AdWords Adviser

You probably already know this, but running an AdWords campaign 24 x 7 x 365 is expensive. But, wouldn’t it be amazing if you could have your ads appear only when your prospects are most likely to buy? AdWords Ad Scheduling allows you to do exactly that!

Consider this, if your business is selling to other businesses (B2B), then most of your prospects might be searching for you during business hours. Therefore you might want your ads to show on Google only between 9am and 5pm.

Conversely, if your business is selling retail products to the general public, your prospects might be most likely to search for you in the evenings and at weekends when they have more time. You might therefore want your ads to show after 5pm on weekdays, and all day at weekends.

These are two simple examples of how you might choose to schedule your ads. Needless to say, things are not always quite so black and white.

Take the case of the B2B, in a few instances some prospects might start work an hour or two before 9am and others might work a few hours after 5pm. It follows that this business could miss out on good leads because their ads are not showing.

Furthermore, take the instance of the retail business, it could be missing out on some very good prospects in the afternoon. For instance, mothers searching the Internet before picking up a child from school.

In these instances, you could use the bid adjustment feature of the AdWords ad scheduling tool to have your ads appear outside of the hours you’ve set, but at a reduced bid price.

It might mean that your ads will appear lower down the page, but at least if you get a lot of “time wasters” clicking on your ad, you’re not going to pay top rates for the privilege. And your ad can still be seen by those prospects that are serious about what you have to offer.

If you want to set ad scheduling for your AdWords ads and make big savings on your advertising costs then this is how to do it:)

1. Log into your Google AdWords account.
2. Click on the name of the campaign you wish to edit.
3. Select the “Settings” tab.
4. Scroll down to the “Schedule: Start date, end date, scheduling” option.
5. Click on the “+” symbol to show the options.
6. Click on the “Edit” link to show the “Ad Scheduling” window.
7. Amend the table as required so your ads show at the times you want them too.
8. To adjust bid prices, change to “Bid adjustment” mode by clicking on the link.
9. Once you’ve input your schedule, click on the save button to save your schedule.

Obviously, restricting the times that your ads can show does have it’s risks. People will search for your products or services outside of the times you specify and some may have a genuine intention to purchase.

But if the majority of clicks you receive on your ads outside your specified hours are from “time wasters”, then you’re wasting your money by letting your ads show on the off chance that one or two opportunities might slip through the net.

Last but not least, when you use the AdWords ad scheduling tool on your advertising campaign, it’s important to remember not to guess when your ads should and should not be showing. You are certain to get it wrong!

You’ll get a much more accurate picture of when to turn your ads on and off from your analytics software. We would recommend that you use Google Analytics and for a typical website, you should make your decisions based on conversions from at least six months of data.

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