Expert tip that took me eight years to learn about Google Ads

★★ signal-medium r/ppc · ↑ 105 · 💬 55 · 2025-07-22 · kw: hours every day · open on reddit ↗

Tool

Google Ads

Issue

Conversion-optimized Google Ads campaigns narrow customer acquisition to high-intent Saturday bookers, missing weekday and spontaneous bookings that represent untapped revenue for event/service businesses.

Cost

hundreds of thousands of dollars (stated by OP); quantified impact unstated in comments

Recommendation

Run parallel campaign strategies with maximize clicks objective; use value-based bidding to assign lower values to Saturday conversions ($10) and higher values to other days ($50); or cycle between maximize clicks (15-30 days) then maximize conversions with tCPA

extracted with

anthropic/claude-haiku-4.5 · 2026-05-08

Body

If you run an event or entertainment business, this could save you hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of trial and error. When I run campaigns optimized for conversions, Google mostly brings in bookings for Saturdays. To clarify, customers submit inquiries every day. But when they book, they almost always schedule their event for a Saturday. Almost never a Sunday. Rarely a weekday. However, when I switch the campaign objective to maximize clicks instead of conversions, I start getting inquiries for every day of the week. My theory is that people booking Saturday events tend to plan further in advance and do more online research. Google knows how to find them. People booking weekdays or Sundays may be less predictable or spontaneous, and so the conversion-optimized campaigns do not reach them as effectively. Would love to hear from others running service businesses. Have you seen the same trend?

Top comments (6)

[score=12] QuantumWolf99

That's interesting insight about conversion optimization getting stuck on specific customer patterns... what you're describing makes sense because Google's algorithm finds the "easiest" conversions first, which would be the high-intent Saturday planners who research extensively. For service businesses, I've seen similar patterns where conversion campaigns get tunnel vision on the most predictable customer behavior... sometimes maximize clicks with manual bid management actually finds better diversity in lead types. The algorithm can get trapped optimizing for patterns that represent a subset of your total addressable market. This is exactly why I ALWAYS RECOMMEND running parallel campaign strategies rather than putting everything into one optimization goal... you miss opportunities when the algorithm decides what "success" looks like based on limited data patterns.

[score=22] [deleted]

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[score=8] Single-Sea-7804

Run your campaign for maximize clicks for one conversion cycle (likely 15-30 days) and then put it on maximize conversions with a tCPA. Then you'll likely get those weekday conversions. Did you start this campaign off on max conversions?

[score=9] TTFV

Yes, this is just a variation on the problem with garbage in garbage out conversions. Any time you track the wrong conversions (spam form submissions, low quality leads, irrelevant leads) Google "improves" by sending you more of them. One alternative you could do while not blowing up automated bidding is to use value based bidding. Since you've established that Saturday bookings are a dime a dozen you can set the value for those to say $10 while setting the value of conversions any other day to $50. This will force Google to devalue users/queries most likely to lead to Saturday bookings and even things out some. You can set this up with offline conversions or just add values based on the date selection from your scheduling form.

[score=3] ppcwithyrv

this is such a smart observation. Maximize Clicks pulls in more random-----probably spontaneous leads (is what I mean) vs. such high intent.

[score=3] Goldenface007

Sorry but thats not an expert tip that takes 8 years to learn, it's an anecdotal theory that's not supported by any data. A fluke one might say. This would probably not have the same results on a wedding venue, a comedy club or a sporting event, so that's important context missing. -Are the weekday reservations actually paid bookings or just gtag conversions? -What's the usual delay between a booking and the event? -Are Saturdays actually booked so far in advance? -Are the weekday availabilities reserved on a shorter time frame? -Are they actually different customer profiles? -What's the conversion rate for each bid strategy and time slots? You should start there if you want to make a real case study.