If you run a  physical brick and mortar retail location, you probably have certain  hours of operation as well as an employee schedule. You probably know  which are your busiest days of the week and even your peak periods  within a day. Your e-commerce site probably has patterns as well. You  may have noticed consistent periods of low or no conversions and perhaps  even entire days when sales are almost non-existent. Yet, you probably  continue to run your Google Adwords campaign, 24 hours a day, seven days  a week. Luckily, you can begin Maximizing Google Adwords campaigns by implementing Ad Scheduling and controlling when your ads should and should not run.

The concept is simple: Run a Google Adwords report which can show you  performance metrics such as conversions or clicks for any time period  you desire. For example, you can run a 24 hour report and see which  hours of the day are profitable (and which are not). Or you may choose  to run a similar report but on a day by day basis, and you could easily  see which days perform well and which ones are not generating a ROI.  Once you have that data, you can create an Ad Schedule within AdWords to  control when your ads should and should not run.

To run the report, follow these simple steps:

  • Log into AdWords.
  • Select your campaign.
  • Select a time period to analyze (the more data you include, the better your analysis will be).
  • Click on the Dimensions tab.
  • Click on the View tab.
  • Select Time then Hour of the day

Analyze the data with care. Take into account your cost of  acquisition. You may see periods of very few conversions but what if you  have correspondingly low traffic volume? If so, perhaps your  cost/acquisition is actually great during those slow periods and ads  should continue to run.

Once you’re sure of the periods when you don’t want your ads to run, it’s easy to start Maximizing Google Adwords. To set up an Ad Schedule follow these steps:

  • Log into AdWords.
  • Select your campaign.
  • Click on the Settings tab.
  • Click on Ad Scheduling.
  • Click on the + Ad Schedule button.

Creating the schedule is very intuitive, you simply add each day of  the week, with a schedule for the hours you want your ads to run.

What sort of results can you expect? Well your number of conversions  should remain as before but your conversion rate will probably improve,  since you are now leaving out a lot of non-converting traffic. Actually,  most of your key performance indicators (KPIs) should improve, but best  of all, by Maximizing Google Adwords, your campaign bill should see considerable savings at month’s end.

The staff at Able Commerce specializes in e-commerce solutions, including internet marketing. Feel free to contact us and one of our Adwords experts will be happy to assist you with any questions you may have.