4 Easy Automated Rules You Should Be Using (To Make Your Life Easier)

home-alone-300x224The holiday season has officially commenced and with that comes more to do (cue – ugly sweater Christmas parties and forced family fun) and less time to do it all. It’s the best time of year to make sure your workflow is benefiting you and your clients. I have four automated rules to utilize this holiday season. Even if you automate nothing else in your accounts. Whether you’re a newbie and haven’t done much automation or you just like to keep it old school, here’s some automated rules you should try out:

Send Email/Notify Me When…

Monitoring Search Impression Share

If you’re monitoring a brand campaign, this is a great report. It’s not something that you necessarily need to have run every business day, but a refresh once a week would keep you on top of things. Set your threshold and then get updates as often as you’d like.

High CPA

If you’re hunting for conversions, this rule will make your days easier. Put in your highest dollar amount and the date range the rule should look at and you’re set. If you really want to get fancy, you can automate bid changes based on the CPA. (Automated bid changes are another post for another day.) This rule will help you keep an eye on where you’re making sales, but where you might not be as profitable.

Pause Keywords When…

High Spend With No Conversions

Especially for accounts with a limited budget, this is a glorious rule. Set it up to email you each day and you’ll always be on top of keywords that are budget-busters. If you like to hunt for high-cost keywords a couple times a week, just set this rule up to do it for you. If you’re worried about getting inundated with emails, you can select to only get an email when something gets paused.

Pause Campaigns When…

It’s A Holiday

Some advertisers, especially those lead gen accounts or some with limited funds, like to go black on days like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Take the Post-Its off your computer and let your campaigns pause and reactivate themselves. You’ll have to add two, one-time rules – one to pause the campaigns and another to reactivate, but once they’re set, you don’t have to worry about remembering to do it yourself!

Word to the Wise – If you’re uneasy about running the rules, make sure to preview them first or run a test before you let them run in the wild.

If you’re interested in learning more, check out some best practices and more information on automated PPC rules.