In a perfect world, you could set up a Google AdWords campaign, fill in your billing details, and then let it run forever… with fresh customers coming to your site every day without any further maintenance or input from you. In reality though, you do need to check on your-per-click accounts once in a while.
How often do you really need to look after them though? Here are a few basic guidelines to follow:
In the beginning, check your AdWords account once every day or two – you want to know that your ads are running, of course, but the temptation will be to change things too quickly. Be sure to give your ads time to work before you start tinkering.
As your campaigns are running, once a week will do – once your campaigns are running along profitably, it’s a good idea to check in once a week just to be sure that nothing has changed. The last thing you want is to see your profitable ads go off-line because you forgot to change an expired credit card, for example.
Look in on your ads frequently after a big change – if you make major changes to your AdWords campaigns, it might be worth it to check in on them every few hours. That’s about the amount of time it takes for new ads and keyword groupings to be approved, or to see if something’s gone wrong with one of your bids.
Your Google AdWords campaigns will probably never be completely hands-off, but once they’re up-and-running profitably, you won’t need to check them all that often.
