If you have just had a new web site designed or you are in the process of marketing your old one, Google Adwords is a great way to get new customers to your web site. Although we recommend search engine optimisation as a longer term, cheaper way of getting customers to your web site, Adwords does have some benefits.

If you have ever set up Adwords yourself, you could be forgiven for being confused with the vast array of terminology used and settings that are available, and it is often the case that people end up spending a lot more on their Adwords that needed. Google provide a lot of settings that allow you to perfectly tweak your ads so that you get the most value for your money.

Setting a schedule

We've recently taken over a customers Adwords account for them. They were spending a lot of money and not getting many customers for it so they asked us to help. One immediate change that we made which is very simple but sometimes people do not think about is creating an ad schedule.

An ad schedule is basically a timetable of when you would like your advert to run. Most of the time people set up an advert and let it run 24/7, which is fine for some businesses such as online shops when people can make orders at any time but for service companies, it makes sense to only run the advert when you are available to speak to customers on the phone, just-in-case they want to get in touch and ask more questions.

With our customer, their adverts were running 24/7 so we immediately changed this so that it only ran during office hours. We also stopped the advert running on Sundays because they are a small company run by a husband and wife team, and they wanted one day a week where they did not want to get interrupted with phone calls.

As well as immediately cutting down on the advert spend, it also gave them back their precious weekend allowing them to relax for at least one day a week.

How to set a schedule

To set a schedule on your existing adverts, just follow these steps:

• Log into your Adwords account and click on the 'Campaigns' tab at the top of the screen
• Under 'All Campaigns' click on the campaign that you would like to add a schedule to
• Now click on the 'Settings' tab and then click under 'Advanced Settings' you should see 'Schedule: Start date, end date, ad scheduling'. Click on this and then click on 'Edit' next to 'Ad Scheduling'
  
  Note: if you do not see 'Advanced Settings' on your screen click on the 'Edit' link and change the setting from 'Standard' to 'All Features' then click on the 'Save' button. This will enable all settings and the 'Advanced Settings' header will now appear

• Click on '+ Create Custom Schedule' and simply timetable when you would like to appear. You can schedule you advert to run 24 hours a day, five days a week, choose only weekends or select custom times and days
• Once done, click on the 'Save' button.

Your advert will now run to your schedule. We always suggest trialling it for a while and if it's still not working for you, you can make further changes or of course get in touch and we will be happy to help.