Blue Tent search account managers use Google Analytics everyday to help manage clients’ campaigns and to maximize ROI. Here is one of our favorite reports for paid search. Check back next week for another Google Analytics’ reporting tip.
Determine the Best Time of Day to Run your Paid Search Account
Most paid search campaigns operate on a budget and all seek to maximize their ROI. One way you can spread your budget more effectively is to use ad scheduling which lets you specify when you would like your ads to run by hour and day of the week. The Google AdWords schedulerincludes an advanced setting which allows you to adjust your bids during certain periods of the day. When should you run your paid search campaigns? Should you increase your bids at certain times of the day to increase your click through rate? Rather than guess and test, turn to the following Google Analytics’ report and see immediate results.
You can apply this custom report to an advanced segment such as your search engine traffic or to your paid search traffic if your campaigns have already been running for a while. Analyze the data to determine those times of the day where visitors perform the best. Look for goal conversions, e commerce transactions, a low bounce rate, high pages/visit and high average time on site. Be sure to consider sample size before drawing concussions. Once you have determined the hours of the day that perform best, set the ad scheduler in your paid search campaign appropriately. Also, you can create a similar report for day of the week to determine if your paid search campaign should be turn off some days of the week.
Stay tuned for next week’s Google Analytics tip relating to site search data.