Should Always Do
Learn from
one platform
& apply
across many
When in
doubt,
break it out
Be specific &
tightly themed
4. The Philosophy Behind It All
• Similar campaigns (audience, geo targeting, messaging) often run on multiple
platforms
• Data analysis is more effective & timely with descriptive naming
• Build accounts and other PPC assets to have as many available built-in data
points as possible
• Pre-plan the types of information you will want to examine to fully analyze
performance
5. Thinking Like A Coder
The more data
points you have, the
more you can
analyze
Platforms
process data
points
A data point
is a SINGLE
item with a
specific value
It’s all about
Data Points
6. Building Like A Coder
Analysis to
Perform
What You Want
To Group
Together
What You Want
To Exclude
Desired
Data
Points
7. • Start your process by thinking about the information you will want to GET OUT
of your account.
• What types of data might you want to group together for analysis?
• What types of data might you want to exclude from each other for analysis?
• Outline all of your desired Data Points, so you can use them in your naming of
things.
Building Like A Coder
Coming Up With Desired Data Points
8. AdWords Campaigns:
• Brand Name
• Restaurant General
• Happy Hour
• Call Ahead Seating
• Special Events
Sample Baseline Structure Outline
Facebook Campaigns:
• Brand Awareness
• Happy Hour Specials
• Live Entertainment
• Daily Specials
BingAds Campaigns:
• Brand Name
• Restaurant General
• Happy Hour
• Call Ahead Seating
• Special Events
Sample Client - Restaurant & Bar
10. Naming Convention: planned scheme for naming things
Naming Conventions should contain all elements in your system – campaigns,
tracking numbers, extensions, landing pages, etc.
Err on the side of over naming everything –
it gives you more data points to work with in analysis
Naming Conventions – Your New BFF
11. Without a naming convention, campaign names tend to lack
description necessary in deeper analysis
• AdWords Campaign Examples:
Awareness
Corporate Lunch
• Facebook Campaign Examples:
Awareness
AC Tune Up
Typical Campaign Names
12. AdWords Campaign Names Naming Convention:
Platform + Campaign Goal/Focus + Geo Target
AdWords Campaign Examples:
AdWords - Initial Brand Awareness - Philadelphia City
AdWords - Corporate Lunch - Delaware County
AdWords - AC Tune Up - South Jersey
AdWords - Happy Hour - Philadelphia Metro
AdWords Campaign Names – With Naming Conventions
13. Facebook Campaign Examples:
Facebook - Initial Brand Awareness - Traffic - Montgomery County
Facebook - AC Tune Up - Traffic - Wilmington
Facebook - AC Tune Up - Lead Gen - Chester County
Facebook - Happy Hour - Conversions - Denver Suburbs
Facebook Campaign Names – With Naming Conventions
Facebook Campaign Naming Convention
Platform + Campaign Goal/Focus + Objective + Geo Target
14. Be specific in the focus of the Ad Group when naming it
Sample Ad Group Names:
Happy Hour - Phila Suburbs - Weekdays
Valentine’s Day - Wilmington
Emergency AC Service - Denver - Weekends
Keep Up The Specifics In Ad Groups
Ad Group Focus + Targeting + Anything Else Unique
Ad Group Naming
15. Be even more specific when naming Facebook Ad Sets
Examples of Ad Set Names:
• Brand Intro - Web Visitors - Traffic - Phila Suburbs
• Happy Hour - Email List - Traffic - Miami
Ad Set Naming - Facebook
Naming Convention For Ad Set Names
Theme of Campaign + Audience + Objective + GeoTarget
16. Be even more specific yet when naming Facebook Ads!
Examples of Ad Names:
• Brand Intro - Free Consult - Web Visitors - Traffic - Phila Suburbs
• Dinner - Surf Turf – Customer LAL - Traffic - Dallas
Naming Convention For Ad Names
Theme of Campaign + Something Unique About The Ad +
Audience + Objective + GeoTarget
Ad Naming - Facebook
17. Follow similar guidelines for naming landing pages
Examples of Landing Page Names
• www.CompanyX.com/ac-tune-up-delaware-county-adwd
• www.CompanyX.com/ac-tune-up-philadelphia-city-fbk
NOTE: You can also use codes for these items if you prefer to be less transparent in your page URLs
Landing Page Path Naming Convention
Topic + geo target + platform
Landing Page Naming Strategy
18. Company X – An HVAC Company
AdWords:
• AdWords - Brand Awareness - Chester County
• AdWords - Brand Awareness - Montgomery County
• AdWords - AC Tune Up - Chester County
• AdWords - AC Tune Up - Montgomery County
Facebook:
• Facebook - Brand Awareness - Traffic - Chester County
• Facebook - Brand Awareness - Reach - Montgomery County
• Facebook - AC Tune Up - Traffic - Chester County
• Facebook - AC Tune Up - Conversions - Montgomery County
Sample Partial Account Structure
19. • Start your process by thinking about the information you will want to GET OUT
of your account.
• What types of data might you want to group together for analysis?
• What types of data might you want to exclude from each other for analysis?
• Outline all of your desired Data Points, so you can use them in your naming of
things.
Building Like A Coder
Data Point Analysis In Action
20. By including the platform, topic and geo targeting in your naming, you can
view groups of campaigns more easily within a platform.
Let’s say you want to see all the campaigns that targeted Philadelphia…
Make Finding Specific Campaigns Easier
AdWords Classic UI
AdWords New UI
21. Searching & Filtering On Facebook
Search/Filter
Names Available
To Show All Philadelphia Targeted Campaigns
You can do this easy geo sorting or analysis because you
defined location as a data point that was important to include in
your naming conventions.
22. By including the platform, topic and geo targeting in your naming
convention, you can easily drill into these items in Analytics.
Why Bother With So Many Data Points?
23. If you want to view all the campaigns
you used for Awareness, across all
platforms in Google Analytics, start
here by using the “contains” criteria
for “Awareness”.
Leave the rest blank.
You’ve now created a Segment that
will show you all Awareness
Campaign traffic in any report/screen.
Segmenting - Start At Top Level Data Points
24. You absolutely can, if all you ever want or need to know is viewable from the
Campaigns area in Google Analytics…
Use the search function from the AdWords >> Campaigns report in GA, enter
Awareness, and only see campaigns who’s names include Awareness.
Can’t You Just Look At Campaigns?
25. If you want to look at
other stats and see
them for a particular
set of your campaigns,
you will need
segments.
This shows device
behavior mobile vs.
desktop for all
Awareness campaigns.
What If You Want More?
26. GA conditions are something you want or do not want to see in a Segment.
Criteria can be entered as OR (if matches any data point chosen) or AND (must
match all data points chosen).
Conditions Are Really Powerful
27. This is where you can mix and match all the data points you’ve generated
to sort, combine or exclude data:
Choose Any Combination Of Data Points
The possibilities are virtually endless for segmenting data –
you will be overjoyed at having set up so many data points!
28. • Start your process by thinking about the information you will want to GET OUT
of your account.
• What types of data might you want to group together for analysis?
• What types of data might you want to exclude from each other for analysis?
• Outline all of your desired Data Points, so you can use them in your naming of
things.
Building Like A Coder
Common Snafus & Questions
29. • AdWords with auto-tagging: AdWords sends back details about Campaign,
Source, Medium, Ad Group, Keyword and Search Query automatically (this
is the default setting)
• For all other platforms: add parameters to your URLs to ensure they are
passed back to GA (they are not natively passed to GA)
Make Sure Data Is Being Sent
30. Add parameters to ALL of your URLs to ensure maximum data is sent back to
Google Analytics (you can do this for non-paid content too!)
A URL builder will create a URL you can use for each campaign, landing page,
etc. and will look something like this:
https://www.CompanyX.com/?utm_source=bingads&utm_medium=cpc&utm
_campaign=bingads_ac_tuneup
Adding URL Parameters Is Key
31. • Referencing your Cheat Sheet
for how you’ve chosen to
name things, build all of the
links for your accounts via a
link builder (more on Cheat
Sheets later!)
• Google has a good one:
https://ga-dev-
tools.appspot.com/campaign-
url-builder/
Use A URL Builder For All Links
32. All paid traffic will not be
counted as such!
Google Analytics uses Medium =
cpc as the indicator that traffic
came from paid advertising
**Facebook, for example, does
not pass utm_medium=cpc
automatically from ad links**
If You Don’t Tag Your Links…
33. When you don’t tag your non-AdWords
traffic, the only clicks attributed to Paid
Search will be AdWords (assuming you
have auto-tagging enabled which is the
default setting).
The Social % here includes both paid
and organic, because it was not tagged
Acquisition Will Be Inaccurate in GA
34. If you want less transparency in your strategy showing in your URLs, you
can come up with your own second level system for naming using codes
for values.
Use numerical values & then have a table to translate those values into
more meaningful data points:
• Awareness campaign = 001
• AC Tune UP campaign = 002
https://www.CompanyX.com/?utm_source=bingads&utm_medium=cpc&
utm_campaign=002
Showing Less Info In URLs
35. Start with defining the basics – source and medium
• Source = terms for non-AdWords platforms (using the lower case
words is preferable to have it all in the same bucket in GA)
Facebook = facebook
Twitter = twitter
Instagram = instagram
• Medium = cpc (this is how AdWords will be categorized, so using it
for other paid traffic sources puts them all in Paid Search together)
Creating A Cheat Sheet Legend
36. List out all known topics, geographies, etc. and decide on the exact
words or abbreviations that should be used for URLs, campaigns,
landing pages, etc.
• Philadelphia = phila
• Plumbing = plumbing
• AC Tune Up = ac_tuneup
Using the same variation of a word/abbreviation is the simplest
method, but I often abbreviate locations and platform names in
landing pages (like adwd for AdWords and fbk for Facebook)
Cheat Sheet Details
37. • Include all of your existing (and planned) campaigns on your master list
• A separate list per platform can be more manageable, if there are a large
number of campaigns (tabs in a spreadsheet work for this too!)
• Include all of the elements from your cheat sheet for each part of your
campaigns (Campaign names, ad group/ad set names, landing page names,
etc.) – map the structure
• SHARE with anyone who works on the accounts
Create A Master List Of Campaigns
38. • Map all of your current campaigns to have a clear picture of everything that
is running.
• Determine if any type of naming conventions are in use and begin to create
your Cheat Sheet.
• If no naming conventions exist, create your own and apply to your
campaigns.
• After a few weeks, create your first segments in Google Analytics and enjoy
the fruits of your labor!
How To Get Started In Your Accounts
39. Questions?
Find me here or on @NeptuneMoon
Julie Friedman Bacchini
President, Neptune Moon LLC
Thank You!
