By: Jacob Eckberg
There’s always so much talk around what goes into creating and maintaining a Google Ads Account, but the majority of the time it’s communicated from the eyes of a Paid Media professional or a PPC pro. Today, we’re going to put a twist on it. Yes, a paid media professional is the one writing this, but let’s switch the perspective to bring this Google Ads Account to “life,” per se. Instead of a professional showcasing his day in the life at the office, let’s swing it 180 and see what a day in the life is like for a living, breathing Google Ads account. Let’s dive in.
Early Morning: Budget Conservation and Activation
Midnight – 6am: Snoozing. Click Through Rates are consistent throughout the night, but conversion rates are low. Instead of paying for people cruising the web with low conversion intent, I’m opting to save my budget for more transactional hours.
6am: I wake up bright and early—6am sharp to be exact. I find that I’m most effective, productive, and focused in the early hours of the day.
Working Hours: Bidding Battles and Conversions
6am – 6pm: My day mainly consists of competing for bids in auctions and battling it out with all my competitors in what seems like a non-stop battle to bring in clicks & conversions. Despite the competition, I’m confident going into the day though because my Quality Score and Max Cost-Per-Click (CPC) are being monitored.
Last week, we made changes to ad copy to better align with my landing pages for a specific campaign. This directly impacts Quality Score, which is one of the factors in my overall Ad Rank. I also have automated rules set up to make sure my Max CPC is forcing my ads to show up only on the first page of search results. This is monitored on a weekly basis to make sure I’m not over-spending on any one keyword—plus, who takes the time to go to the second page nowadays?
One slight change during these business hours is between 11am – 1pm. After a month, I dove into the data I collected and found conversion rates were higher at these hours. My hunch is that during the lunch hour, people are doing research and are able to actually book appointments, so we have a +25% bid modifier during these hours to be more aggressive for these valuable users.
Evening: Wind-Down for Optimal Budget Use
6pm – 10pm: I start to wind down my day after normal business hours. Looking at our past data, it doesn’t seem like people have high intent to convert between these hours. In an effort to combat that, we put a -50% bid modifier to be a little more conservative in what we’re willing to pay for these specific users.
10pm: Straight to bed. Battles I participate in last till 10pm sharp everyday, and once they end, I’m done for the day. I’ve found that after normal business hours, transaction value starts to dip. I rinse and repeat this process each weekday, which may seem boring to you, but as long as I’m generating results and making my bosses happy (looking at you, dear reader), all is well in my world.
Daily Assessment and Analysis
Now, you might be saying there’s no way that’s all a Google Ads account does everyday. And you’re right—you caught me. I’m actually the king of multitasking: while I’m constantly jockeying for bids in auctions, I’m also keeping track of everything users are typing into Google, and stashing them in my Search Term Report to examine later. On top of that, I’m always adjusting how I operate in an effort to better myself. Some ways I do this on a monthly basis is by:
- Adjusting ad text and landing page text, aiming to increase click through and conversion rates
- Running experiments with bid strategies to really get the most out of myself
- Adjusting the audiences I’m built for
- Adjusting the demographics I’m bidding on
- Keeping an eye on locations (I can be global, or as granular as zip code based) I’m showing up in.
Hopefully you enjoyed seeing the day-to-day operations of Google Ads from this different viewpoint. It’s not everyday we get to step outside of our “technical” shoes in the workplace as we continue to build the best PPC accounts possible for our clients. There’s so much more that goes into a Google Ads account than just this, which leads me to a question for you: is a potential part two something I should dip my feet into?
Let me know what you think, or if there’s anything in particular you want me to cover next!