5 Things Paid Search Managers Do Each Month

There are many different tactics and optimizations that go into managing a successful paid search account. Understanding how to utilize the account’s data is also a crucial aspect in the management and generating a positive ROI. Here are some of the paid search management tactics that managers make sure to do at least once a month:

Manage Spend Pacing

Checking in on your account’s spend is very important when managing a paid search account. One of the worst things you could do is blow through your budget too early in the month and have to go dark for any amount of time. It’s important to see what the total spend month to date is, the average daily spend, and the total spend the account is pacing towards. Once you know where the account stands, figure out where you need to be and what to spend each day to get as close the goal budget as possible. 

Check Search Terms

Keeping an eye on what searches trigger the keywords in your account keeps you from spending on irrelevant terms and allows you to add more keywords that you might not have previously thought about. Adding search terms as new keywords will help the account because the more relevant the keyword is to the search will help combat the ever-increasing CPCs. If your account is structure is organize by match type, don’t forget to add the new keywords to your cascading negative list.

Bid Optimizations

Managing bid optimizations is an important aspect of paid search management. Bids can help you manage your budget and optimize your account. There are many types of bid adjustment levers that search managers can pull in order to help increase account performance while decreasing costs. 

Optimizing your keyword bids should be the first lever you pull when trying to manage the account or individual campaign budgets. This will help to increase or decrease spend without budget capping your campaigns. You will also want to check and make sure your bids aren’t too low and causing keywords to be below the minimum first page bid. 

Other bid adjustments that will help optimize the account spend wisely and capture the right customer at the right time. These include audience, device, location, ad schedule, and demographics. These optimizations can help to decrease costs by bidding lower on those who are less likely to convert on your ads, and help to keep the account competitive by increasing bids on those who are more likely to convert. Of course, those bid optimizations can become less time consuming if you take an automated approach and decide to implement auto bid strategy best practices.

Check for Disapproved Ads

Account notifications will alert you for disapproved ads. You also are able to filter by disapproved ads in the “Ads” tab. Ad disapprovals will prevent your ad from showing. It’s important to fix any issues quickly to get your ad reapproved and serving in auctions. There are many different reasons that an ad can be disapproved, but the interface will tell you what violation is triggering it. 

Evaluate Performance

Evaluate performance often and use the data to help make decisions for optimizations. This is a crucial aspect of the success of any paid search account. Know your KPIs and analyze how your current campaigns/ad groups/keywords are meeting that goal and what is dragging the account down. It’s important to look compare current performance with past performance as well. Look at week over week, month over month, and year over year data if that is available. Just because a keyword was successful 2 months ago does not mean it will be successful now. So let the data help you make decisions, and lower bids or pause things as needed. 

These are not all the things that paid search managers do each month, but they are the important aspects of managing an account and some of the most common tasks. Depending on the account size, these tactics may need to be done more or less often. Want to learn more about paid search management? Use Google’s tools and courses in their Google Ads certification.

Next Steps

If you’re certified in Google Ads Search, are organized, and enjoy both quantitative analysis and consumer behavior, you might be interested in exploring work as a paid search specialist or other digital marketing role. If that sounds like you, you can use this careers page from Jooble to search digital marketing jobs in the United States.

Root & Branch is a digital marketing team with operations in North Carolina digital marketing training and consulting in Paid Search, SEO, and digital analytics. Root & Branch is a certified Google Partner agency.