What should you be looking for when running a PPC audit? Whether you decide to run a PPC audit internally or you ask a third party to do it for you, here's everything you should be looking for when it comes to an effective PPC audit.
PPC, also known as pay-per-click or Paid Search advertising, involves paying a platform such as Google Ads to show your brand in the search results. You pay every time someone clicks on your ad. PPC is a powerful tool for businesses looking to get in front of a particular audience. One of the biggest benefits of PPC is that it allows you to get in front of people who are actively searching for your products or services.
If you’re already running PPC ads yourself or have an agency managing them for you, it’s natural to want to know whether they’re performing as they should.
This may be when you request a PPC audit from another agency or third party or ask an expert in-house to review your campaigns to ensure you’re getting the most from your budget. Monitoring performance on a regular basis and reviewing your campaigns is essential for optimising your ad spend and campaign performance.
In this blog, we’ll take a look at exactly what you need to look for in a PPC audit, whether you’re running it yourself or asking someone else to do it for you.
A PPC audit allows you to assess and evaluate the short and long-term performance of your campaigns and understand the return you’re getting for the money you’re investing.
Conducting a regular PPC audit can help you to:
Running a PPC audit can help you to understand where there might be inefficiencies in your campaigns and where you could be getting more from your budget.
You might find that you’re suddenly not getting the same results as you were before. Your campaigns are running really well, but you want to see if there’s more you can do or you’re just starting out with PPC campaigns and you’re not sure what you’re doing. All of these questions can be answered with a PPC audit.
Choosing a digital marketing agency or another professional means you’ll benefit from a team of experts who work on PPC accounts full-time so they know exactly what to look for and what the latest best practice looks like when it comes to running a successful campaign.
Whether you decide to conduct the audit yourself or ask a professional to do it for you, there are a few key things you should be looking out for to make sure you get the most from it.
The structure of your account will have an impact on the effectiveness of your campaigns. Campaigns are usually divided into four sections:
Which looks something like this…
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An effective audit should make sure that your campaigns are clearly segmented, your ad groups are well-organised and keywords are properly targeted.
If you have keywords in several ad groups or your ad groups aren’t properly segmented, this can affect the performance of your campaigns, and they may need to be reorganised.
A key part of PPC campaigns is keyword performance. Not only will analysing the performance of keywords within your campaigns help you to understand the current effectiveness of your strategy, it will also help you to pinpoint areas for improvement and expansion. This will have a huge impact on your overall success and ROI.
Keywords help to connect your ads with the people who are actively searching online. The relevance and specificity of your chosen keywords will have a direct impact on who sees your ads and how they interact with them. So, selecting the right keywords for your campaigns and ensuring you have your bidding strategy right will require continuous monitoring and adjustment to ensure you’re targeting the right keywords and to ensure you’re not missing anything.
We recommend analysing your click-through rates (CTR) which provide an indicator of how many people are actually clicking on your ads after they’ve seen it in the search results. Low CTR could indicate that the keywords you’re targeting aren’t quite right or your ad copy isn’t performing as well as it could be. You’ll also need to have a look at the Quality Score of your ads which reflects the relevance of your keywords, ads and landing pages to user’s search queries. Low Quality Score is an indication that these three factors aren’t quite matching up so you might need to analyse each element to find out what’s going wrong.
Finally, conversion rates show how many clicks result in an action being taken by a user, such as a sale or a sign-up. This is a good indicator of whether your PPC campaigns are helping towards your marketing and business goals.
In addition, underperforming keywords should be analysed in your audit. These are the keywords that just aren’t contributing to your goals and may need to be paused to allow better-performing keywords to drive results.
Keyword analysis is a vital element of any PPC audit and will provide you with the insights you need to enhance your campaign performance.
Your ad copy and creative can have a huge impact on the performance of your ads. If it’s not engaging enough, no-one will click through to your landing page and you’re not going to drive any conversions.
When conducting an audit, the relevance of your ads, clarity and the call-to-action (CTA) should all be analysed. Have you included the right keywords in your ads? Is your offer clear to the user? Are you telling them what you want them to do next? All of these factors can have an impact on the performance of your ads so it’s worth checking and monitoring performance against these factors to see if there’s any improvements you can make.
To optimise your creative and ad copy, start by really honing in on your USPs. What can you offer that your competitors can’t, and what will make people click through to your website? Experiment with different CTAs to find out what motivates your target audience to click and convert. You can use A/B testing for this and find out which CTAs are more effective for your ads.
Personalise the ad copy as much as you can with your target audience’s search intent and demographics and ensure your landing pages match with a cohesive and relevant landing page.
When A/B testing, do it methodically. Change one element at a time, such as the CTA, headline, or image, which will allow you to accurately measure the impact of each factor on your ad’s performance. Analyse metrics such as click-through rates and conversion rates to guide your campaign optimisation and ensure you’re making data-driven decisions.
Continuous optimisation, based on iterative testing and learning, is crucial to refining your PPC strategy and enhancing campaign success.
Landing pages and conversion rates play a pivotal role in the success of your PPC campaigns - they are the link between ad clicks and desired actions, such as purchases or sign-ups.
A highly optimised landing page that’s specifically designed to align with the messaging and intent of your PPC ad will help to enhance the user experience by providing clear, relevant information and a straightforward path to conversion. This relevance boosts the quality score of ads on platforms such as Google Ads, leading to lower costs per click and better ad placements.
Moreover, having a clear path to conversion that minimises friction points through intuitive design, compelling copy, and strategic placement of calls-to-action can have a huge impact on whether or not visitors complete your desired action.
By carefully designing your landing pages and conversion paths to provide a seamless, engaging journey from the minute someone clicks on your ad through to conversion, can dramatically improve the performance of your PPC campaigns by improving conversion rates and maximising your ROI.
Review your landing pages to make sure they’re as relevant as possible to your ads and the keywords you’re targeting and ensure that landing pages are as easy to use as possible across a range of devices.
If your landing pages don’t match your ad copy or the offers you provide, landing pages are slow to load or it’s just too confusing to find the information you need to convert, you’re not going to get the most from your campaigns.
Accurate tracking is the cornerstone of measuring PPC campaign effectiveness, providing the data and insights necessary to evaluate performance, make informed decisions, and optimise return on investment.
By having tracking in place, you can monitor critical metrics such as click-through rates, conversion rates, cost per conversion and overall ROI. Being able to look into these metrics with granularity provides you with a comprehensive understanding of how users interact with ads and the actions they take on your website. Monitoring these metrics will allow you to identify successful parts of your campaigns and those that need improvement.
Without accurate tracking, you’re essentially navigating in the dark, relying on assumptions rather than data-driven insights.
It’s essential to check your conversion tracking set up, your Google Analytics integration and how accurately the goals you’ve set up are tracking.
Audits can often detect missing tracking codes or inaccurate conversion attribution, which could be misrepresenting the results of your campaigns. Knowing exactly what conversions are being driven and where allows you to truly understand how well PPC is working for your business.
Efficient budget use and bid management are crucial elements of maximising the performance of PPC campaigns without overspending. To optimise budget allocation, you should focus on keywords and ad placements that demonstrate high conversion rates and return on investment and regularly prune underperforming elements.
Implementing automated bidding strategies, such as target CPA (cost per acquisition) or ROAS (return on ad spend), can help to manage your bids dynamically, adjusting in real-time in-line with market conditions and competition to achieve the best possible ad placement for your budget.
Employing a tiered bidding strategy where bids are adjusted based on the likelihood of conversion (as indicated by keyword intent, device type, or user location) ensures that higher bids are allocated to searches most likely to result in a sale or lead.
Having these insights will allow you to identify budget wastage and reallocate funds to provide better performance and results for your business.
Competitor analysis is an essential part of any comprehensive PPC audit. It will allow you to understand where your campaigns sit in comparison to your competitors and whether they’re doing something you’re not.
Understanding their ad strategies, your market and how you’re positioned in relation to your competitors will help you to continue improving the success of your campaigns and make sure you’re offering or doing something differently to your competitors. Ultimately, you want searchers to click and convert on your ads over and above your competitors.
By identifying which keywords your competitors are targeting, including both high-volume and niche terms, you can uncover gaps in your own strategy or find opportunities for expansion. Analysing their ad creatives and messaging can provide insights into improvements you can make to your own campaigns.
Additionally, monitoring competitors’ bidding strategies and ad placements can provide valuable information on market trends and customer preferences, allowing you to adjust your bids and ad spending more effectively. This approach not only enhances your understanding of the competitive landscape but also empowers you to make informed, strategic decisions that improve the performance and efficiency of your PPC campaigns.
Choosing the right digital marketing agency for your PPC audit is crucial .When selecting an agency, it’s crucial to consider factors such as their experience and track record with PPC campaigns, specifically within your industry or niche.
Look for agencies that have a proven history of improving PPC performance for their clients, evidenced by case studies, testimonials and measurable results. The right agency should prioritise data-driven decision-making, demonstrating a deep understanding of PPC metrics, and how they impact overall business goals.
Many agencies will offer an initial PPC audit for free, but they may charge for a more in-depth audit and to work with you on an ongoing basis. Before committing to one agency, it’s essential to ask targeted questions to make sure they’re going to fit with your business.
Ask about their strategy for conducting an audit, including the tools and methodologies they will use. This will help you to understand the depth of their analysis and whether it aligns with your expectations. Additionally, discussing their approach to ongoing communication and reporting is important. Ensure that their reporting structure is transparent, offering regular updates and actionable insights rather than just raw data.
Ultimately, selecting the right digital marketing agency for your PPC audit comes down to their ability to understand and align with your business objectives, their expertise and proven success in PPC, along with their commitment to transparency and partnership throughout the process. By carefully considering these factors and asking the right questions, you can forge a valuable partnership that drives your PPC campaigns to new heights of success.
The main areas to ensure your audit covers the right information and provides you with everything you need to continually improve your campaigns are:
Having information and data-driven analysis for each of these elements will help you to understand where your campaigns are truly performing and where they’re not.
A thorough PPC audit, whether it’s performed in-house or by a third–party will provide you with the insights you need to continually drive better results and efficiencies in your advertising efforts.
Taking the next step in optimising your PPC campaigns with a professional audit can be a game-changer for your business. A comprehensive audit will provide deep insights into your campaigns’ strengths and weaknesses, revealing opportunities for improvement that you might not have identified on your own.
With the complex and ever-changing nature of PPC advertising, having experts analyse and provide tailored recommendations can significantly elevate your online marketing efforts.
Don’t miss the opportunity to maximise the potential of your campaigns! Contact our team to claim a free PPC audit and find out more about where your campaigns could do with improvements.
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At Logica Digital, we take the time to understand your business and customers to create a bespoke marketing plan that will deliver the best return on investment for your business. We always get results.
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