This is post N° 6 in my series of posts about Google Ads step-by-step daily optimization routines (see the introduction here, and the general Google Ads optimization routine overview here, the Monday routine here, the Tuesday routine here, and the Wednesday routine here).
So, if it’s Thursday and your Google Ads account is underperforming (make sure you read my criteria for Google Ads underperformance first HERE), this is what you should do.
Thursday is a relatively relaxed day, when you check and adjust your bids again.
However, unlike Monday, where you checked budget pacing and budget allocation, and adjust both auto and manual bidding, you will only be adjusting manual bidding this day.
You can do the budget checks if you’re in an unusual situation, or getting close to the end of the month (to make sure you don’t underspend or overspend), but most of the time you can leave that alone until next Monday.
The reason why you won’t be adjusting automatic bidding, and only do that once a week on Monday, preferably on Monday, is that we will give time for the auto-bidding algorithm do its thing.
In fact, it could even be argued that adjusting auto-bids once a week is too much. But many times you are under strict KPI targets and you can’t afford to wait that long to make adjustments if you’re not happy with the current results.
The bid-changing process was explained on the Monday routine post – just follow those instructions.
Another thing you should do on Thursday, is to change bid adjustments for locations, ad schedules (day parting) and devices.
The process is pretty much the same as with campaign/ad group/keyword bid optimization that we discussed for Monday.
The only difference is, here you should be looking at a 30-day date range when doing your analysis.
Reason being, these are more “structural” elements, and typically more stable than ad groups/keywords, so it makes sense to base your changes on a broader time horizon.
You can also skip this check some weeks (unless your under-performance is really bad), because as you will probably notice, sometimes there just won’t be much to change anyways.
Conclusion
Like I said, Thursday is a relatively relaxed day, when you will be just making changes to manual bidding elements (which these days are used less and less), and maybe changing bids to locations/schedules/device bids.
P.S.: If you need help with your Google Ads, go here to book a free consultation with me.