If your Google Ads account is under-performing (as discussed on my previous article, make sure you read it so you don’t make unnecessary changes), this is what I recommend doing every day.
This is a general overview. In the future, I will be creating specific how-to’s for each day of the week.
Again, most of these tasks should only be done when you see under-performance on that day, as defined by the two-fold criteria I explained last time.
The only exception is Monday, because if you don’t do the budget check each week (regardless of performance), you could end up overspending by the end of the month.
Monday
Monday is one of the hardest days, when you have to do more work if your account is underperforming.
On Monday you should check your budget allocation between campaigns and the total account “budget pacing”.
What the heck is that, you might ask?
It’s just checking that you are on track to hit your target ad spend by the end of the month. Make sure your current total daily ad spend is not going to make you go over your monthly budget.
Also, if a campaign is not working well, take budget away from it (and give it to the best performers).
Simple.
It’s just like rebalancing a stock portfolio.
Another thing you should do on Mondays is adjust your bids (both automated and manual).
But you can probably guess what I’m going to say now – do NOT touch your bids if your account is performing just fine!
So, if indeed your bids need adjustments, do this:
Anything that’s working well, you can either leave it alone, or give it a higher bid (so you get more traffic, assuming you have the budget). And anything that’s under-performing, should get its bid reduced, so it gets less traffic.
I like to do bid changes in increments of 5-20%. Anything more than that could be too disruptive and through things out whack, especially these days that we use a lot of automatic bidding. Since bidding algorithms are sensitive, it’s always better to make changes gradually.
Tuesday
On Tuesday, you should check your search term reports. Add as new keywords any search terms that have converted and make sense, and add as negative keywords any search terms that are not relevant.
This one is pretty easy, and actually kind of relaxing, once you get in the flow.
Even if your account is performing well, doing this will make it work even better, so this one of the changes that you can safely do as often as you want.
Wednesday
On Wednesday, you should check any split tests (also called A/B tests) you are running, and see if it’s the right time to make any decisions – pause the losers, and write a new ad to beat the control.
This one is time-intensive and will require the best of your creativity, so be prepared.
Don’t pause tests blindly, especially if your account is not under-performing. It’s important to make sure your results are statistically significant before you make any changes – I will discuss this on a future post.
You can do this every week if you want, and not only if your account is under-performing, as long as you make sure your results are statistically significant.
Thursday
On Thursday, you should check your bids again – but only for manual bidding campaigns. Don’t mess too much with your automatic bidding (only do this once a week, preferably on Monday), and let the algorithm do its thing.
You should also change bid adjustments for locations, ad schedules (day parting) and devices. If you don’t have enough time for these additional adjustments, you can do them on Friday.
And remember, don’t touch your bids if your account doesn’t meet the two criteria for under-performance I specified on my Google Ads optimization overview post.
Friday
Friday is free-for-all day. Let your creative juices flow… here are some of the things you can do:
- Test new campaigns
- Test new bidding strategies
- Test new landing pages
- Pausing under-performing campaigns, ad groups, keywords, etc. (you can also do this on any of the other days when things are REALLY bad. This is one of the biggest levers you can pull to fix an account)
However, you need to be really careful here. You can use the “experiments” feature to test your changes with just a portion of your traffic, so that your current strategy continues to perform regardless.
You will need to use your own judgement here in terms of which changes are worth making regardless of performance, and which you should only make when you meet the two-fold criteria for underperformance I have been drilling into your head at this point.
Important Note:
While I have structured this optimization routine on specific days of the week, the changes don’t need to be done in this specific order, or on those specific days.
It is only something I use to keep my sanity.
For example, if on Monday your account has not met the criteria for under-performance (i.e it’s working well), you should only check your budget is being spent correctly (which you should do very single week regardless of performance), make any necessary changes, but not rebalance the budget or change bids (which should only be done if your account is under-performing).
But if the criteria for underperformance is first met on Tuesday, or any other day of the week, on that day you should retroactively make the changes you were supposed to make on Monday – namely, rebalancing your budget and adjusting bidding.
If it happens on Tuesday, you should also perform the Tuesday routine (search terms optimization) on that same day.
If it happens on Wednesday, you should perform the Wednesday routine (split testing) IN ADDITION to the Monday and Tuesday routine. So this would be a hard day, because you would have to perform 3 different routines.
You get the drift.
You might need to spread out the changes over multiple days, especially if you manage more than one account, or if your account is complex.
So for example if underperformance happens on a Thursday, you could perform the Monday and Tuesday routines that day, and leave the Wednesday and Thursday routines for Friday (assuming underperformance continues)
Also, try your best to perform these routines early in the morning.
That way, you will get some of their positive effect on that same day, and if you end up hitting your KPIs by the end of the day, your account is now in order (according to criteria #1, because you would have broken the bad streak of 3-days in a row bad performance rule), and the next day you won’t have to make any changes, unless it’s an unusual situation (extremely bad performance on a 30-day basis).
Hope this all makes sense, but if you have any questions, please do comment on this post!
Alright, go try out that routine, and let me know how it goes!
P.S.: If you need help with your Google Ads, go here to book a free consultation with me.