There are lots of excuses people make for not progressing in learning a new skill like coding; I’m not smart enough, it’s too hard, I can’t remember the concepts, I have different priorities now, etc. But the ONE EXCUSE I hear the most frequent is…
“Dude, I’m already so busy managing a ton of accounts. I don’t have any time to learn how to write my own Google Ads Scripts!”
Fair enough. You’ve got meetings to attend, reports to send out to clients, SKAG’s to create, bids to adjust, endless search term reports to analyse, ad copy to test…Business to take care of. And then there are friends, family, and a mountain of other responsibilities that have a monopoly on your time. So how, amidst all those time-consuming responsibilities, do you find time to learn to write some awesome custom Adwords Scripts?
Easy. You make time. By using Adwords Scripts.
Sounds like a chicken and egg situation? Maybe not…
“Hundreds of hours are saved because I took some time to learn JavaScript and automate those tedious activities.”
– quote from Reddit r/PPC
Here’s how you can do the same.
Step 1: Monitor your time spend.
From today on, monitor how much time you spend on every task, including browsing the web and scrolling Facebook timelines. Also make distinct log entries for the different tasks that make up Adwords account management, like ad copywriting, bid management, reporting, account structure optimizations, client communication, etc. I recommend using some form of time tracking app for this. Toggl is a great tool.
Step 2: Eliminate tasks that have poor ROI
The easiest way to get back huge chunks of time is to eliminate pointless activities from your daily working routines. I used to spend hours a day on social media and reading blog posts that did not translate into any actions. I also did a lot of pointless clicking in the Adwords interface. Just clicking around with no specific purpose other than to see what was going on. All this lead me to no action, no results. Nothing really improved. Not my accounts performance, not my relationship with my boss, not my skills, not my happiness. It was a complete waste of my time. Once I cut out social media and only read blog posts that got me to actually do something I started to make my time useful and feel a sense of achievement every day. Learning new skills made me feel much better than relaxing every day.
I urge you to look at your daily activities, including those Adwords related, and ask yourself “does this really make anything better?”. Does adding sitelinks to ad groups with near-zero impressions really make sense? Does spending hours digging in search terms reports to find negative keyword candidates really cut down costs? Is a Quality Score of 7 really an issue for these keywords? Do you really apply any of the things you read at search engine land? What if you just read the 3 top posts once a week, instead of spending hours reading every post every day?
Remove all tasks that do not deliver significant results from your daily routine.
Step 3: Automate recurring Adwords tasks
Welcome to the art of bootstrapping. Let’s use scripts to free up some time to learn how to write your own scripts. Magic, right? Here’s how. You make a list of the Adwords management tasks that currently take up much time. Now go find a script that reduces the time you spend on these time-consuming actions. Just browse some of the many Adwords Scripts collections out there and I assure you, you will find some that can alleviate some of the tasks that currently take ages to complete.
NB: Try to think of a task that takes up a large chunk of your time every week. Next time you are scheduled to do the job, instead of going in and doing the task the way you normally would, go find an Adwords script to help you. If you are lucky you’ll find one that you can use straight out of the box and delivers an immediate “return on research time”. Example: if you spend 4 hours every week digging for negative keyword candidates in your Shopping campaigns, use this script. Finding, installing and running this script would maybe take you 2 hours. Running the script, using its output and finishing your job will take you 1 hour. Congrats! You just won 1 hour of time this week, next week you will win 3! That is 3 hours a week to spend on learning your new superpower.
Step 4: Dedicate freed-up-time to learning Adwords Scripts
Freed up time is of no use unless you make it so. Start building the habits to succeed in learning to write your own Adwords Scripts. Spend 30min each day learning new Javascript skills. Codecademy is a great start for this. Then add an additional 30min each day to play around with some existing scripts and code snippets. Have some fun tinkering with the code. After a week or two of following this habit, learning Adwords Scripts has become part of your daily routine and you should be able to write your own small Adwords Scripts!
So, start monitoring, eliminating and automating your daily tasks today. Next week you’ll have an ocean of time to spend learning how to use the power of Adwords Scripts, and enjoy all the benefits.
BONUS TIP: During coffee breaks I like to browse through some Google Ads Scripts libraries, just to get a feel for what is possible. This way I learn about the use cases and I activate my brain to start thinking about the possibilities of automation for my own accounts. Why not give this a try on your next coffee break?
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