Our B2B ads run 7am - 7pm, but why?

[Mark_A]

Our ads are geographically limited and currently run to cover the basic working day, 7am -7pm.

I suppose because we don't expect anyone to search B2B terms outside these times.

But if no one or only a few are searching for these terms outside these times it would cost us nothing to be 24/7 and we might pick up people working late or early who we might otherwise miss?

Just thinking aloud ...

What does webmasterworld think?

[NickMNS]

You need to test this out. I may be a workable strategy but it might not. You could get many people clicking on the ad with no actual interest to purchase anything but that are simply curious. So you may not pay much for the click but your conversion rate will not warrant the investment. Obviously this is product specific.

Another strategy to consider is, try and find some interest area that your 7 to 7 customers share outside of work hours and then run your ads targeting that interest area. You will probably get few clicks outside of work hours so that should keep costs down, but once back at work the viewers of the ad may be more inclined to click on the ads they see then as they will be more familiar with you brand.

[Mark_A]

Looking at reports it seems we did once advertise all hours, as there were some clicks in the night hours. I will have to ask my colleagues why it was stopped. I suppose it will have been tricky to determine which clicks converted but people dealing with enquiries might have had a feeling that post 7pm clicks didn't convert.

As to your second ideal NickMNS yes that is certainly an interesting idea. Our current daytime ads are very tightly targeted with little waste - but if I could think of an area of interest of our clients I could run some late and early ads specific to that.

[engine]

Dayparting can save you from unwanted clicks outside of business hours, and is well worth doing.

Outside of those hours you're still likely to get clicks, using up your budget. There's always going to be wasted clicks in all the ads, but wasted clicks that are significantly higher at specific times of the day can be dealt with through regular testing and scheduling.

As was suggested, try running entirely different ads outside of normal hours and measure their performance. You can a/b test them, too.

If you're converting far fewer outside business hours, and it's costing you the same, it's easier to make a call on that. Note, because many savvy business hours advertisers use dayparting you may find that the competition outside office ours means a significantly reduced cpc.

Treat all campaigns as an ongoing test.

[Mark_A]

Hi engine, thanks for that, yes I expect out of hours competition should be less and CPC therefore also less.
Will ponder some ads for out of hours.

[RhinoFish]

Use Enhanced CPC, or other outcome based bidding tactics, and you'll grow volume some, at the cost that's right for you.

[Mark_A]

Thanks RhinoFish, I will have to look up Enhanced CPC, I am not familiar with it.