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The first 14 days: what to change and what to leave alone
6 minutes, 9 steps, workout 6 of 6 in this module
Day two of a new campaign: a handful of clicks, no sales, and a message from the client asking whether you should change the ads, the keywords or the budget. Change everything too early and the campaign starts learning from scratch, so you never find out what worked. Wait too long and a broken tag or a badly matched keyword burns money for weeks. Knowing what to fix on day one, what to check on day three and what to leave alone until day fourteen is most of the job in a new account.
What you'll be able to do
By the end of this workout, you'll know what the learning period is, which changes are worth making in the first two weeks and which to leave alone, and when to move to a conversion-based bid strategy.
A first look: The early days are noisy
A new bid strategy shows “Learning” for up to 7 days, and results can take one to two conversion cycles to settle. Judge over at least two weeks or two conversion cycles, whichever is longer.
What this workout covers
- 1The early days are noisy
- 2Change less, learn more
- 3Case: Day 14 review
- 4Summary
A question from this workout: Day 14 review
Pamora's towel campaign has run 14 days on Maximize clicks at $50 a day. Conversion tracking is verified. Break-even cost per sale is $45.
- Spend (14 days)
- $700
- Sales
- 16
- Cost per sale
- $44
- Pace
- about 34 sales in 30 days
What's the sensible next step?
- Stay on Maximize clicks: it will learn to find buyers eventually
- Switch to a conversion-based strategy such as Maximize conversions, then leave it alone for at least two weeks
- Switch to Target ROAS with a 600% target and double the budget the same day
- Change bids by 20% every morning to steer it
Pick your answer first, then open the reasoning below.
Show the answer and the reasoning
Answer: B. Switch to a conversion-based strategy such as Maximize conversions, then leave it alone for at least two weeks
Sales are flowing at about 34 a month, enough to judge a conversion-based strategy (Google suggests evaluating over 30 days including at least 30 conversions). Switch once, then give it a couple of weeks before judging.
The other steps work the same way: you decide first, then see why each option is right or wrong.
How you practice here
- 3 short concept cards
- 1 multiple-choice question
- 1 campaign case with real-looking numbers
- 1 put-in-order exercise
- 1 guided calculation
- 1 sorting exercise
- 1 slide-and-see exercise