When is the best time to sell heaters? How about lawn mowers?  It is a company’s business to know when their seasons begin and end. For example: toy companies do their main advertising from mid-October through December and air conditioning companies do their main advertising from mid-May through October.  Seasons also apply to the world of paid search. Therefore it is important for companies to know their paid search seasons and adjust their online strategies accordingly.

It is always valuable for a business to have a paid search presence. However, it is vital to know when to slow down or throttle up paid search advertising. The main time to throttle up paid search spending is right before the busy season. Each client knows that their sales/leads tend to spike and maintain a high during certain parts of the year. Once a business has defined their busy season, they need to translate this knowledge to their paid search efforts. On the same note, when the busy season ends, it’s good to slow down the paid search spend, so that a wealth of funds can be used for your busy season. For example: Company A sells insurance, and May thru September is their busy season. For the months of April thru September they spend $10,000 a month. They ramp up in April for the surge that will start to take place in May. When Company A slows down in October, they lower their budget to $7,000 and maintain that monthly budget through the end of March. They are spending 30% more during their busy season and still maintaining a presence during the slower months.

Once a business understands their paid search seasons, they can make the necessary changes to their advertising budget.  By making these adjustments, a business is able to make the most of their paid search efforts. For some businesses, the paid search seasons can become a little more complex, which will be discussed in Part 2. 

Google is constantly making changes to improve people’s experience on their search engine. One of Google’s latest changes will affect businesses of all sizes that are running or plan to run paid search campaign. It’s called the Ads Preferences Manager and it’s worth paying attention too.

Google is giving searchers a choice of what types of ads they want to see and even giving them the ability to block ads. When a searcher does a search on Google, there is a little note that appears near the paid ads that says, “Why this Ad?” or “Why These Ads?”

After clicking on these words, a box pops up that gives them the option to learn more about the Ad Preferences Manager. Once they click on the link they are asked to sign in to access their ad preferences. They are then given the option to block ads from advertisers whose ads displayed on their most recent search. An advertiser can be blocked or unblocked with a simple click of the mouse.

According to Google they want to personalize a user’s search experience. In fact on the Ad Preference page it says, “With personalized ads, we can improve your ad experience by showing you ads related to websites you visit, recent searches and clicks, or information from your Gmail inbox.” In all fairness, Google even allows users to block Google ads. (I tried it and it works).  Google also gives the searcher the option to opt out of these personalized ads.

This new option presents a whole new element to paid search ads. For advertisers, not only do ads, keywords, and landing pages have to be relevant, now users have to like them so they don’t get blocked.  This is all the more reason to run relevant campaigns that display ads which are associated to a user’s keyword search, and leads them to a relevant landing page.

It’s a little early to tell if users will adopt this new option and begin using it. However, businesses should keep in mind that at any given moment their ads can be blocked from showing to a specific user. It’s a somber thought, but it is the new reality.

One of my favorite reports to run in Google AdWords to optimize campaign performance is the Search Query Report. You can run this report by clicking “See search terms” in the Keywords tab in your account.  The Search Query Report shows you the actual keyword terms and phrases that users searched for when your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ad shows an impression on the search engine results page (SERP).

From this report you can see which keywords have brought in the most conversions and even the cost per conversion. It would be best to pause any keywords that have a high cost per conversion and low ROI. Also, if you find that there are search terms which are bringing in conversions, but are not currently in your campaign, you should add these terms to your campaign. This will increase the quality score of your ad and therefore decrease the cost per click (CPC) of the keyword.

On the other hand, if you find search terms that are not relevant to your campaigns, you should add these terms to your negative keyword list. Doing so will increase your click-through rate (CTR) because your ads will receive more clicks without wasted impressions, thus decreasing your CPC as well.

Another way to use the Search Query Report is to check the match type you’re currently using for exiting keywords. Also, you can create more tightly knit ad groups based on common groups of search queries. The Search Query Report is an excellent tool to help optimize your paid search keyword menu and lower your average CPCs for your campaigns.