Open up any Google Ads campaign and chances are you can find some ways to save money. However, often misunderstood even by those who are experienced Google Ads account managers are the many ways to impact budget using scheduling, auto bid features, and the many other nuances of bid modification and optimization. Here are some tips to help you decrease your PPC budget while maintaining or increasing total number of clicks during a given period.
Schedule during normal business hours: This is a pretty simple concept, particularly if you’ve set up call extensions or have dynamic phone numbers on your website that change to a Google tracking number (both functions of any ad account) and are tracking inbound phone calls as conversions. If this is the case, and you heavily rely on inbound calls rather than form submissions scheduling your ads to show during the times your business is open and automatically pausing them when your business is closed is a great idea and can save you money that otherwise would have went to missed calls or voice messages, which convert at a much lower rate.
Adjust bidding or disable campaigns during low-response periods: After you’ve gathered enough data in the campaign to start drawing conclusions from it, you’ll want to look at what hours of the day your conversions come in. You can do this using the dimensions drop down options. If your ad clicks convert at a significantly higher rate between the hours of nine to five for example, you can schedule your ads to only show during those hours or you can auto-adjust your bids downward during “off-hours”. You can apply this same principle to days of the week.
Modify bids based on search location: Available on enhanced campaigns is the option to modify your bid based on location. Let’s say you’ve just run a postcard mailing in a nearby county. You may decide to adjust all bids for searches taking place in that county by +20% as a way to be more likely to get in front of those who are more likely to have seen one of your postcards. This can have a real impact on conversion rates.
With these three simple tips, you can get more from your ad campaign for less. Spend a little time and look over your bid adjustments and ad schedules and watch your conversion rates go up and cost per conversion go down
