Prime Search Hours: When To Up-Bid Your PPC Competition
January 8, 2008 by Pablo Palatnik
One of the key components of running a PPC campaign (for bidding purposes) is knowing when your target audience is searching the web. Granted, the web is the one place that is open 24/7 with millions and millions of people jumping around from website to website so a lead/sale can come at anytime.
If you notice in the engines, your competitors switch positions due to CTRs but also bids during certain times. There are competitors that know exactly when they want to be on top and others just always stick to their positions.
One way you can find out when you may want to up-bid your keywords is through Google Trends. Let’s say you have a website that sells college football t-shirts. Tonight, Ohio State played and if you think about it, you’ll have people searching for buckeyes info and gear.
Keyword: ohio state football roster
Time: 11:06pm
Hotness: Spicy
Related searches:
lsu football roster, ohio state roster, ohio state football, ohio state football players, lsu roster
Peak:
4 hours ago
MarketingCharts reports on a study done by BurstMedia which was interesting to me and may be obvious to some but not to others. I’ll go over the main points which you should be aware of to decide when you want to set your peak bidding times.
* Some 35.5% of respondents said they spend three or more hours per day online, with the 18-34 years old segment the most active: 41.5% of them are online three or more hours per day.
• Among 25-34-year-olds, 32.8% of men and 28.4% of women cite work as the primary location for going online.
• Shopping while at work is common: Half (51.2%) shop online for personal items while at work – and men are significantly more likely to do so (56.4% vs. 45.5%).
• The most common personal shopping activities while at work: making a purchase (31.7%), researching features of brands (26.6%), comparing retail prices (25.8%), looking up store locations (25.1%), seeking last-minute deals (18.4%).
Work Hours: 8:30am-9pm Eastern.
Keep in mind, I write 9pm because you have people working on the west coast, so when its 9pm in the east, it is 6pm in the west.
From my experience, I have also seen leads come in late at night, around 10pm-1am eastern.
Dinner hours and weekends are slow for the most part but those are also times to take advantage if you see your competition drastically drops their bids but if you’re in a competitive market, you’ll see the days of up-bidding and down-bidding may be gone. Competition has gotten so fierce; advertisers try to stop as high ranked as possible. This is something you have to do research and see if there is a possibility for you to get ahead, mostly through Google.
