Too many Adwords accounts lay inactive for weeks on end, even though we all know the best ROI comes from campaigns which have regular improvements and check-ups. What you really need is a schedule which makes sure you cover all the important Adwords tasks on a regular basis, ensuring no aspect of the account is left un-optimised.
What a coincidence, we’ve just finished creating such a list, PLUS a downloadable Adwords management calendar, (download it now.)
There are so many things to keep your eye on in your Adwords account that we’ve put together this management schedule so you can keep your eye on things daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly. Note that this schedule is targeted at managing mid to large sized, established Adwords accounts.
Contents
Daily Tasks
While on a day to day basis you should be checking your accounts – remember not to make changes based on only a day or two of history. When making any tweaks, compare recent performance to the longer term using the date comparison feature. Most changes should be made looking at at least a week of history, and comparing time periods like previous week and same time last year.
- Check that everything is running as expected – consider using the keyword diagnosis feature
- Monitor your priority adgroups daily – those with the biggest spends or which bring in the most sales.
- Watch that daily budgets are sufficient
- Check disapproved keywords or ads (yes, keywords can be disapproved).
- Browse PPC news and blogs for any new features or tactics
Weekly Tasks
A good way to work out your weekly tasks is to assign a task to each day of the week, which makes sure you cover everything. For example:
Money Saving Monday
Use sorting and filtering to target high CPA keywords/Adgroups/Campaigns.
- Where are you spending too much money?
- Reduce bids or pause keywords if necessary.
- Consider whether you are showing these searchers the right ad copy and landing page.
- Consider if match types are too broad
- Use Google Experiments to lower bids if you don’t want to lose too much volume.
Opportunity Tuesdays
Use sorting and filtering to find out where your CPA is low or acceptable
- Check impression share and ad position for opportunities.
- Consider broader match types.
- Look for opportunities to expand with more aggressive bidding.
Keyword Wednesdays
- Check keywords searched for new and negative keywords.
- Check for keywords with lower than first page bids.
- Pause underperforming keywords (e.g. not converting or low CTR)
- Change match types of keywords depending on performance.
This is the day to grow and refine your keyword lists
Thursday Ad Focus
- Check ad rotations and ad copy performance for the week.
- Make sure all ads with tests live are getting even impressions.
- Tweak adcopy.
- Consider both CTR and Conversion Rates when making ad decisions
Friday Display and Remarketing
- Check your placements report to see where you are wasting money. Pause, exclude or apply bid multipliers appropriately.
- If you have placements that are doing really well, make sure you can manage their bids.
- Check the placements that are working for your remarketing, should you be using them for normal display?
- See which ad copy is working on which placements, pause or refine.
Monthly Tasks
- If you’re using RLSA – are your bid multipliers still keeping your CPA at acceptable levels?
- Run a landing page report to look for pages which are under-performing. Consider changing landing pages or optimising them.
- Check competitors report: who is new, who is aggressive, how to compete against them?
- Look at assist clicks to see if under performing keywords are adding conversion value.
- Ensure all your products are being promoted – do you have any new products or services?
- Check the benchmarks of your Shopping campaigns – are you competitive?
- Does your Shopping feed need to be updated? Do descriptions need optimising?
- Consider new placements or testing new targeting for display
Quarterly
- Are your extensions all still accurate?
- Which sitelinks are working better than others?
- Check your landing pages are still working and that URLs haven’t changed
- Are all your settings still correct?
- Make sure your adgroups are still tightly themed, they can bloat over time
- If quality score or cpc is not as good as it could be, consider separating adgroups into more tightly themed groups, improving match of adcopy or improving match of landing page.
- Go through negative keywords lists to ensure you aren’t blocking things you want to show for.
- Consider new adcopy strategies, create new image ads.
- Revisit budgets
- Check bid adjustments for time of day and day of week – are they still relevant?
- Check dimensions tab for location results – do geographic bid multipliers need to be implemented or updated?
- Segment for device results – do device bid multipliers need to be implemented or updated?
- Look at your remarketing audience sizes. If some are very big, consider breaking them out into smaller audiences. (e.g. negating people who have converted, tighter qualifiers)
Summary
This is not an exhaustive list of all the activities you might want to undertake to manage your Adwords account, however adhering to this list should help keep your account in good condition. The most important thing is not to ignore your Adwords account, and to take a systematic – not ad hoc – approach to managing it.
To help you manage this process, we’ve created a calendar you can use or edit, download it now.
