When did your business last conduct a pay-per-click (PPC) audit? If the answer is “I don’t know,” it may be long overdue. We know “audit” can be a scary word, but we promise that this one will pay off. While a pay-per-click advertising strategy is an excellent tool in your digital marketing toolbox, if your PPC ad accounts are not reviewed and optimized regularly, you’re essentially throwing away money. Of course, we know throwing away money in this economy – we don’t like it either!
Don’t hit the panic button just yet, though! If you are paying for a digital ads strategy and not seeing the return you had hoped for, we can help. Taking the time to conduct this PPC audit could save you money and increase your leads, and here is how!
What is Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising?
In case you need a quick refresher, PPC advertising is when you pay a fee each time a potential customer clicks on one of your ads. Whether that ad consists of text, images, or video, you can pay to place those ads on search engine pages, websites, social media sites, and more!
For example, when searching for a specific keyword or phrase on a search engine, the top two or three search engine results that you see at the top of your screen noted with “Ad” are pay-per-click ads.
This paid advertising effectively gets targeted, quality leads to your landing page, app, or website. With the perfect ad copy, graphics, and targeted keyword, you can grab a potential customer’s attention away from your competitors! Yes, it costs money, but a PPC strategy can have a significant return on investment when done right!
What is a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Audit?
All that said, you may be wondering a few things, like, what even is a PPC ad account audit, and why do you need to conduct these regular check-ins on all of your different ad accounts?
Let’s break it all down. A PPC audit is a deep dive into your ads accounts to look for areas that need improvement to optimize your account’s performance. These audits are crucial to keep your ad accounts running smoothly in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible. No matter how much time you spend trying to perfect your ads strategy, there is always something that can be improved.
Key Components of An Ad Account Audit
Say, for example, you decide to audit your Google ads account. While your Google ads account offers MANY different areas and data points, it is easy to get lost. So, we will focus on a few key areas to start with!
1. Ad Account Setup & History
When looking at an ad account, whether it’s Google, Bing, or a social media platform such as Facebook or LinkedIn, you will want to take a big-picture look at the overall account and how it is set up. In addition, it is essential to determine your business goals and how your ad campaigns are set up to help you reach them.
Reviewing historical data is critical to see how your ads strategy has performed over time. It will also help you uncover performance issues and know how to improve your campaigns.
2. Conversion Tracking
Suppose you are spending all of this money on ad campaigns but not utilizing conversion tracking. In that case, you won’t know which leads are coming in through ads versus organic traffic. So, you can’t tie your ad spend back to actual individual sales events internally.
In theory, you could be getting a ton of leads from ads but not know which ones – which makes it impossible to tell the quality of the leads that are coming in from your ads versus people organically calling, filling out forms, emailing, etc.
Google will optimize to collect conversions if your ad account and conversions are set up well. So, the key is to set up your conversion tracking early and correctly!
3. Bid Strategies
There are many different types of bid strategies; each can yield a different result. They are important because they are each tied to a unique strategy of how you can use your ads to gain attention and get in front of the right customers. When done right, these automated strategies can get you the return you’re looking for with your ads plan.
4. Targeted Timeframe & Geographies
It is important to note where your ad is targeted to show across the country and the time of day when your ad is shown to potential customers. For example, if you notice that your ad is getting a lot of impressions at 3:00 AM, with no conversions, then you will want to make an update.
5. Types of Targeted Keywords
Clean up your targeted keywords. You can spend a lot of money bidding on keywords that bleed your money dry because they have bad intent, meaning they could be too broad or trigger the wrong type of service, or the cost per click is too high. Turning off keywords that don’t convert, have a bad quality score, and have bad intent can result in instant improvements for your ad account.
6. Ad Copy
Is your ad copy compelling enough to make a potential customer want to click on it over a competitor’s ads? If the answer is no, then your ad copy could use a refresh! Whether you are using emotional verbiage or very pointed and informational copy, your ads campaigns should be an extension of the story you are telling as a business.
After all of these areas are reviewed and optimized to ensure your PPC account is performing correctly, you will essentially retrain Google to serve your ads. While we wish it was like flipping a switch on, after a few weeks (an average of 2-3 weeks for an existing account and 30-45 days for a new account), the PPC algorithm will find the right people to see your ad campaigns, and continue to bring you the right traffic time and time again. With new accounts, though, it is important to note that you are essentially paying for data that you can then use to optimize your account with to get you further, faster. The more money you spend, the faster you can gain actionable results!
Contact Us Today to Discuss Your PPC Audit
Once you spend the time and money to craft a PPC strategy and target the right people at the right times of day paired with the best ad copy and conversion tracking setup, it will ultimately save you money and increase your leads! We love a PPC ads account win-win.
Marketing Refresh is a full-service digital marketing agency, and we would love to help you and your business! So contact us today, and let us discuss how we can work together on a PPC audit to optimize your PPC ads account and meet your business goals.
