Things that successful PPC managers do in the morning

There are lots of articles out there on what successful people do in the mornings and you might have a specific set of things you like to do when you first clock in for the day in order to stay organized.

For PPC agencies and high-level in-house PPC managers, brief morning check-ins with your team can be essential to your clients’ or company’s PPC success. In this post, I’ll outline why I do this and what we’re looking for every morning to make sure we’re on top of our game.

Disclaimer: If you’re a PPC manager at an agency where multiple teams report to you, and each team has an unusually large client load, or you’re in-house managing a massive account, you may have to modify these steps. Further, this practice will only work if each PPC professional on the team has a manageable workload and is committed to the process.

Why have morning PPC check-ins?

As a high-level PPC manager, you want your team to have a good grasp on what’s happening in their accounts daily, and you want to be able to get the information that will help you help them. Here are just two reasons a morning check-in can help create a successful day ahead:

1. Find out what happened yesterday. It’s exciting to see what happened with your account(s) the day before — and essential to know what the wins and losses were.
2. React quickly. A lot can happen in one day, so a morning check-in helps you stay on top of mission-critical adjustments. This is especially important for newly launched campaigns and ad groups.

Following are 12 steps to a successful PPC morning routine. Encourage your team to go through these each morning for each account, then report back to you any interesting findings:

Top 3 Ways to Measure Conversions Using Estimated Total Conversions

In October, Google announced Estimated Total Conversions as a first step to providing you with a more holistic view of the conversions driven by AdWords. It is available to all advertisers who use AdWords conversion tracking. Estimated Total Conversions includes conversions you see today, such as online sales, as well as new conversion types like cross-device conversions and calls. Learn more

These insights are particularly important to understand because consumers are now constantly connected, using multiple devices throughout the day. In the next few weeks, this will be even more pronounced as people shop for holiday gifts. A recent holiday study shows that 84% of consumers who are likely to use a mobile or tablet device while shopping this holiday season, will start shopping on one device and finish on another.

Google os making it easier for advertisers to understand these consumer behaviors with new insights that are part of Estimated Total Conversions, a new column in AdWords.

Estimated Total Conversions includes cross-device conversions, which are also shown in a separate column to highlight their importance.

3 ways to use Estimated Total Conversions to improve business results

1. Take another look at your desktop/tablet bid. Once you see more conversions that can be attributed to AdWords, your total ROI from AdWords will change. Re-calculate your desktop/tablet cost-per-acquisition (CPA) based on these cross-device conversions. If your CPA has improved using this measure, you might want to look for opportunities where you may be able to increase position and volume by increasing your bids.

2. Capture the full value of mobile.  Many experienced search marketers are already using this data to make business decisions, by starting a test on campaigns that previously did not show on mobile.  Within a few weeks of showing ads on mobile devices, these advertisers started to see conversions they could not before -- those that started on a mobile phone and ended on another device. These insights led to important business decisions like adjusting mobile bids or shifting budget to reflect the new ROI of their keywords.

Amber Yeray, Digital Marketing Manager at EXPRESS, a national fashion retailer, has been working with her agency partner, RKG, to understand the new insights offered by Estimated Total Conversions.

“Cross-device conversions have shown that total estimated conversions are up 7%, with a 17% lift from mobile-initiated conversions. EXPRESS and search marketing agency partner, RKG, are now able to increase mobile bids for areas of the account that show the most impact from mobile -- driving more volume while remaining efficient.”

3. Spend only the most profitable dollar. The total value of your AdWords investment might change once you’re able to see more conversions. Whether it’s AdWords, other digital channels or offline media, think about investing your dollar into the most profitable channel possible.

Estimated Total Conversions provides new insights that may help you optimize bids and budgets to improve performance. Amit Shah, Vice President of Online, Mobile & Social at 1-800-Flowers, used the new insights that he gained to make more informed budget allocation decisions.

“After measuring cross-device conversions that began on a mobile device, we saw a 4% increase in total conversions measured in AdWords. With the full view offered by Estimated Total Conversions, we can correctly understand attribution across channels and make better decisions on achieving marginal spend optimization.”

These are just a few of the tips that we will continue to share as we hear feedback from you. Check out these best practices along with a walkthrough of Estimated Total Conversions in a recent webinar Google has hosted.