PPC audit: how to audit your PPC ads like a pro
When used correctly, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising can provide businesses a healthy increase in website traffic and revenue. At the same time, however, it can turn out to be a highly costly method of advertising if you’re not implementing your ads properly. The most surefire way to make sure your PPC campaigns are making you money instead of costing you money is to conduct regular, thorough PPC audits.
Efficient campaigns are successful campaigns, and PPC efficiency is what can turn a costly endeavor into a profitable one. PPC audits allow marketers to accurately assess the progress of a campaign and the individual ads therewithin. There are several key steps that combine to make a solid PPC audit, but first, it’s important to know why you need to run PPC audits regularly.
Why should you conduct a PPC audit?
While PPC ads and audits may sound like over hill to some business owners, this could not be further from the truth. PPC audits allow you to pinpoint any areas in which your campaign is underperforming. From irrelevant keywords, badly written ad copy, or landing pages that aren’t conversion-optimized, it’s vital to identify the weaknesses of your PPC ads.
The same goes for the positive elements of your campaign – without an audit, you may allow some spectacularly beneficial results slim through the cracks unidentified, never to be repeated. Similarly, a PPC audit can help you discover new opportunities for improvement, such as new highly-searched keywords and key phrases.
Combining these two approaches, a PPC audit will allow you to make the most of your financial resources. By knowing the strengths and weaknesses, you can better allocate your campaign funds, focusing on productive elements rather than continuing to squander money in underperforming areas.
Your top-of-the-line PPC audit checklist
Now that the reasons for needing a PPC audit are clear, the next step is to create a PPC audit checklist. Without such a document, it can be hard to hit all the necessary aspects of the campaign that need auditing. Here are four key points that must be addressed in any PPC audit.
1. Choose a date range
Step one, select a range of dates you want to investigate. This may sound obvious, but too many businesses try to assess a campaign over too long or short of a period to get specific, valuable insights. Choose a timeframe that will let you get a clear picture of your campaign’s performance. You don’t want to choose too wide of a range, or your data runs the risk of becoming stale.
A good rule of thumb is to examine data spanning at least three months. This will give you enough information to identify patterns and pinpoint places where your campaigns need to be strengthened based on the patterns you’ve identified.
2. Check your quality score
The first key metric you need to assess is your quality score. This is a single figure score based on the quality and relevance of your landing pages, advertisements, and keywords. To find out your quality score, go to your Google Ads account’s Keywords tab and select the Quality Score column. Here, you can also view your average quality score for every ad group and campaign.
If your quality score is poor, you can raise it by creating short and clear ad copy and ensuring that your keywords are relevant to your landing sites and target audience. Higher ad ranks and lower expenses will generally drive up a quality score.
3. Analyze your CTR & conversion rate
Next on the checklist is another pair of crucial, intertwined metrics: click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate. Your advertisement’s click-through rate (CTR) is the proportion of viewers who click on the ad itself. The percentage of individuals who click on your advertisement and subsequently complete a desired action—such as joining your email list, making a purchase, or subscribing to your newsletter—is known as the conversion rate.
Once again, to find these figures, go to your Google Ads account and click on the Campaigns tab, select the Performance option and there you will find your CTR and conversion rate. Your conversion rate and CTR are displayed for each keyword, ad group, and PPC campaign.
If your CTR is low, you can raise it by creating ads that are both interesting to read and relevant to your target market. To find what works best for your campaigns, you may also experiment with alternative landing pages and ad extensions, so you can more accurately identify precisely which elements of your campaign are resonating with your audience members.
4. Review your bids
Finally, you will need to constantly be aware of how much you are paying for each click you’re generating from your ads. What you’re willing to pay for each click on your advertisement is expressed in your bids. The more you bid, the higher your ad will show up in search results.
However, there is a lot more strategy involved in bids than simply bidding more than your competitors. While you don’t want to underbid and lose out on possible business, you also don’t want to overbid and squander money unnecessarily.
Navigate to your Google Ads account’s Keywords tab and select the Bids column to examine your bids. For every time period selected, you can view your current bids. If you’re unsure how to set your bids, the bid simulator on Google Ads will help you determine how much to bid in order to get the desired results.
Choose inSegment as your pay per click marketing agency
Running your first PPC audit can be a heavy lift, but it doesn’t have to be. Smart business owners know their strengths, and have no problem acknowledging their weaknesses. Trusting in a professional PPC agency is a great way to learn about this niche without running the risk of performing substandard audits, or worse, PPC campaigns that lose money.
inSegment is the ideal partner for you whether you need assistance managing your PPC marketing or auditing your PPC campaigns. Our group of skilled PPC specialists have years of experience refining our approach to PPC audits and they can assist you in optimizing your spending while also hitting your company’s PPC targets.
You can make sure that your campaigns are operating at optimal efficiency by regularly carrying out a PPC audit. You can find areas in which your campaigns need improvement and make the required adjustments to get better outcomes by referring to the preceding guidelines.
Contact inSegment today to get help managing your PPC marketing or to audit your past and current PPC campaigns.
