Once you’ve started advertising through AdWords, it’s easy to either forget about it and not get the results you want or to spend too much time working with it, making you neglect other facets of your business that need your attention. Today we’ll talk about setting up an AdWords campaign calendar to help you budget and schedule the time needed to make your advertising dollars as effective as possible without consuming your every waking moment.
Setting up an AdWords calendar helps you map out your marketing and advertising plans over time and help you reach your goals. Here’s how to set up your calendar:
- What are your goals? Are you increasing sales 20% in the next two months? Do you have a special sale over the next two weeks? Are driving up local traffic to your brick and mortar business? Whatever your goal is, try to tack it down to real numbers: 5,000 people to the sale, local traffic up 10% in 10 days or similar goals.
- Review the response you’re getting to your current AdWords campaigns. This helps you determine how many views you’ll need to meet or exceed your goal.
- Set up a calendar, whether it’s a paper copy to scribble on or an electronic version to keep your schedule.
- Add what you’re currently publishing, what you’ll need to take time to redesign or repackage, when you’ll need to get content from an outside source for your ads or when you need to develop new ads. Your campaign should be aimed at your target audience.
- Look at your schedule and figure out when you have availability. Plan your time and devote that time to only working on marketing – not getting coffee, catching up on emails or checking Facebook for the umpteenth time that day.
- Outside of that time, leave it alone. It’s tempting to check your AdWords account every hour or two, but that can be a distraction that keeps you from getting your real-world work done.
By sticking to your calendar, you’ll get more work done in less time, multiplying your effectiveness. Take a little time occasionally to determine if the system needs tweaking and your campaigns will be more effective while taking less time.
