Managing your Google and social media ads can be very time consuming and dreadful, especially if you have other tasks and little or no knowledge of how to optimise your campaign performance.
Luckily Google and Facebook offer simple and super efficient automation rules, which help you take care of multiple tasks, like enabling and pausing campaigns, keywords or ad sets. All you need to know is your average account performance, so you can set up the correct metrics you want your rules to optimise for, no need to know how to code or set up complex algorithms.
Both Google and Facebook have really different but equally impressive automation and machine learning algorithms, which help you run your campaigns as efficiently as possible. Let's dive into the 4 simple PPC automation tips which can help you save time and money
Google Ads Automated Rules. Simple and super effective if you are managing large accounts. Automated Google ads rules are perfect for busy business owners or those who are prone to making errors when analysing data.
You can automate the more tedious tasks like analysing ad performance, pausing or enabling PPC campaigns, removing expensive keywords or inefficient placements, as well as tweaking bids for keywords, age ranges or demographics which don't convert.
Before you set up your account rules, you should ideally have some account data such as cost per conversion, click through rate and cost per click. Next, go to Tools and Settings > Bulk Actions > Rules.
Google Ads automated rules allow you to set certain conditions to manage campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords, topics and placements and demographics, by pausing or enabling them based on the set criteria.
You can save yourself a lot of time by letting Google take control of some part of the account management. Here is one way to use Google ads automated rules:
If your ideal CPA is £35 and you'd like to test 20 new keywords and check how they would perform compared to your existing account data, you can set up rules to pause keywords where the conversion cost is higher than £50 or reduce the bids on keywords where the CPA is less than £50 but more than £35.
To make sure the rule works as intended, you should set the same rule 3 times, to run on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, depending on how many clicks your account is getting. This way you will make sure that if the cost per conversion is over £50 but it took longer than 1 day to reach the cost threshold, Google would still take care of those expensive terms.
Important: Make sure you also set rules for keywords, ads, ad groups, placements and demographics which spend more than the CPA you're willing to pay for but generated no conversions. To use the example from above, if your normal CPA is £35 and you'd like to automatically pause terms with Cost per Conversion of over £50, make sure you set up 3 additional rules (daily, weekly and monthly), for terms which spent over £50 and got no conversions.
I.e. the automated rules would pause keywords which spend over £50 in the space of a week or a month and got no results. Google ads allows you to pause, as well as adjust bids based on performance.
You should definitely take into consideration your attribution model when setting up automated rules and give your ads account enough time to update it's metrics. We would suggest you use data from the previous day for your daily rules, instead of same day data.
Another good use of automated rules is applying them for smart campaigns. Let's say that for some reason you don't want your smart shopping campaign running during certain hours but due to its type, you don't have the option to schedule it. You can set 2 simple rules to pause and enable your campaign at certain times during the day.
Check out our Beginners Guide on Google Ads Optimisation for more tips on how to track the metrics that matter.
Automated Facebook and Instagram Ad Campaigns Rules. Facebook automated rules can be quite handy when you're looking to automatically pause or enable your campaigns or make changes to the budget and bids, without being glued to your screen 24/7.
To set up Facebook ads rules navigate to your Ads Manager > Ads Manager Menu in the upper left corner > Advertising > Automated Rules.
To create your Facebook ads rule, click the green button Create Rule at the upper right corner. You will be presented with several options for what the rule will apply to, the action the rule would perform, as well as the schedule.
Just like with Google ads, you should ideally have some campaign data and should know your average account metrics, so you can set rules for optimal CPA, without missing out on traffic and conversions.
Facebook Automated rules allow you to set as many conditions as you find suitable. For instance, you can pause your ad sets only if they had over a certain number of impressions, clicks and had no conversions. This way you're ensuring Facebook won't pause ads, campaigns or ad sets with no conversions without them generating enough engagement or acquiring a certain cost.
On the example above you can see a Facebook automated rule which will pause ad sets with over 1000 impressions and over 50 clicks, with less than 2 conversions. The account's average CVR is 6% so we are automatically pausing ad sets with less than that.
The clicks condition is to ensure we have had enough traffic before we pause an ad set. You can set up rules for conversion rate, engagement or costs on campaign, ad set and ad level.
Automated Bidding Strategies & Ads. One of the best things about Google and Facebook ads is the machine learning behind them. Although both giants have different AI behind their technology, they are both great with A/B testing or finding the optimal bidding strategy for your business.
Bidding strategies - unlike Google, with Facebook sometimes it makes more sense to not pay for the metrics that you care about. I.e., if your priority is clicks and conversions, it might be cheaper if you pay per CPM (1,000) impressions, as long as your CTR and on-site conversion rate is good. How much you pay depends on how competitive the targeting for these audiences is at any given time, which is why the CPC and CPM changes throughout the day.
The same cost variation applies to Google, mornings or evenings could be much more competitive than mid-day or early hours.
Google's automated bidding strategies work wonders if your account has enough 'good' data. For instance, with Cost per Acquisition bidding, Google will aim to get you conversions around the cost you paid recently. If you had poor conversions on your website, CPA might not be ideal for you. To make the best out of your Google ads account and automated bidding strategies, make sure you have tracking installed correctly.
Automated bidding strategies save you time and make sure your bids are high enough so your ad is seen, while aiming to achieve optimal cost per click and conversion.
Responsive Ads - both Facebook and Google offer responsive ads, which allow you to upload multiple headlines, images and ad copy and let the platform serve the creative it finds would convert best. Responsive ads can really boost engagement and help you find the right creative much faster, with less effort.
Conversational Landing Pages. This isn't necessarily a PPC or ads related automation tip, but it's definitely worth mentioning.
Conversational landing pages contain a chat bot which plays a significant role in the conversion process. Some companies opt for chatbot-only landing pages, where the user is immediately engaged through chat, with no other copy or images on the page.
The bot can ask and answer questions, make reservations or even qualify your leads. The great thing about conversational landing pages is that the user is immediately engaged without the need of any sales people or human interaction, while still giving the user a personalised and conversational experience.
Many chat bots have super user-friendly backend builders and multiple integration options, including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Mailchimp, Slack, Google Analytics and Zapier. You can easily automate data collection, tech support requests, take online payments and engage your visitors without knowing code.
You simply need to design the chat flow and use a set of conditions and variations for each response. You can take over any time, track conversions and fully customise the experience.
Comments