{"id":23313,"date":"2022-12-14T09:21:45","date_gmt":"2022-12-14T09:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/14\/if-time-is-money-this-free-google-ads-budget-script-is-priceless\/"},"modified":"2022-12-14T09:21:45","modified_gmt":"2022-12-14T09:21:45","slug":"if-time-is-money-this-free-google-ads-budget-script-is-priceless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/14\/if-time-is-money-this-free-google-ads-budget-script-is-priceless\/","title":{"rendered":"If Time Is Money, This Free Google Ads Budget Script Is Priceless"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Time is money.<\/p>\n

This is one of my mantras, and I try to run my life by it.<\/p>\n

Since I run my own small digital marketing agency and we only have a lean team, we have also made this one of our key pillars.<\/p>\n

So it is not a surprise for me, and for us as a team, that automation<\/a> has always been at the top of the priority list.<\/p>\n

It is also because I have always been fascinated by technology and innovation, and believe that progress is what drives us forward for the better.<\/p>\n

As such, I have looked at ways to do things using a different approach.<\/p>\n

My Automation Journey Started With Macros And VBA<\/h2>\n

Back in the day, I worked for a large online travel agency and my job was to set up partner businesses in the back end. It was a repetitive and tedious job; a sort of endless \u201ccopy and paste\u201d task.<\/p>\n

That is when I discovered the existence of macros.<\/p>\n

For those that are not that familiar, macros are sets of actions that can be recorded as instructions.<\/p>\n

When played back, macros will automatically repeat all the actions and steps that have been recorded in that exact same order.<\/p>\n

A benefit is that they can be recorded and used in a large number of environments. One of the most common uses is in spreadsheets \u2013 Excel, Google Sheets, etc.<\/p>\n

Many Years After, We Still Use Macros!<\/h2>\n

Even with my duties running the agency, I still enjoy being hands-on with the accounts \u2013 and in particular, working with the ops team.<\/p>\n

Recently, we had to complete an extra large report for one of our biggest clients.<\/p>\n

They prefer Excel over any other solution, and we had to engineer something that could collate and \u201cclean\u201d the data, format it, and present it in an insightful way.<\/p>\n

Whilst gathering the data and presenting it was quite straightforward, \u201ccleaning\u201d it to maintain consistent formatting was a bit of a challenge since we were dealing with tens of thousands of rows.<\/p>\n

This is where macros came to the rescue.<\/p>\n

A few sets of instructions I recorded and modified using visual basic (VB) \u2013 the language macros are built-in \u2013 made the task not only possible, but also helped to complete it faster, and eliminate the risk of human error.<\/p>\n

Automation = Money<\/h2>\n

My point is exactly this: If time is money and automation saves time, then automation equals money.<\/p>\n

All while providing the additional benefit of reducing the chance of making mistakes along the process.<\/p>\n

It is easy to see what has inspired my fascination with automation.<\/p>\n

Some of you reading this column might even have come across one of my previous articles here on SEJ: How To Use Google Sheets For Web Scraping & Campaign Building<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Evolving To Google Ads Scripts<\/h2>\n

There are tons of Google Ads scripts out there that have been written by some of the brightest minds in our industry; Frederick Vallaeys, and Daniel Gilbert, just to name a couple, are amongst those that I consider the real automation trailblazers!<\/p>\n

But despite scouring the internet, by and large, I couldn\u2019t find anything that could solve my problem.<\/p>\n

Why We Needed A New Script<\/h2>\n

Here was my issue: At our agency, we have a number of retail clients in the flower delivery industry that run their businesses online and via their brick-and-mortar stores.<\/p>\n

Having helped many of these businesses with their ad campaigns for several years now, we know a lot about their customer behavior and buying patterns.<\/p>\n

From these insights, we\u2019ve gathered that people tend to mostly order flower deliveries on weekdays, but on the weekends it is easy enough to pop to the shops and grab a fresh bunch of flowers.<\/p>\n

So normally we can see a dip in return on ad spend (ROAS) between Friday afternoon and Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n

Typically, people are back online on Sunday evenings, ordering deliveries for Monday.<\/p>\n

But despite all the amazing steps forward that Google has made with automated bid strategies (target ROAS, maximize conversions, etc.), most of these clients struggle to maximize ad performance during the weekends, whilst their ROAS tend to peak at the beginning of the week.<\/p>\n

So one of the actions we have taken (in accordance with our clients) is that, led by their performance data, we allocate different budgets, at a campaign level, to each day of the week.<\/p>\n

For example, we would have something like this for a Monday:<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Day<\/td>\nCampaign<\/td>\nBudget<\/td>\nWeight<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Monday<\/td>\nCampaign Name 1<\/td>\n$150.00<\/td>\n30.00%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Monday<\/td>\nCampaign Name 2<\/td>\n$85.00<\/td>\n17.00%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Monday<\/td>\nCampaign Name 3<\/td>\n$162.50<\/td>\n32.50%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Monday<\/td>\nCampaign Name 4<\/td>\n$62.50<\/td>\n12.50%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Monday<\/td>\nCampaign Name 5<\/td>\n$40.00<\/td>\n8.00%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Total<\/td>\n\n$500.00<\/td>\n100.00%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

And then like this for a Friday:<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Day<\/td>\nCampaign<\/td>\nBudget<\/td>\nWeight<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Friday<\/td>\nCampaign Name 1<\/td>\n$70.00<\/td>\n20.00%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Friday<\/td>\nCampaign Name 2<\/td>\n$87.50<\/td>\n25.00%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Friday<\/td>\nCampaign Name 3<\/td>\n$140.00<\/td>\n40.00%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Friday<\/td>\nCampaign Name 4<\/td>\n$35.00<\/td>\n10.00%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Friday<\/td>\nCampaign Name 5<\/td>\n$17.50<\/td>\n5.00%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Total<\/td>\n\n$350.00<\/td>\n100.00%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

You can see that, not only do we have a smaller total budget, but we also have a different budget weighting by campaign.<\/p>\n

We needed to be able to change each campaign budget to have a different allocation every day of the week.<\/p>\n

Indeed there is a way to automate the process directly from Google Ads<\/a> using rules. Though, if you have an account with a large number of campaigns, the setup could take a significant amount of time and effort.<\/p>\n

That is because we would either need to create one rule for each campaign, for each day of the week, in order to update the budget amount.<\/p>\n

Alternatively, we would have to create one rule for each day of the week, but with a different line (action) for each campaign.<\/p>\n

And no matter how you do it, either of these options leaves you vulnerable to mistakes along the way.<\/p>\n

I postulated that it would be easier to have a spreadsheet with the budgets split, where allocations can be calculated using simple formulas, and have this fed straight into the platform via a script.<\/p>\n

As I mentioned, I scoured the internet by and large, but couldn\u2019t find anything like that.<\/p>\n

Sure, there are a handful of Google Ads scripts that have been written to manage budgets, most to control spend and limit chances to overspend, but nothing that would suit our clients\u2019 needs.<\/p>\n

Enter The Google Ads Budget By Day Of The Week Script<\/h2>\n

What our script does should be pretty clear by now, but to summarise, it allows us to use a Google Sheet to set budgets by account and by campaign for each day of the week.<\/p>\n

It then uses that information to update the campaign\u2019s daily budget.<\/p>\n

Note that this is an MCC-level script, so if needed, multiple accounts can be managed through one single document.<\/p>\n

Where To Download And Copy The Script<\/h2>\n

The script is completely free to use, and can be downloaded or copied from our Github gist here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"scriptScreenshot from Github, December 2022<\/span>