Here’s my 6-stage cycle you can use to increase your PPC productivity and freedom without wasting a lot of time and money:
1. Define your PPC goals
Be concrete, be specific, and don’t be shy about the numbers.
2. Eliminate
Remove all the tasks that don’t significantly move the needles for what you defined in the previous step. Be relentless; remove more than what feels comfortable. You should also apply this at the PPC account level — remove campaigns, ad groups, and keywords that only bring complexity but little results.
3. Document
Create a written Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for anything you do more than once. Think negative keyword management, tinkering with budgets, smart bidding targets, feed optimization, and ad copy testing. Start with the easy stuff — this allows you to prove the value of SOPs to yourself (and your team). Don’t try to document everything at once. Take small incremental steps. Improve the SOP every time you use it.
4. Delegate
Bring in one or more contractors to run your SOPs for you. Make sure that they know they are allowed to improve the SOP as long as they update the SOP to reflect their changes and ask you for feedback.
5. Automate
Set up software automations to replace your contractors. This could be as simple as using automated rules, plugging systems together with no-code solutions like Zapier for reporting, or hiring a developer to write a Google Ads script for you.
6. Liberate
The ultimate goal is freedom — both geographical and from the traditional 9-to-5 structure. Work from anywhere, anytime you want. This flexibility allows you to focus on what’s really meaningful for your account, for your client, for your business, for you, and for your loved ones.
This brings me to Brian Dyson, the former CEO of Coca-Cola, who once said:
“Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them work, family, health, friends, and spirit, and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls — family, health, friends, and spirit — are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered.”
– Nils