If you’re not using robots to help manage your Google Ads campaigns, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.
There’s nothing new about robotic management, but over 90% of the Google Ads accounts we review (for free) have no robotic management at all!
Robots Cannot (and should not) Do Everything
Robots are for a) mathematical and b) rule-based decisions and monitoring.
People are for a) monitoring the robots (!) and b) message (ads) & creativity.
The more automation you have with robots, the more time you ultimately have for improving your message, doing the “real” high-value work and getting more leads.
Google Ads accounts with no robots are a massive waste of human time – the online marketing version of going back to the medieval age.
Basic Robots You Must Have
So here are some fundamentals that are a waste of human energy – get a bot on it.
Note: this is just a selection, we have over 40 Google Ads processes run by bots, developed and perfected over a loooooong period of time.
#12 Broad Match Detector/Killer
#1 – Weekly/Month Budgets
Spending human time on something as simple as this – eek, what a waste.
Daily budgets are handled within the platform, but weekly/monthly is harder to manage, unless you are on monthly invoicing.
A simple budget script can check budgets hourly or daily for “spend this month” and pause everything if you hit the set threshold.
EASY, and one day-to-day marketing stress removed forever more!
#2 – Over-delivery Checks
Yes, Google over-delivers – i.e. spends more than the daily budget you set in the platform. It’s somewhere in their 15,000 pages of terms & conditions that they are allowed to do.
A simple script can detect and alert you to this over-delivery, so you at least know about it – and can do something about it if necessary
#3 – Summary Emails
People are so bad at timekeeping compared to a robot – that Friday summary you ask for; they forget, they’re late, they rush it and forget some details.
No such problem with robots!
#4 – Cleanup Bots
Are you fussy with capitalisation in ads? Do you hate the “low search volume” warning? Do keywords receiving 0 impressions balloon the size of your account?
Get a bot-Janitor to clean that all up! Every hour if you like.
#5 – Best Practice Audits
It is best practice to have 3x Ads in an Ad Group, for example.
Run an audit on all the basics, and get the results to the team to act on.
More Advanced Bots
This is where maths and rules really take over… we’re on Short Circuit level robot-ing now.
#6 – Bid Adjustment Bots
Adjusting bids by; device, location, schedule, gender, age, parental status, income etc… is simple mathematics.
Now you need rules upon rules to ensure nothing silly or drastic happens in your account, but this is a massive waste of human time – the rules per account rarely ever change
#7 – Hourly Day-parting
A level beyond your schedule bid adjustments, this needs a lot of data to be useful and hit hourly thresholds. We only turn it on for very high traffic accounts.
What it does: optimises your bidding by hour of the day.
#8 – Weather Bidding
Did you know that the weather has a significant effect on people’s dating habits?
You can adjust bids depending on the weather in a specific location!
If = rain in <New York>, bid X.
Amazing.
#9 – Low Performance Failsafe
Quite simple, over certain thresholds, if performance is < desirable, pause it and keep a log.
(Humans check the log, work it out)
#10 – Low Quality Scores
Good quality scores above 7/10 are usually synonymous with good overall performance… it takes into account awful landing pages (“landing page experience”)
Anything under 5 is a red flag, and inefficient.
You need a new landing page or a new ad – find out exactly which with an automated QS bot!
Sometimes low Quality Scores are unavoidable – e.g. if you are advertising consultants but have no consultants on your page (deliberately) – in comparison to ‘consultants-for-hire’ sites your quality will be low.
You should strive for 7+ though, and 9+ if working with high budgets.
#11 – Ad Insertion
Is this a robot? Or just data stuff. I don’t know, either way here it is.
You have a sheet full of promos, discounts on your product catalogue. Your robot gets the correct-right-now discount into your advert. Magic.
#12 – Broad Match Detector/Killer
If there is one thing I have learned in life, it is that full broad matches in Google are giving license to Google to snatch money from you every minute they are live.
Not broad match modifier – I mean broad match with no +
Turn that sh*t off immediately, and automatically!
(There are rare exceptions, for example very early days data gathering where budgets permit – maybe. Maybe.)
Now We’ll Get Technical
For the advanced reader, here are a selection of the more advanced robots we have knocking around… now we’re talking freaky Boston Dynamics super-robot territory
Ok not quite, but here we go:
#13 – Search Query Optimiser
I love this robot, she looks through every single *actual* search term (not targeted search term), analyses the data and self-optimises. That is, creates new terms & removes unwanted (poor converting) terms.
Whoa.
And it works.
#14 – Anomaly Detector
All accounts settle down in to a relatively peaceful life, compared to the initial data and learning stage.
Then you can get the real high-value human work done: better messaging and creativity; ad copy & experiments, landing page copy & experiments, and deep, deep optimisations.
Whilst you’re off doing all that, rest safe in the knowledge that Anomaly-Bot is going to actively alert you to any unusual changes.
And There Are Many More
This is just a selection of scripts we use to manage Google Ads campaigns, and maximise human time for “real” optimisations.
There are a tonne more but we can’t reveal all of our secret sauces…
The goal: have your people spend less time stressing on routine, rule-based stuff – which absolutely must be taken care of, it’s bread and butter.
Also, they get to sleep easier at night knowing everything is under control!