Our Favorite PPC Tool: We’ve Been Using it Consistently Using for 15 Years

I’ve been involved in PPC since 1998; and over those years I’ve used a lot of PPC tools from GoToast to PAD to Omniture and many more.

There’s one tool that I started using for PPC in 2001 and I’m still using it today: My Calendar.

Now most people don’t consider this a PPC tool; but in reality – it’s your most important one.

I have switched from Outlook to Google Calendar; but the idea is the same. If you don’t have a good calendar, you can’t get anything done and PPC management will fail.

Consider these days:

I did a poll during a recent keynote and asked the audience a simple question: What day would you build an account?

There were 4 options:

• Throughout day 1
• Skip lunch on day 1
• After/before work on day 1 or 2
• Do it all in the morning on day 3

The overwhelming majority of people picked the morning of day 3.

Now day 1 and day 3 have the exact same number of hours blocked off. There is the exact same amount of free time to build the account on those 2 days; but the structure of the day changes most people.

PPC people are creators. We want huge blocks of time to build and create. Most PPC people have their calendar controlled by their manager (or client) who don’t understand the need for large blocks of time as they live in 30 and 60 minute chunks of time.

There’s a brilliant article on this subject here.

However, a poorly managed calendar means the client waits at least 2 more days for the work to be done. If you have 30 minutes between meetings,

• you might answer some emails and actually work
• you might check out Twitter or Facebook
• you won’t launch an ad test or start modifying bids or do any ‘serious’ PPC work

Trello (and this image is courtesy of Trello – we’re huge fans) wrote a great article on how to find the correct hours to work.

• Most people have motivation, energy, and the focus to work in the mornings
• These decline as it nears lunch time
• In the afternoon, we have the motivation to work; but not the energy or the focus
• The highest motivation of the day is getting ready to leave work

What this means to PPC people:

• Schedule your mornings distraction free to create
  • Create could be campaigns, dig into data, do the hard time-intensive work
• Take a break for lunch and clear your mind
• Leverage other people’s energy in the afternoon
  • Such as client wanting to know how things are going
  • Giving feedback on a new project
  • Doing basic data analysis (which you might not act on until the next morning)

The next time you say you don’t have the time to do something (build an account, use a tool, doing some optimization work, etc) – look to your calendar.

A tool is only useful to accomplish a task.

If you don’t have the time to accomplish a task, or even know what the task is because you haven’t had the time to analyze any data, then look to your best PPC tool – your calendar.