When you’re asked to predict performance at various spend levels, performance targets or total conversion goals for a meeting tomorrow morning, it becomes daunting the task to get through it in the given time. We all know that planning can be both exciting and exhausting, and I am sure many of you must have felt this at different points of their life.
When you need to decide how to allocate your budget across accounts for next month, next quarter, or throughout 2020, you can now answer those questions and more (e.g. Performance Planner now works for manager accounts). Even if your goals or budget aren’t changing, you can still find opportunities to improve the performance of your campaigns and accounts.
Getting the most out of Performance Planner is a tricky task, if not a daunting one. We have provided some ways of how you can get the most performance planner.
1. Know what seasonality can mean in terms of performance
Every time you update your date range it’ll take seasonality into account, seasonality can have a big effect on your planning. This prediction includes whether your campaigns will see increases or decreases in traffic based on Google’s historical search queries in similar periods, geographic areas, and categories from previous years. It also factors in year-over-year growth.
2. Forecasting
After you’ve created your plan, you can view it on the draft plan page. The page includes an overview where you can make changes to see how your campaigns might perform. You can also see how your performance numbers will change in real-time and can share that information before implementing anything. It’s a safe place to forecast.
3. Plan according to the periods you care about
You can customize the dates of your forecast depending on how your business operates. Monthly, quarterly, annually, fortnightly – whatever you’d like. Projections for 2020 are included so you can get ahead of next year’s performance. You can even focus on a single day if you want.
4. Estimate how new keywords will affect existing campaigns
What will new keywords do to your existing query mix and budget plans? Will those new ideas address searches you’re already appearing for, or will this drive a new volume for you? To find out, click on your campaigns (underneath the plantable) and check out the “Things to try” section. You can add your keywords and see what’s projected to happen.
How To Create a Successful Plan
Planning is an art and if you will keep a few things in mind, it will help you plan things in a better way and get better results.
First, you need to understand that forecasts are directional, not guarantees. They’re based on auction data, seasonality and recent history from your campaigns.
Moreover, plan across accounts. If you have multiple accounts you can add campaigns from each into your plan. The Performance Planner is as flexible as your account structure can be. Your campaigns and accounts in each plan should have similar goals. Your plan won’t make a ton of sense if you’re basing things around a CPA goal only shared by some of your campaigns. With different goals, your account(s) use different plans.
Also, not all campaigns are eligible to be planned. Campaigns need to have enough history. Also, Performance Planner works with Search campaigns using certain bid strategies: manual CPC, maximize clicks, enhanced CPC or Target CPA. Timing affects accuracy. The closer you are to your forecast period, the more accurate the plan is. If you’re forecasting out into the distant future, there’s a chance that some variables will change between now and then.