5 Settings to Pay Attention to in Adwords: Ad Scheduling

Marketing for small businesses can be an expensive endeavor.  Many business owners try to cut costs by doing tasks themselves rather than hiring an outside company.  If you have decided to forgo pay per click management, setting up a Google AdWords campaign yourself can be a daunting task.  There are many different settings that are automatically set in Google’s favor that may not necessarily be the best for your campaign.  Here is part 3 of this 5 part series: Ad Scheduling.

 

It is very important to implement ad scheduling in order to use your full budget.  If you don’t use ad scheduling, Google will save some of your ad budget for times when people actually aren’t very likely to click.  If Google saves a quarter of your budget for use between 12am and 6am, and only 3 people click on your ad during this time, then you won’t use your entire daily budget during peak hours.  

 

This is also very important for brick and mortar stores.  For instance, if you are running a campaign for an ice cream shop that is only open from 11am to 8pm, you shouldn’t run ads at 1am because A) not many people are looking for ice cream shops at 1am and B) if they did click on your ad, you would be much less likely to actually get business from that click than from someone who clicked your ad at 2pm when the ice cream shop is open.

 

Another cool thing about ad scheduling is that it is done by day of the week.  So if you get a lot of clicks between 3pm and 5pm on Saturdays, you can increase the percentage of your budget that is spent during that time.  As always, it is very important to test this before implementing it.  Run your ads for at least a week to see when people are clicking, then adjust your ad scheduling accordingly.  With an even longer period of time to measure, such as several months, you can definitely schedule your ads during the best time to make a return on your investment.  Check back next month for part 4 of this series to learn about Ad Rotation.