The B2B Bid Strategy Question: Maximize Clicks vs. Conversions
Getting your Google Ads campaigns off the ground for a B2B business can be tricky. One question that comes up a lot is around bidding strategies, especially early on. You might be using Maximize Clicks to get some traffic flowing and see what happens, but how does that square with things like ad scheduling? And is Maximize Clicks even the right strategy for B2B in the first place?
Can You Schedule Ads with Maximize Clicks?
First off, yes, you absolutely can use ad scheduling when your campaign is set to Maximize Clicks. The option is still available in the campaign settings, letting you control which hours or days your ads are eligible to show.
Why Maximize Clicks Usually Isn't Ideal for B2B
Here's the thing though: while you *can* use scheduling with Maximize Clicks, the strategy itself often isn't the best fit for B2B objectives if you're looking for actual leads or customers. Maximize Clicks is built to get you the highest *volume* of clicks within your budget, end of story. It doesn't care if those clicks come from people likely to fill out a lead form, download a guide, or book a demo. It just wants the click.
In the B2B world, conversions usually happen during business hours when people are at work and making decisions. If you're running Maximize Clicks, it might see that clicks are cheaper at 11 pm or on a Sunday because there's less competition, and happily spend your budget then, even if those clicks have almost zero chance of turning into a valuable lead. You end up paying for a bunch of low-quality traffic.
Prioritise Conversion-Focused Bidding for B2B
If your goal is genuinely to get leads, sign-ups, or sales (which for B2B, it almost always is), you should switch to a bid strategy that optimises for conversions. Strategies like Target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) or Maximize Conversions are designed for this. They use Google's machine learning to figure out when and where conversions are most likely to happen, and they automatically adjust bids to get you more of those valuable actions.
With a conversion strategy, the system learns from your conversion data. If it sees that conversions mostly happen between 9 am and 5 pm on weekdays, it will naturally bid higher during those times and lower (or not at all) during off-hours, even without you manually setting a schedule. It's essentially doing the scheduling optimisation for you based on actual results, not assumptions.
Should You Still Use Ad Scheduling Manually?
Even when you're using conversion bidding, you *can* still layer manual ad scheduling on top. For instance, if you have absolute data proving you've never gotten a single conversion on a Saturday, you might choose to pause ads completely then. Or if your sales team can only handle calls during specific hours, you might use scheduling to align ad delivery with their availability, perhaps just using it to reduce bids slightly outside peak hours.
But be careful about setting a rigid schedule based only on assumptions about "business hours," especially with small business owners who might work odd hours. Always let your own campaign's conversion data guide your scheduling decisions. Look at the day of week and hour of day reports in Google Ads to see when your actual conversions are occurring. If conversions *do* happen outside standard hours, conversion bidding will handle it. If they really don't, you can use scheduling to enforce that, but it's often best to let the algorithm learn unless you have a clear, data-backed reason not to.
The Takeaway
While you can pair ad scheduling with Maximize Clicks, for B2B campaigns focused on generating quality leads or conversions, it's much more effective to switch to a conversion-optimised bid strategy. These strategies are built to find you the valuable actions you need, and they're smart enough to figure out the best times to run your ads based on performance data.
