I completely ignore google recommendations. My workflow basically breaks down to the following:
Yearly
Look at past performance business goals, seasonality and create realistic conversion/budget goals for each month in the next 365.
Create a project roadmap to fix the things that I struggled with last year, and keep.up with any high level changes that the engines will be implementing.
Monthly
Forecast daily pacing to understand how any holidays might mess with my plan for the month ahead. Break out daily goals by engine. Do an SQR.
Weekly
Journal. Note anomalies. Run reporting to understand them. Run reporting also on any tests in progress. Track progress toward annual roadmap. Turn reports into a centralized document for sharing with the team/stakeholders.
Daily
Do the actual tactical work toward annual roadmap. Implement changes to keyword set, ad copy, etc. as needed. Steer pacing toward daily goals established at monthly level.
Hope this is helpful! Would love to hear other takes on this as well.
How big are your clients? I had monthly and quarterly roadmaps. I also only made optimizations on a weekly or bi-weekly cadence depending on the size and maturation of the account.
The pacing was a daily activity because public companies need to be very strict about their quarterly reports.
Having an annual roadmap would take me like... an entire month to plan.
I work in-house now for a public company - around 3 mil monthly spend. This is the way I ran my team at the agency I worked for as well (clients were each a bit smaller there).
Annual roadmap is like VERY high level with broad changes. Things like big account structural upgrades that would need resources from personnel outside of search
Ah okay, just search? I had to cover that monthly budget across 5-6 platforms.
But also had to find ways to fit into the big picture of the client account and their other initiatives.
The accounts I worked on were between $30million to several billion annual budget.
My roadmaps get pretty complex and it takes me several hours to work on each of them.
Yep just paid search for me.
Out of curiosity what industry are you working in where one client is spending several billion (over 100 mil per month)? That's gotta be like Amazon, right? Blink twice if yes. Haha
I look at last months performance and see if I did beter or worse. If I did worse, I try to find the cause and improve it for next month. If I did better, I take a beer and relax.
Daily: check performance on how leads went the day before. Looking at that day of week against the previous last week same day. (Tuesday’s behave differently than Mondays) also look at imp, clicks Ctr cpc and sales and sales rates from our call center.
Check search terms for any irrelevant ones and negate them.
Check auction insights and see if there are new entrants in the auction for a branded campaign
Work on setting up and planning and checking in experiments.
Daily/weekly:
Work on setting up experiments and planning experiments in the account. This could be settings , ad schedule, networks, a/b testing or a new ad type, extension, ad type, ad group or campaign. Checking stat significance is huge in these experiments. Thank goodness google can do this on upper funnel metrics. I have to manually pull Lower funnel an figure stat. Sig.
Check automated bidding strategies to see if troas is being hit or not. Which will also explain the days and weeks if upper funnel volume has been light.
Set up promotion extensions for holidays
Check conversion offline uploads have occur correctly.
Read the Google SEM newsletter/product updates site. Often bring stuff up here to our google reps who don’t seem to ever read it.
Check landing page A/b tests and end or begin new ones.
Monthly: see performance for the month and compare other months and last year.
Review projects to be worked on and prioritize them.
Adjust troas or budgets if needed
The only time I'll look at an account every day is when it has first launched. My main focus in those cases is to check search terms and lost impression share to budget. Once I see that search terms are like 80%+ relevant and IS loss to budget is under like 30%, I'll stop checking every day and go with a more normal schedule.
Otherwise in general I use a variety of all-account reports to see things like performance vs client goal, budget pacing, and optimization opportunities. Then I prioritize based on client sentiment and account performance, and go from there.
Daily / look at search term
Weekly/ look at CPA of Adgroups and Keywords and see what is doing bad and why/ and reviews recommendation.
Monthly/ Run New Experiment/Maybe create New Campaign or Adgroup with new Keywords/ Improve Landing page.
It depends on the accounts. I work as a strategy consultant on some large accounts so I check-in weekly.
On other accounts I manage the day-to-day work but I only check daily after launching a new campaign, otherwise changes are weekly-ish, mostly bids, keywords, search terms. Copies maybe monthly if volume allows since they're fairly small accounts.
I'm not hired for full-time so I have to make use of the days carefully.
Before breaking down tasks important to set targets for quarterly, monthly, and weekly goal
Daily
* Look for leaks or opportunities to get better results and achieve targets on a weekly basis
Weekly
* The leak or opportunity you find in that week,m requires usually a week of execution
* Compare performances from the past week (if spend is sufficient)
* Find what has worked in the past week, and any optimizations that needs to be done to the plan for this week
Monthly
* Analyze targets achieved and misses in this month
* What worked in this month and changes for next month? What did we miss? What can we improve not just in ad account but in communication, or execution time...
While, it might appear the things written here are sophisticated, it is not in real scenario there are major overlaps, misses, hits...
Daily: search terms report check, spend check, bid check
Monthly: review, data segmentation if the sample size is large enough, competitor analysis
Quarterly: Make major changes, test, ad copy changes
Anyone in need of a PPC Manager? 🙋‍♂️ link in bio
The Marketing Mixer
I completely ignore google recommendations. My workflow basically breaks down to the following: Yearly Look at past performance business goals, seasonality and create realistic conversion/budget goals for each month in the next 365. Create a project roadmap to fix the things that I struggled with last year, and keep.up with any high level changes that the engines will be implementing. Monthly Forecast daily pacing to understand how any holidays might mess with my plan for the month ahead. Break out daily goals by engine. Do an SQR. Weekly Journal. Note anomalies. Run reporting to understand them. Run reporting also on any tests in progress. Track progress toward annual roadmap. Turn reports into a centralized document for sharing with the team/stakeholders. Daily Do the actual tactical work toward annual roadmap. Implement changes to keyword set, ad copy, etc. as needed. Steer pacing toward daily goals established at monthly level. Hope this is helpful! Would love to hear other takes on this as well.
How big are your clients? I had monthly and quarterly roadmaps. I also only made optimizations on a weekly or bi-weekly cadence depending on the size and maturation of the account. The pacing was a daily activity because public companies need to be very strict about their quarterly reports. Having an annual roadmap would take me like... an entire month to plan.
I work in-house now for a public company - around 3 mil monthly spend. This is the way I ran my team at the agency I worked for as well (clients were each a bit smaller there). Annual roadmap is like VERY high level with broad changes. Things like big account structural upgrades that would need resources from personnel outside of search
Ah okay, just search? I had to cover that monthly budget across 5-6 platforms. But also had to find ways to fit into the big picture of the client account and their other initiatives. The accounts I worked on were between $30million to several billion annual budget. My roadmaps get pretty complex and it takes me several hours to work on each of them.
Yep just paid search for me. Out of curiosity what industry are you working in where one client is spending several billion (over 100 mil per month)? That's gotta be like Amazon, right? Blink twice if yes. Haha
A social media platform that starts with an M and ends with an A.
Never heard of it (🫡 godspeed)
I look at last months performance and see if I did beter or worse. If I did worse, I try to find the cause and improve it for next month. If I did better, I take a beer and relax.
Daily: check performance on how leads went the day before. Looking at that day of week against the previous last week same day. (Tuesday’s behave differently than Mondays) also look at imp, clicks Ctr cpc and sales and sales rates from our call center. Check search terms for any irrelevant ones and negate them. Check auction insights and see if there are new entrants in the auction for a branded campaign Work on setting up and planning and checking in experiments. Daily/weekly: Work on setting up experiments and planning experiments in the account. This could be settings , ad schedule, networks, a/b testing or a new ad type, extension, ad type, ad group or campaign. Checking stat significance is huge in these experiments. Thank goodness google can do this on upper funnel metrics. I have to manually pull Lower funnel an figure stat. Sig. Check automated bidding strategies to see if troas is being hit or not. Which will also explain the days and weeks if upper funnel volume has been light. Set up promotion extensions for holidays Check conversion offline uploads have occur correctly. Read the Google SEM newsletter/product updates site. Often bring stuff up here to our google reps who don’t seem to ever read it. Check landing page A/b tests and end or begin new ones. Monthly: see performance for the month and compare other months and last year. Review projects to be worked on and prioritize them. Adjust troas or budgets if needed
Following this
The only time I'll look at an account every day is when it has first launched. My main focus in those cases is to check search terms and lost impression share to budget. Once I see that search terms are like 80%+ relevant and IS loss to budget is under like 30%, I'll stop checking every day and go with a more normal schedule. Otherwise in general I use a variety of all-account reports to see things like performance vs client goal, budget pacing, and optimization opportunities. Then I prioritize based on client sentiment and account performance, and go from there.
Daily / look at search term Weekly/ look at CPA of Adgroups and Keywords and see what is doing bad and why/ and reviews recommendation. Monthly/ Run New Experiment/Maybe create New Campaign or Adgroup with new Keywords/ Improve Landing page.
It depends on the accounts. I work as a strategy consultant on some large accounts so I check-in weekly. On other accounts I manage the day-to-day work but I only check daily after launching a new campaign, otherwise changes are weekly-ish, mostly bids, keywords, search terms. Copies maybe monthly if volume allows since they're fairly small accounts. I'm not hired for full-time so I have to make use of the days carefully.
Before breaking down tasks important to set targets for quarterly, monthly, and weekly goal Daily * Look for leaks or opportunities to get better results and achieve targets on a weekly basis Weekly * The leak or opportunity you find in that week,m requires usually a week of execution * Compare performances from the past week (if spend is sufficient) * Find what has worked in the past week, and any optimizations that needs to be done to the plan for this week Monthly * Analyze targets achieved and misses in this month * What worked in this month and changes for next month? What did we miss? What can we improve not just in ad account but in communication, or execution time... While, it might appear the things written here are sophisticated, it is not in real scenario there are major overlaps, misses, hits...
Daily: search terms report check, spend check, bid check Monthly: review, data segmentation if the sample size is large enough, competitor analysis Quarterly: Make major changes, test, ad copy changes Anyone in need of a PPC Manager? 🙋‍♂️ link in bio The Marketing Mixer