Should I Pause My Google Ads?

When it comes to pausing a Google Ads campaign, one of the most common solutions that I hear and that is driven around on places like YouTube is actually just plain wrong. And the solution that many people give when it comes to the question of should you pause a Google Ads campaign? Is that they say that you should not pause a campaign, but rather lower your budget down to $1 a day, 50 cents a day, or lower a keyword bid down to like $0.01 so that your campaign is not paused, but it doesn't spend any money. So in this video I'm going to talk about why this solution is offered, why it is the wrong approach, and how if you take on this approach, you'll be doing more damage than good in your Google Ads account. And then I'm going to finish with giving you the correct solution to this issue and how you should go about correctly pausing your Google Ads campaigns. But before we get into all of those issues, just in case we haven't met yet, my name is Aaron Young for from Define Digital Academy and I'm your 15,000 hour Google Ads master. The common situation for why people would want to pause a campaign that is performing well is generally because of two reasons. Firstly, they want to reduce some advertising costs for a period of time or secondly, because their business is closing for a period of time because of a seasonal holiday. And the reason for why some so called Google Ads experts recommend that you just lower your budget and down to that level where you're not going to get any actual clicks in your campaign, but the campaign still running. So you're kind of tricking the Google Ads algorithm. The reason why they give this solution is because they go through and explain to you that the Google Ads algorithm works and it's going through a learning phase and it's got all of this data about your Google Ads campaign. And then they go on to say that if you pause a campaign or a certain ad group that the algorithm resets and you lose all of that data. And this is mostly true in that the Google algorithm is always collecting data about your campaign and that by pausing your campaign, it will reset a new learning phase. And then what? That means that if you come back a week or two or even a month later to restart your campaign, the Google Ads algorithm will have to go through the whole learning process once again. So you could see a period of time where your results aren't the same as what they were previously before you paused your campaign. But where this strategy falls down and the reason for why it is not a valid solution is because people do not understand that by rapidly changing your Google Ads budget is exactly the same thing. What I mean by that is that if you were to rapidly decrease your budget, say for example, $50 a day down to a dollar a day, you're doing the exact same thing as pausing your campaign in that you're throwing it into a new learning phase. And the reason why this is bad, by reducing your budget so rapidly so so that you're not getting any actual clicks any further, that is so bad for your account because one of the core factors in having a successful Google Ads campaign is by maintaining a high click through ratio. The reason for why this is so important, you need to remember all the time with any optimization that you make in Google Ads is that the Google Ads algorithm rewards a high click through ratio. The reason for why that is so important is because the Google Ads algorithm really rewards ads that are clicked on. And there are a couple of reasons for why the Google Ads algorithm rewards a high click through ratio. Firstly, and most importantly, you need to remember that Google Ads is the way that Google gets paid. If no one is clicking on the ads, it means that Google is not getting paid. The second reason for why click through ratio is so important is because Google is very passionate about making sure that they're matching users search inquiry with relevant ads, which is then taking people through to relevant websites. So if the click through ratio in your campaign lowers, that sends a very strong signal to Google that your ads are not relevant for users. And this is why I don't like the solution of just rapidly decreasing your budget. Because what you also do is you rapidly decrease your click through ratio. And for me, that is even more damaging to your account than just pausing your campaign. And think of an example like this. You, you are currently running a Google Ads campaign with a budget of $50. And you've got a long history of getting each conversion at $10. So your cost per conversion is $10. So on that account for every $50 spent, you're getting five conversions. And then because of that long term data, you've also set up a maximized conversion bidding strategy with a CPA target of somewhere between $8 to $10. But if you were to use this commonly given solution of just lowering your budget you down to a dollar a day so that technically your ads are still running, but you're not getting any clicks, you're feeding data to the Google Ads algorithm that your account is now trying to maximize the conversions for just $1 a day. Meaning that the CPA target of 8 to $10 that you've got in your account is no longer valid because you've only got a budget of $1. And before you say, well, I'll just remove the CPA target and we'll run with the maximized conversions bidding strategy. And that is still not going to work because your account has been conditioned and you've got the algorithm working to get your account performing and providing conversions for you at $10 a conversion. And that's why I've never understood that solution, because by rapidly decreasing your budget, you're forcing your campaign to get no clicks and also to lower the impressions and also lower the click through ratio. It's the same effect as pausing your campaign. And this all comes from people who don't fully understand how important your budget is. For the Google Ads algorithm, if you had two campaigns that were exactly the same in every other way, except one campaign had a budget of $100 and another campaign had a budget of $1,000, those campaigns would be very, very different. The reason for that is because the budget with $1,000 a day may be more targeted to perform in those high traffic areas of the day, whereas the campaign that has only got a budget of $100 a day may be limited from those areas. And the algorithm is focusing its impressions and clicks on a certain type of people at later periods of the day where there's not as much competition. And the reverse of this is also true. That is why for people, if they see a successful campaign and they just really, really quickly increase the daily budget of their campaign, they will not see the same results. So, for example, if you've got a highly successful campaign running $10 a day, one, once again, the worst thing you can do is just to quickly increase that budget to $50 a day because it'll force the algorithm to go into a new learning phase. Now, this might be getting a little bit confusing, but the main point I want you to see and I want you to understand is that by reducing the budget very, very quickly from a high level down to a level where you know you're not going to be getting any clicks and impressions. It's the exact same thing as pausing your campaign. So let's, let's now talk about the solution and the correct way of going through this process. And this is a process that I've been talking to at length with Google HQ here in Australia. And the term that I want to introduce to you is a term called priming. And a key feature of the Google Ads algorithm is that you want to stagger any budget increases or budget decreases. And that's why they use the term priming. They want to prime the account for the new budget increase or, or prime the account for the new budget decrease. What we're looking at doing here is to slowly train the Google algorithm that we want you to perform at the same level, but with this new budget. So if you're coming into a period where you want to reduce your budget, the core principle that you need to follow is that you should only decrease your budget by no more than 20% at a time. And then from there you look review the results and when you see that those results have stabilized so your core conversion results are the same except just running at a level 20% lower, you can then add in another budget decrease for a further 20%. And my strong recommendation here is to never fully pause the account, similar to the wrong solution that other people have given. Because my core difference is this, is that you only lower the budget to to the level of a single cost per conversion. Let's use that example again of an account that's at $50 a day getting conversions at $10 a day. What you would do there, and the correct way to lower the budget spending for this account would be to reduce the daily budget by 20% at a time down until where you get to $10. And the reason for why a budget of $10 a day is so important is, is because that's the average cost per conversion. So if your cost per conversion was actually at $5 a day, you could lower your budget down to $5 a day. And then you can allow your campaign to go into that maintenance period where it's still going to be operating at the same level. So you're still going to be seeing very similar click through ratios, very similar conversion rates, and also very similar cost per conversion rates. With the only difference being is that you've got a lower spending that you need for your business while your business is trying to reduce some costs or you're going through a holiday period. And then when it comes time to rescale your account, always you need to remember is that priming and you only go about increasing your budget at 20% as a time until you get back to your desired budget. Now, if you're at the stage in your Google Ads journey where you're actually even thinking about issues like this, I want to invite you to my Google Ads 10X community. And the reason for that is because this is the place where you where I go through detailed strategies for Google Ads in a private community. And once you're part of this private community, you get access to monthly advanced trainings with live Q and A sessions. And these are topics that I don't actually go through right here on my YouTube channel or if I do, I take it through to a deeper level. And secondly, we also have live group coaching and Q and A calls every single month where you get access to me, where, where I take you through a live group coaching session. And then you can actually ask questions and I'll give you the answers. So once again, you can see the highest level of success with your Google Ads campaign. And then finally you also get access to my Google Ads community. And this is a community of like minded people, just like you, who are trying to learn as much as they can about Google Ads so that they can increase the performance of their Google Ads campaigns. And when you're part of this community, you can log in anytime, ask any questions, and your community members are there to support you. And I'm also active in that community, answering questions every couple of days. And if you'd like to find more about my 10x community and how you can join, just follow the link in the description below. And then one last thing before we go. At the end of that video I spoke about how you need to actually correctly scale a Google Ads account. And if you would like to learn more about how to correctly scale a Google Ads account and what you need to be looking out for, I want you to go through and watch this video right here. Thank you for joining me. See you next time.