Simplify your AdWords management with automated rules

Marketers benefit when they have more time to think strategically and spend less time on repetitive tasks.  We were excited when we launched automated rules in 2010 to provide you with the benefit of 24-hour account management while leaving you free to focus on other things.

Looking across the web, search professionals have been sharing ways they’ve used automated rules to help manage their campaigns.

1. Prioritize your time over the holidays with these ideas from Krystal Kenlan (WebPageFX):
• Schedule ads for special events/holidays
• Pause campaigns that spend certain budget partway through the month
• Pause low-performing ads based on metrics
2. Swap ads while you sleep as Ally Malick (SEER Interactive) suggests:
• Upload your promotional/new price point ads in a paused state and make sure these ads have a unique identifying phrase (i.e. “Doorbuster Sale” or “Ends Friday!”) so you can segment them using a text filter (another option for this is to use labels)
• Create an automated rule to pause all ads currently running 
• Create another automated rule to enable the new promotional ads
3. Save money with these three rules from Dan Williams (Periscopix) 
• Decrease bids by 10% on keywords that trigger an ad in the top three spots but have not led to a conversion
• Set a maximum bid first, then set a rule to increase bids on all keywords not displaying on the first page
• Set rules that help you fine tune for optimal ad position (not necessarily the top!)
4. Save time with automated rules ideas by Joel Chudleigh (Deep Footprints)
• Pause keywords that have had many clicks but have not converted
• Increase your bids on keywords that have a relatively low CPA
• Decrease your bids keywords that have a high CPA and a position between 1 and 5
• Increase your bids on keywords in positions lower than 7

Automated rules are available to all AdWords accounts and if you regularly perform manual tasks in your account, we encourage you to give this feature a try. And once you’ve done so, we’d love to hear your feedback for how we can make automated rules even better. So do let us know how it goes!

Posted by Maria Nikishyna, Inside AdWords Crew