If you listen to my podcast you’ve probably heard that I work on some large, intense AdWords campaigns. The campaigns spend a lot of money, and a lot of people’s lives are affected by the performance of these campaigns. They are the pinnacle of high stakes Google AdWords, and it’s a blast. But when you think about it, everyone’s Google AdWords campaigns are high stakes.
Sure, a moving company owner’s AdWords campaign that spends $3,000 a month might spend in a year what someone else’s campaigns spends in a day, but to that moving company owner, the $3,000 a month he lays out on Google Ads to bring back new business is an incredibly high stakes operation.
He’s spending a significant amount of money. $3,000 a month x 12 months a year ($36,000) x a 20 year business run is a lot of money ($720,000)! And it’s not just the money that’s important. That budget keeps the leads coming in, it keeps his employees busy, and ideally it makes a good return on spend and helps him make a profit each year. The point is that everyone’s AdWords campaigns matter, and to every advertiser, the stakes are high to them.
And high stakes can bring high stress. And high stress kills.
The advice I’m about to give you will lower your stress levels and save your life.
If you advertise on Google, don’t pay attention to the results of any one day, during that day.
Let me repeat myself.
If you advertise on Google, don’t pay attention to the results of any one day, during that day.
Let’s break that down. What I’m trying to convey, is that you should not be checking your AdWords data during the day, and you should not be putting a lot of stock in intra-day data (data you’re looking at for today, today).
If you check your current day’s AdWords results during that day, and if you put stock into what you’re seeing, you will stress yourself out. And I don’t want you to be stressed.
One day’s AdWords results, especially when looking at them that day mean absolutely nothing. One day of data is so pitifully meaningless, and there are so many things about statistical significance that you don’t know about that I’m not even going to try to start explaining them.
One day’s data means nothing, especially when you’re looking at it that day.
Some days it’s busier than other days, some days its slow for no reason, some days it’s 105 degrees in Los Angeles and no one is doing anything, including searching for a divorce lawyer.
Sometimes campaign rack up hundreds of weird, unnatural impressions and your clickthrough rate will be artificially depressed for an hour until those unnatural impressions are removed.
Sometimes your campaign is limited by budget.
Sometimes you’re not getting searches from likely to convert users and enhanced CPC bidding keeps your volume low.
There are so many things during the course of one day that can throw off your data. And when you look at your data during the day, you don’t give all this stuff a chance to work itself out. And you don’t give yourself a chance to see a full picture of what’s going on, so you aren’t able to see things that you’d see if you were looking at a larger amount of data.
If you don’t want to be stressed, don’t look at one day’s data during that day. You won’t be able to do anything productive, and you’ll just stress yourself out. And stress will kill you.
Instead, check the full data for one day the next day, and ideally check your AdWords data and results on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis. Checking your data properly like this, will help you be able to accurately review your data and successfully make smart optimization decisions.
So there you go, I just saved your life. Pay me back by sharing this article and buying me Cheesecake Factory if we ever meet.
