Secret Strategy to Grow the Google Ads Algorithm Like a Pro

Kasim [00:00:11] Hey everyone, Regina here at Starter PPC. 2

[00:00:13] Today I want to talk to you about the overpacing, underpacing spend schedule 3

[00:00:19] that we like to use here at Starter PPC. 4

[00:00:22] You can too. 5

[00:00:23] We find it to be very helpful when you're trying to force the algorithm 6

[00:00:27] through mini learning periods so that it will gain some strength. 7

[00:00:32] Over time, it seems to help the algorithm to grow. 8

[00:00:37] More subtly and more quickly than if you were to just set a daily 9

[00:00:41] spend and just keep it that way month over month over month. 10

[00:00:45] I will say this seems to be more necessary in accounts with 11

[00:00:49] smaller ad budgets, you know. 12

[00:00:51] So at Certified PPC, we're always working with people who have 13

[00:00:54] ad budgets of 5, 000 or less. 14

[00:00:56] But like at our sister agency Solutions eight, for example, they don't use the 15

[00:01:00] over pacing, under-pacing schedule as often because when you have more budget, 16

[00:01:05] you have more conversions and more conversions means more power because 17

[00:01:10] you have more frequency of data points. 18

[00:01:13] And the algorithm can use that to get a leg up over the competition. 19

[00:01:17] And basically what that means is it's gonna grow. 20

[00:01:21] On its own, and you don't really have to encourage it 21

[00:01:24] and force it to do hard things. 22

[00:01:26] So I'm going to talk about this overpacing, underpacing, and the 23

[00:01:30] philosophy behind why it works, and also the technical management 24

[00:01:35] of how to manage it day to day. 25

[00:01:38] Or week to week, I should say, because you really only have to do it once a week. 26

[00:01:41] let's dive into it. 27

[00:01:42] So, first of all, I just want to say, 28

[00:01:43] the theory behind this is that, let me see if my face can fit here. 29

[00:01:48] That's good enough. 30

[00:01:49] theory behind this is, the algorithm, If you just give it a standard amount 31

[00:01:53] of budget day over day over day, it seems to kind of hone in on what works 32

[00:01:58] and it stops trying after a while. 33

[00:02:01] what we do is we kind of force these mini learning periods and 34

[00:02:04] we force it to do hard things. 35

[00:02:06] What I mean by hard things is we give it more budget than it's used to, right? 36

[00:02:10] Maybe 20 percent more, 40 percent more. 37

[00:02:13] just for a short period of time. 38

[00:02:15] And that makes it try new things. 39

[00:02:17] It's going to have to try some of these products over here that it usually 40

[00:02:21] doesn't show or some of these placements over there that it doesn't usually test. 41

[00:02:25] Sometimes it even tries new users, like new pockets of the market. 42

[00:02:30] And through this process, it can kind of discover new things that 43

[00:02:33] work that it wasn't using before. 44

[00:02:35] So what happens is when you lower the budget back down to 45

[00:02:38] where you want it to be, right? 46

[00:02:40] You just have to underpace then to try to make up for all the 47

[00:02:43] time when you were overpacing. 48

[00:02:45] The algorithm goes, oh, that's all I have to spend today. 49

[00:02:49] Well, no problem because I just spent way more than that for the past two weeks. 50

[00:02:53] now it can just gobble up all the easy low hanging fruit that it's discovered. 51

[00:02:57] And you'll find that your return will shoot up during this time period. 52

[00:03:01] even though your conversions have gone down because you're 53

[00:03:03] now spending less every day. 54

[00:03:04] So it's got some pros and cons. 55

[00:03:06] It's a little bit like a roller coaster, I feel at times. 56

[00:03:09] And so we do warn our clients that it's going to be a little bit like this. 57

[00:03:13] we do the first half of the month is over pacing. 58

[00:03:15] The second half of the month is under pacing. 59

[00:03:18] what you find is that, the return goes down during the first two weeks and 60

[00:03:22] it shoots up in the last two weeks. 61

[00:03:24] The. 62

[00:03:24] Conversions go up and up and up in the first two weeks and they 63

[00:03:27] go down in the last two weeks. 64

[00:03:28] but it all kind of evens out in the end. 65

[00:03:30] I just think that when businesses get a little bit bigger, they stop 66

[00:03:34] doing this because it is a little bit disruptive to your life as a human and 67

[00:03:38] as a business owner, especially if you have, people you have to report to with 68

[00:03:41] numbers and you want some steadiness. 69

[00:03:43] So. 70

[00:03:44] We only do it because we're working with small businesses, and we find that it 71

[00:03:47] is pretty necessary when you're trying to get the algorithm to grow over time, 72

[00:03:52] over months, it seems to encourage growth instead of just keeping things the same. 73

[00:03:57] I'm going to actually give you guys this spreadsheet, which 74

[00:03:59] is what we use internally. 75

[00:04:01] I'm going to show you how it works and a lot of. 76

[00:04:04] The people watching right now are probably like, Oh, but I only own one ad account. 77

[00:04:10] That's fine. 78

[00:04:11] Just delete all the rows. 79

[00:04:12] We have multiple ad accounts because obviously each person on our team 80

[00:04:15] is working with multiple clients. 81

[00:04:16] If you're an agency, you might also use all these rows, but if you're a business 82

[00:04:20] owner, you might only just need one row. 83

[00:04:21] Each row is an account. 84

[00:04:23] here's how it works. 85

[00:04:24] So this is week one. 86

[00:04:25] It says fill on the first. 87

[00:04:27] So on the first you come in and you put in your monthly budget. 88

[00:04:29] Let's actually just start another row and let's call it business 89

[00:04:33] a very creative business name. 90

[00:04:35] Okay. 91

[00:04:35] So business a has a budget of about 3, 000. 92

[00:04:39] Let's say. 93

[00:04:39] it's going to tell you what to spend every day for the first week. 94

[00:04:43] And that's 120. 95

[00:04:44] Why is it 120? 96

[00:04:45] Because they're overpacing by 20%. 97

[00:04:47] It says that right here. 98

[00:04:48] Pretty straightforward. 99

[00:04:49] Now you don't have to do anything for a week except for make sure 100

[00:04:53] it's kind of spending about 120. 101

[00:04:55] Obviously Google's going to spend some more some days and less other days, 102

[00:04:58] but it should average at about 120. 103

[00:05:01] week two, it says fill this one around the 8th. 104

[00:05:04] I say around the 8th because you can't always get to it on the 8th, right? 105

[00:05:07] Maybe you only want to do this on a weekday. 106

[00:05:09] It's really not that important that it's done on the day. 107

[00:05:11] But you should try to do it on the 7th or the 9th or something like that. 108

[00:05:15] So you're going to come in and just put the month to date spend. 109

[00:05:18] Now, let's pretend you've spent about 105 up to this point. 110

[00:05:21] It didn't quite spend 120 per day. 111

[00:05:23] It spent about 115. 112

[00:05:24] That's okay. 113

[00:05:25] We're going to make up for it. 114

[00:05:27] And so now, in week two, we want to overpace by 40%. 115

[00:05:31] So we're really pushing the algorithm to try new stuff and grow, grow 116

[00:05:35] its abilities and its powers. 117

[00:05:37] So this time we're spending 143 every day, this goes on for 118

[00:05:41] a week, et cetera, et cetera. 119

[00:05:42] So, at the beginning of each new week, you're going to put in how much you spent. 120

[00:05:45] Let's say we spent 806. 121

[00:05:48] Now it starts to pull back, right? 122

[00:05:49] And it's like, okay, we're just going to start to pace to spend 123

[00:05:53] whatever's remaining of the budget for whatever's remaining of the month. 124

[00:05:56] So now we're spending about 80 a day. 125

[00:05:58] And in the last month. 126

[00:06:00] let's say you've spent 2, 400 by now, and let's say there's 127

[00:06:03] six days in the month left. 128

[00:06:04] That's important. 129

[00:06:05] You have to put how many days are left in the month. 130

[00:06:06] So let's say there's only six, because maybe you're doing this on the 23rd or 131

[00:06:10] the 24th, or maybe it's a February and there's not that many days in the month. 132

[00:06:14] So six, and now you're going to spend a hundred dollars. 133

[00:06:17] And that's because you want to spend that as, as close to the perfect 134

[00:06:20] amount as you can to try to spend the full 3, 000 by the end of the month. 135

[00:06:26] Right? 136

[00:06:26] So that's how this is. 137

[00:06:27] Okay. 138

[00:06:27] So if you're wondering what are these notes here, T ROAS, TCPA recommended 139

[00:06:32] for this week, remove T ROAS and TCPA. 140

[00:06:35] So T ROAS and TCPA are restrictions that you can put on the bid strategy. 141

[00:06:40] And this is a little bit more advanced, but if you know what they 142

[00:06:43] are and you want to use them, great. 143

[00:06:44] I would say this is an optional strategy, but I left it in here 144

[00:06:47] to show you guys, because this is. 145

[00:06:49] That's often what we do, not always. 146

[00:06:52] So sometimes if we see an opportunity to apply a target ROAS, 147

[00:06:56] for example, on one or two of the campaigns inside of the account. 148

[00:07:01] We will do that, but we don't leave it on. 149

[00:07:03] that's the important part. 150

[00:07:05] If you're using TCPA or TROAS, do not leave it on because what you 151

[00:07:09] want to do is you want to force the algorithm to learn how to hit that 152

[00:07:12] goal, but if you keep it on, it's going to lose all of its knowledge. 153

[00:07:17] That it has about all the other products, right? 154

[00:07:20] Because it's just going to hone in on what it can do to hit that goal. 155

[00:07:23] it's a blessing and a curse because while it's on the algorithm is losing power, but 156

[00:07:28] it's gaining a really high return and it's learning how to hit a really high return. 157

[00:07:32] So it's good and bad. 158

[00:07:34] feel free to use that. 159

[00:07:35] There are exceptions to this rule. 160

[00:07:37] For example, standard shopping, we found sometimes we just apply like a low target 161

[00:07:42] row as like 30 percent or 40%, which we find helps, but it's not restricting 162

[00:07:47] the algorithm because it's so low that the algorithm kind of just ignores it. 163

[00:07:52] So sometimes we. 164

[00:07:53] have other reasons for using TCPA that are less restrictive. 165

[00:07:57] But in, in, if you see us applying a TCPA or a tROAS that's, that's, you 166

[00:08:04] know, actually at the goal that we need it to get, we'll only do that 167

[00:08:07] for short periods of time each month. 168

[00:08:09] this is our secret sauce, you guys. 169

[00:08:10] Well, one of our secret sauces. 170

[00:08:12] Unfortunately, it's really hard to prove that this is working. 171

[00:08:15] I do think that over time, even if you don't overpace or underpace, 172

[00:08:19] Over time, the algorithm should gain knowledge about your products and 173

[00:08:24] your business and it will start to gain some power and to grow over time. 174

[00:08:29] But I do think that this, when you're small, at least, 175

[00:08:32] this type of learning phase. 176

[00:08:34] you're going back and forth from learning phase to goal phase, 177

[00:08:37] learning phase to goal phase. 178

[00:08:38] So I call it taking the algorithm to the gym, right? 179

[00:08:41] So I think that when you're small, this type of thing really speeds things up. 180

[00:08:45] And in some cases seems to be, sometimes it just feels like it's the only thing 181

[00:08:48] that's helping the algorithm to grow. 182

[00:08:51] Which is a whole nother rabbit hole that we could get into, but I hope this helps. 183

[00:08:54] Play with it. 184

[00:08:55] There's a link below where you can make your own copy of this calculator. 185

[00:08:59] Make sure you don't change any of the fields that are in yellow 186

[00:09:02] because these are calculations. 187

[00:09:03] You only want to change the fields in white. 188

[00:09:06] Okay, Best of luck to you. 189

[00:09:08] Don't forget to like and subscribe