Maximize Your Budget with Ad Scheduling

How to get the most out of Google Ads’ dayparting features

Running a successful Google Ads campaign takes planning – from mapping out conversion points to researching keywords to writing compelling copy, it’s a lot of work. 

And it’s all worth it to make sure you’re serving ads to the right users. But…..

Thanks, Morpheus. I can take it from here.

Reaching the right audience is great, but meeting them when they’re ready to take action? That’s even better.

And that’s where Google Ads scheduling comes in, with two simple, yet powerful ways to get the most out of your budget:

⇨  Align ad delivery with your operating hours (also known as dayparting)

⇨  Scale ad spend during peak performance periods

Join me as I show you how to leverage Google Ads scheduling to reach the right users at the right time.

Let’s jump in!

Spend Smarter by Dayparting your Ad Schedule

Before we start, you’re probably thinking, “Dayparting? Isn’t that what broadcasters do to keep swearing off TV until 10pm?” 

And you’d be right – but in the Digital Marketing world, dayparting is a useful tool for scheduling your ads at certain times of the day or week. Dayparting (AKA Google Ads scheduling) lets you serve your ads per your operating hours, so you can avoid wasting spend trying to acquire customers when you’re not ready to serve them. 

Let’s look at a couple use cases:

• Running a brick-and-mortar storefront but you’re closed evenings? Schedule your ads to run only during your day-time operating hours. 
• Running a restaurant that opens late afternoon? Schedule your ads to start running from 5pm to closing. 
• Are you running a pop-up store that’s only open Tuesday-Thursday? Set your top-funnel awareness ads to run the whole week on a low budget, and schedule bottom-funnel action ads to run Tuesday-Thursday
  • Bonus Tip: this would also be a great time to layer in radius targeting with scaling bid adjustments 

This strategy also works when you’re running a leads- or service-based business. Just because you’ve closed shop for the day doesn’t mean you have to miss out on potential leads from some keen after-hours searchers. You can schedule your call-only ads or extensions to pause at the end of your workday, and can keep your other awareness and action-oriented ads (form submissions, RAQs, you name it) enabled to capture those late-night leads. The possibilities are endless!

To start dayparting, select ‘Ad schedule’ from the left-hand column in the Google Ads platform and set your schedule accordingly

But however you choose to schedule your ads, you also need to make sure you’re meeting your users at the most profitables time for your business.

Spend More When it Matters Most

You may have some ideas about when your peak traffic periods may be based on your own sales and booking data, but do you know how that translates to your Google Ads campaigns? 

Peak traffic for your coffee shop might be during the morning rush or lunch hour, but for most online businesses it’s rarely that simple. An online retailer may assume most people get their shopping done on their work breaks or commutes home, but that’s not enough to set an ad schedule. In fact, more consumers have been doing their shopping in the evening and late-night than ever the past few years.

Clearly, it’s not enough to just go by assumptions when deciding your ad schedule. 

So how do you determine what your most profitable periods might be?

Luckily, Google Ads offers many tools to make the most of your ad spend, and for ad scheduling, that tool is bid modifiers. 

Google Ads scheduling lets you break down your ad schedule by clicks, average CPC, conversions, CPA and other performance metrics, so you can hone in on your most (and least) profitable periods of the day. You can then adjust bids to make sure you’re always serving ads during your best periods while decreasing bids during your worst.

Identifying peak performance periods lets you apply bid adjustments to get even more bang for your marketing buck

Reach the Right Users at the Right Time

When used properly, ad scheduling can really help improve the performance of your ad campaigns. With the proper planning and bid adjustments, it can help maximize your spend by focusing on the periods that drive the most value for your business. 

But Google Ads scheduling is just the tip of the optimization iceberg. For more in-depth bid and targeting strategies that really move the needle, you need an agency that knows how to do the incredible with search. Does your marketing program stack up?