More about QS Search and China Marketing Trends
Industry news
Setting up an effective ad schedule bid adjustment on SEM
Source: | Author:QS | Published time: 2022-04-20 | 1036 Views | Share:


Have you ever encountered an advertisement that went offline early before reaching the traffic peak even if the conversion cost is very still high when doing the SEM promotion? Due to rapid changes in the bid price, manually modifiying the ad bids for every different time slot is time-consuming and may negatively affect the quality of the advertisement. A useful promotion feature called “Set up an ad schedule bid adjustment”, can solve the above problems. It allows advertisers to control and maintain the ads during the high-traffic period, and we will further explain this important feature in this article. 


“Set up an ad schedule bid adjustment” is based on the existing delivery setting, which added the time-based bid modifier function. The major SEM promotion platforms such as Baidu and 360 Search in China allow advertisers to set bid coefficients for different promotions and different delivery periods.

 

“Set up an ad schedule bid adjustment” function of 360 Search promotion 


By managing the promotion period of your SEM ads effectively, not only can you satisfy advertisers’ needs, but you can also stabilize the conversion costs, avoid some invalid traffic, and improve the effectiveness of your promotion. Nevertheless, how should we analyze and optimize the SEM promotion period?


1. Optimization and adjustment according to the industry

a) In order to reach their potential audiences, advertisers must understand and analyze online usage patterns and habits.

Example: Comparing holidays and workdays, people usually stay up late, and therefore, their browsing time is also delayed. 


b) The searching habits of the audience change due to different time nodes and industries.

Example: The number of searches in the education industry and the regular business service industry on major holidays and rest days are often very low. However, for life service industries such as material recycling, and home maintenance, the number of searches on weekends and holidays will be much more than on working days. Hence, the promotion period for different industries should differ on workdays and weekends.

 

Case: To avoid the keen competition during the daytime, advertisers should place the ads from 15:00 to 23:00 on weekdays and from 8:00 to 23:00 on weekends


c) Industry demand varies with the seasons, there are low and high seasons in the industry. 

Example: Most customer inquiries in some manufacturing industries are concentrated from mid-February to October. Due to the shutdown of raw materials in winter and the Lunar New Year Holiday, the customer inquiries would decrease. Therefore, they should increase the budget during the peak season, and the budget can be appropriately reduced during the winter.


2. Set the suitable “ad schedule bid adjustment” based on the historical data and the promotion period of direct competitors. 


In order to determine the best period for displaying the ads, it is necessary to analyze which time slot to invest more in. In the early stage of promotion, it is recommended to invest a sufficient budget and set up full-time delivery. After analyzing the data, eliminate or control the period with high traffic but poor conversion effect. And record the CTR and conversion rate as the main reference for the future.


Utilize the “Set up an ad schedule bid adjustment” function, combine the promotion experience and the promotion situation of competitors, and set appropriate bidding ratios according to the promotion effect of different periods to improve the promotion efficiency.


For example, when the search volume and the competition are low at the midnight, you can reduce the bid coefficient to make the advertisement bid slightly lower than that in the daytime, to save costs and not lose the traffic that would otherwise come from low competition. During the peak promotion hours during the daytime, to have a better display ranking, you can appropriately increase the bid coefficient.

 

Case: To improve the competitiveness during the daytime, the customer increases the bid factor to 3, and sets it to 1 to obtain lower-cost traffic at night


3. Arrange customer service on duty during the promotion period.

The competition in bidding ads is becoming more and more intense, it often takes a lot of time and effort to obtain a consultation from the customer. Thus, there must be a professional customer service staff to follow up in time. Otherwise, it may lose a business and damage brand awareness, which may also cause huge losses to advertisers in long run.


Therefore, advertisers need to arrange a customer service staff to follow up promptly according to the promotion period, as well as their own business and industry conditions, so as not to miss any customer inquiry and increase the number of conversions.


4. Cases for ad schedule bid adjustment:

(a)Financial advertisings

  • Anaylst browsing habits of your potential users: Such as opening time of US stocks, etc.

  • 100% normal bidding price: Bid the industry keywords and brand words during trading hours (such as 21:00-4:00 am).

  • Lower 50% and 80% bidding: Put brand words in the off-hours to maintain brand promotion.



(b)B2B advertisings

  • Potential users: Most of them are company employees, usually browsing during working hours.

  • 100% and 80% bids are delivered normally: this enables you to promote based on the users' working hours.

  • 50% lower bid: Place a 50% bid during off-hours hours and make arrangements for 1 on-duty customer.



(c)Education advertisings

  • Potential users: The majority of them are office workers, and they usually browse during breaks followed by working hours. For example, most of the target groups of MBA courses are professionals who want to improve their status in the workplace. And they will browse relevant information in their spare time.

  • 100% and 80% bids are delivered normally: Mainly promoted during the commuter time of office workers.

  • Lower 50% and 30% bidding: There is still a small amount of traffic during early morning breaks and holidays, which can be allocated according to customer service hours.



If you want to know more about digital marketing in China, please contact our professional digital media consultant at: enquiry@so360.hk.



 


Get updated with latest industry trends
  • Name*
  • Email*
  • Phone*
Subscribe Now