Need to Reduce Your Google PPC Advertising Bill? Use Ad Scheduling!
If you run at least one affiliate site you’ve probably noticed some consistency of the “slow” periods, when you have few if any conversions. These periods could be as small as a few hours or as large as an entire day. If you are running a Google PPC Advertising campaign during these periods, you may potentially be throwing money away. Today we’ll cover how to run a Google Adwords report to determine your slow periods as well as how to implement Ad Scheduling and save yourself some money (and useless clicks).
Analyzing PPC Advertising Reporting
To run a report broken down into each hour of the day, you must first select a time frame to analyze. The longer the period, the more accurate the data is likely to be. On the other hand make sure the period you analyze is relevant to your current situation. For example, don’t advertise Christmas data if you want to implement Ad Scheduling in mid-summer.
To run the report, log into your Adwords account and select the PPC Advertising campaign you want to analyze. Then, on the upper right hand corner select the date range you are interested in analyzing. After that click on the “Dimensions” tab, followed by the “View:” tab and lastly, select “Time” and “Hour of the day”.
The report will be broken down into 24 hour periods, with each hour containing the sum of the data for the time period you selected. Some of the metrics included in the report include Impressions, Clicks, Conversions and Cost per Conversion (Cost/Conversions). It will be very evident which are your peak hours in terms of conversions and which are not productive. However, don’t make any snap decisions, you may have low conversions in a particular hour but you may also have correspondingly low clicks. Analyze carefully and take into account your cost per conversion.
PPC Advertising Scheduling
Once you’ve figured out what time periods are not worth advertising, it’s time to set up an Ad Schedule so the PPC Advertising campaign runs only for the productive periods. To do so make sure you are in the correct campaign and click on the “Settings” tab. Choose “Ad Scheduling” followed by “+ Ad Schedule”. The interface for setting up a schedule is very intuitive, simply “Add” a day, then select the period during which you want your ads to run. Repeat as necessary to cover all the time periods and days.
Make sure you follow your PPC Advertising campaign closely during the next few days to make sure it runs (or doesn’t run) when it’s supposed to. Also keep a close eye on your conversions just in case you missed something during your analysis. Remember, if your sales funnel is typically composed of multiple visits before conversions are finalized you may inadvertently reduce conversions by implementing Ad Scheduling.
