4 highly effective tips for improving PPC campaigns: sort out AdWords problems

• Part four in our five-part series on Google AdWords PPC success
• Guide for improving PPC campaigns
  
• Key tips for when your Google AdWords campaign underperform

This post is the fourth in our ‘Managing your PPC’ blog series. Here, we’ll discuss what to do when your PPC campaigns underperform. This guide will help you identify and solve the most common issues with PPC – so that you can turn your underperforming ads into the powerful lead generators you had in mind when you invested your budget in them.

Please note: for this blog series, we’re focusing improving PPC campaigns on the ‘Search Network’ only. In short, this means it will only appear on Google search, rather than running on third party websites and YouTube channels.

How to identify underperforming ads

First things first, how will you know your campaigns are underperforming? Before anything else, look at your stats. Things to watch for:

• Your campaign isn't performing as expected
• Your click-through rates have fallen from previous weeks
• It has been several weeks, and the stats aren't as good as they should be
• Your spend isn’t matching up with your estimates

These are all indicators that something needs to change. The next step is to dig a bit deeper by looking at the ad status. Normally, Google will highlight any warning signs for your attention.

There are three different types of status, the third of which is the one we are interested in here:

• Statuses that you control– e.g. ‘campaign paused’ and ‘'
• Statuses related to where your keyword is in Google’s approval process– e.g. ‘eligible'
• Statuses that are impacted by other factors– e.g. ‘low search volume,' ‘below first-page bid estimate’ and ‘limited by.'

Finding a solution for improving PPC campaigns

There are four areas that are important here:

1. Campaign ad budget cap
2. Individual cost per click bid
3. Keyword match type
4. AdRank score

It’s good to focus on these four because there isn’t too much that can go wrong beyond them. Also, they are factors that you can control, and they will draw immediate results. In the following section, we will discuss each in turn.

Now might be a good time to note that things don’t happen overnight, and as we know, good things take time. To get a real indication of your campaign performance, it’s best to wait a week before making changes. If you’re reporting to your stakeholders on a weekly basis, it’s a good chance for you to get a 7-day-view of the campaign—leaving enough time to justify a change to your campaign.

1. Campaign ad budget campaign

What’s going wrong?

With the cost-per-click (CPC) model, Google charges you every time someone clicks on your ad. But before it goes live you get to decide, given your budget, how much you are willing to pay per click. For example, if you have £50 and are willing to pay £5 for one click, then your ad will receive 10 clicks before your budget runs out. When your budget has been used up, Google will change the status of your ad to ‘limited by budget.'

How to fix it

The key here is to keep an eye on Google’s recommended bids, which can be used to optimise your budget and ads. When you set your budget, Google lets nature take its course and won’t initially provide any recommendations. But after a day or two, it will begin pulling in the click data, and you will see Google’s recommended bids. These provide an opportunity to improve your reach and make sure your ads are seen.

There are two types of page bid:

• First page bid – the amount needed to be displayed on the first page of Google’s search results
• Top page bid – the amount required to be displayed at the top of Google’s search results (i.e. the best position)

When Google says budget limits your ad, it means that it’s performing below its potential. You must look at the first page and top page bids and decide what you can afford to improve it.

In the example above, the estimation for the first position bid is $27.30, and for the top page bid it’s $22.00. Can you afford $27.30? If it’s an important campaign, then you might decide it’s worth the extra expense. However, the more affordable $22 is a top page bid and that coupled with the lower price might be the right combination for your campaign.

Sometimes Google will indicate that your budget is capped, but when you look at your ads, they seem to be performing OK. Here, you don't need to make any changes – it all depends on how many clicks your ad is getting. For instance, the ad has reached its budget cap, but it has 76 clicks, which is fine. If it was getting zero clicks, you might want to bump it up. But, again, this comes down to budget.

2. Individual cost per click bid

What’s going wrong?

When you set up a campaign, you can choose to spread your budget equally across your ads in bulk. This way, all your ads will have the same maximum bid based on the budget you select. It’s easy for an ad to reach its limit this way – normally because it’s doing slightly better than the rest. This means good ads can end up being penalised.

How to fix it

Over time, some ads will do better; others will do worse. The ones performing well may reach the budget cap quite quickly. The key here is to identify which campaigns are performing and which aren’t and to tweak them accordingly. Let’s look at an example.

The things to think about include:

• The position you want
• The page you want to appear on

When we set up these two campaigns one was allocated a $1000 budget, and the other was only allocated $500. What we found was that the $1000 budget wasn't being used up, but that the ad with the budget of $500 had already reached its cap.

The answer here is to reduce the campaign cap for the first one and increase the cap for the second. It’s important, to always keep an eye on your campaigns. It’s common that you might have to stop half-way through a campaign and reallocate the budget cap.

3. Keyword match type

What’s going wrong?

When you set up an ad campaign, Google will ask you to select a keyword match-type, which will influence who sees your ad. Choosing the wrong one can lead to your ads underperforming. There are three main types:

• Broad match
• Phrase match
• Exact match

Your choice of keyword match type is dependent on how broad or specific you want to be. To illustrate this, imagine you're a company that provides cyber security products, and want to use the keyword 'company data breach.'

Broad match has, as the name suggests, the broadest reach of the three types. If you set a broad match type, your ad could be triggered when someone types in anything that is related to data, company data or data protection. The downside of this is that people who click on your ad might not be interested in cyber security, they could just be looking for data.

Phrase match is a more targeted approach that matches variations of the phrase used in your keyword. For example, your ad will be triggered when someone searches ‘most recent breach of company data,’ or ‘am I at risk of a company data breach?’

Exact match will only surface to people who search for ‘company data breach’ exactly. With this type, you can feel far more confident that the people who click on your ad will find it valuable. It will reduce your clicks but should produce a higher conversion rate.

How to fix it

So, if you notice your stats aren’t looking as good as you would like, it might just be a case of having the wrong keyword match type. A general rule of thumb is that the more specific you go, you get fewer people seeing your ads; however, those who do will be more likely to click through and like what they see.

If your keyword is set to broad match, it might be worth changing it to phrase match. People are probably seeing your ad, and maybe even clicking on it, but are finding that it's not relevant to them.

If you make it more specific you know that people will be more interested. It’s about finding the perfect balance so that the right people see your ad, which will impact your CTR.

4. AdRank score

What’s going wrong?

Google gives every ad campaign an AdRank score, which influences where your ad will rank. Without these, the highest bid would always win, and large organizations could easily outspend their competition. But you might have a lower budget and a better ad. Google wants to reward good ads because a better ad will create a better customer experience for its users.

The algorithm factors in:

• The keyword quality and relevance
• The landing page quality and relevance
• The budget

If you notice a campaign is underperforming, it could be because one or more of these factors is letting you down.

How to fix it

You need to figure out what is causing your low score. To make matters easier, Google is here to lend a hand – pointing out the cause of the issue. In this example, the keyword relevance is above average, but the landing page is below average.

Next, you need to use Ad Diagnosis – a tool that helps you solve any problem. Google will guide you to a solution by pulling up the area you need to improve by providing the relevant information.

Once you have identified the culprit, it’s time to work on making the relevant adjustments. Unfortunately, unlike the three other fixes, the AdRank score solution can create several related tasks that you must complete before the fix can be implemented. For instance, if it’s your landing page that’s not up to scratch, you will need to change the content and design. You may have to temporarily take down the site so that you can work with your designers, copywriters and development team to improve the experience of customers who visit it. It might be days before the landing page is back up and running and your campaign is getting the clicks and conversion that you would like.

There is a lot written about AdRank scores on the web, but there’s no perfect solution to achieving a perfect score. The easiest way to boost yours is to tailor your ads so that they better reflect your keyword choice. As always, practice makes perfect.

In the next post in our Managing PPC campaign series, we’ll be discussing how to make a killer report. Make sure to follow us on Twitter (@takefiftyfive) and Facebook to know when we publish the next post!

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by Chris Wright

Download your free copy of our PPC campaign reporting template

To conclude our 'How to' PPC campaign series, download your free PPC campaign reporting template to help keep your ad campaigns on track.

by aidan.danaher

Round up your PPC campaigns with killer reports

• Fifth blog in our five-part series on Google AdWords PPC campaigns 
• Steps to follow when rounding up your PPC campaigns
• Free downloadable report template 

This is the fifth and final post in our ‘Managing your PPC’ blog series. By now, you know the basics of PPC and can run a campaign from start to finish. The last piece of the puzzle is reporting. It’s essential to know how to deliver a report that explains the results of your campaign, indicates what did and didn’t work and provides a consistent and rigorous overview of activities. We’ll cover everything you need to know, including:

• Why reporting matters
• Which key metrics to include
• How to take your report to the next level

At Fifty Five and Five, we run PPC campaigns for a wide range of companies across the Microsoft Partner Network. So, our focus is on producing reports for our clients. Where our key stakeholders are our clients, yours may be your marketing director, management or board of directors. Either way, the advice in this post is equally applicable. So let’s get started!

Please note: for this blog series, we’re focusing improving PPC campaigns on the ‘Search Network’ only. In short, this means it will only appear on Google search, rather than running on third party websites and YouTube channels.

Why reporting matters

If you’re not reporting on the outcomes of your PPC campaigns, how do you know when they have been a success? How, when something doesn’t work out, can you identify what went wrong and learn from your mistakes? Reporting is one of the best ways to improve your campaigns and move things forward.

The key metrics

The first part of putting together your PPC report is to decide on the metrics to include. These should be based on the agreed goals that you set at the beginning of the campaign. Each company will have a unique perspective on what counts as success. But, in general, it’s good practice to use the same metrics every time. There are four good reasons why:

• it will make your life easier
• it creates a consistent experience for whoever sees your report
• it will ensure you include all the important metrics
• it will help keep your reports clear, clean and easy to understand

Here is our fail proof list of the key metrics you should use in your report:

1. Number of leads

Generating leads is one of (if not the) biggest driver for running ads. When reporting, this is the 'bottom line' number. Define what a 'lead' counts as from the beginning (e.g. number of people who clicked on an ad, filled out a form and gave you their email address) and then tot this number up.

2. Click-through rate percentage

Whether their performance is good or bad, reporting on your ads CTR is a key part of your PPC campaigns. If you’re producing weekly reports over a three-month period, for example, reporting will help you identify which ads aren’t performing to a good standard and adjust accordingly.

3. Result by region

Depending on the size and scope of your PPC campaigns it might be a good idea to break down your results into regions. If you are targeting certain regions – and specific budgets have been allocated for these regions – then it becomes essential.

4. Number of impressions

Impressions are counted each time your ad is seen by people on a search engine results page.

5. Cost-per-click (CPC)

CPC refers to how much your ad has cost for one person to click on it. If you’re working to a rigid budget, this might be the most important metric to track.

6. Total cost

Another area that your internal stakeholders will care considerably about is Total Cost. Be clear on how much you’ve spent so far, even down to the region if your targeting is very granular, along with how much is remaining.

7. Average page position

This is the average position that an ad has appeared on Google’s search engine results page. Good for getting an overall idea of how well an ad is performing.

Taking your report to the next level

The key metrics mentioned are essential, but to produce a report that goes above and beyond, there are few more things to consider. Not everyone will do these, but, at Fifty Five and Five, we believe these additional metrics give you a better idea of where your money is going and the impact they’re having. With that, you gain better visibility into your PPC campaigns and can make your money go further.

Here are three things you can do to take your reports to the next level:

• Use Google Analytics to provide extra insight
• Include the conversion rate
• Include a commentary

Google Analytics

Before you begin any PPC campaigns, you need to set up your ads so that you can find them later in Google Analytics. To do this, you need to set up an Urchin Tracking Module (UTM). You can read more about UTM’s in Part 2 of our PPC blog series.

In short, by adding these UTMs, it gives you additional information on where a click has come from. So, let’s say your ads are targeting the UK, Australia and the US, by adding these UTMs, specific to each region, you’ll then be able to see how each has performed.

As well as looking at the UTMs that report on your campaign goal, Google Analytics also lets you look specifically at the landing page you’re promoting. From there you can see how much traffic has come to that page, and the percentage of that traffic which has come from your PPC work. This lets you report on both the lead generation aspect and from a brand awareness angle (by viewing pure sessions/visitor numbers).

Conversion rate

A great feature of Google Analytics is that you can create goals, which can help you work out conversion rates. This is where the data from AdWords and Google Analytics marry up.

The conversion rate is the percentage of people who have done what you want them to do (i.e. download the whitepaper after clicking through from your ad). You can work it out by dividing how many people clicked on your ad by how many times the goal was triggered and multiplying that by 100.

Why is this important? It helps you define the true worth of your campaign. You might produce great ads, but the conversion rate remains poor. This could be because the landing page isn’t good enough or because AdWords isn’t the right channel for this campaign. But, by being transparent about the conversion rate, it helps key stakeholders decide on what to do next.

See below for a preview of what the downloadable template consists of, and how to calculate the conversion rate for AdWords.

Telling a story

It’s always useful to write a commentary because a little context can go a long way. While the stats are great, commentary can help explain to your clients or managers why you have had a poor week, or why you have had a great week.

The commentary doesn’t have to be very long. It should include any anomalies and any short or long-term trends; it should emphasise any particularly good outcomes and explain the reasons for bad ones. It is also useful to briefly discuss the budget, i.e. outline why you spent the amount that you spent.

Now might be a good time to note that things don’t happen overnight. To get a real indication of your campaign performance, it’s best to wait a week before making changes. If you’re reporting to your stakeholders on a weekly basis, it’s a good chance for you to get a seven-day-view of the campaign—leaving enough time to justify a change to your campaign.

Maximise your PPC campaigns

If you address the areas mentioned in this post, you can produce a killer report that complements and completes your campaign. Make your PPC campaigns go above and beyond with a report worthy of your hard work.

Don't forget to download your copy of our free PPC campaign report here.

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by aidan.danaher

5 simple steps for improving PPC campaigns: Getting AdWords back on track

• Part four in our five-part series on Google AdWords PPC success
• Guide for improving PPC campaigns
  
• Key tips for when your Google AdWords campaign underperform

This post is the fourth in our ‘Managing your PPC’ blog series. Here, we’ll discuss what to do when your PPC campaigns underperform. This guide will help you identify and solve the most common issues with PPC – so that you can turn your underperforming ads into the powerful lead generators you had in mind when you invested your budget in them.

Please note: for this blog series, we’re focusing improving PPC campaigns on the ‘Search Network’ only. In short, this means it will only appear on Google search, rather than running on third party websites and YouTube channels.

1. Identify under-performing ads

First things first, how will you know your campaigns are under performing? Before anything else, look at your stats. Things to watch for:

• Your campaign isn't performing as expected
• Your click-through rates have fallen from previous weeks
• It has been several weeks, and the stats aren't as good as they should be
• Your spend isn’t matching up with your estimates

These are all indicators that something needs to change. The next step is to dig a bit deeper by looking at the ad status. Normally, Google will highlight any warning signs for your attention.

There are three different types of status, the third of which is the one we are interested in here:

• Statuses that you control– e.g. ‘campaign paused’ and ‘'
• Statuses related to where your keyword is in Google’s approval process– e.g. ‘eligible'
• Statuses that are impacted by other factors– e.g. ‘low search volume,' ‘below first-page bid estimate’ and ‘limited by.'

Finding a solution for improving PPC campaigns

There are four areas that are important here:

• Campaign ad budget cap
• Individual cost per click bid
• Keyword match type
• AdRank score

It’s good to focus on these four because there isn’t too much that can go wrong beyond them. Also, they are factors that you can control, and they will draw immediate results. In the rest of this post, we will discuss each in turn.

Now might be a good time to note that things don’t happen overnight, and as we know, good things take time. To get a real indication of your campaign performance, it’s best to wait a week before making changes. If you’re reporting to your stakeholders on a weekly basis, it’s a good chance for you to get a 7-day-view of the campaign—leaving enough time to justify a change to your campaign.

2. Fix ad budget issues

What’s going wrong?

With the cost-per-click (CPC) model, Google charges you every time someone clicks on your ad. But before it goes live you get to decide, given your budget, how much you are willing to pay per click. For example, if you have £50 and are willing to pay £5 for one click, then your ad will receive 10 clicks before your budget runs out. When your budget has been used up, Google will change the status of your ad to ‘limited by budget.'

How to fix it

The key here is to keep an eye on Google’s recommended bids, which can be used to optimise your budget and ads. When you set your budget, Google lets nature take its course and won’t initially provide any recommendations. But after a day or two, it will begin pulling in the click data, and you will see Google’s recommended bids. These provide an opportunity to improve your reach and make sure your ads are seen.

There are two types of page bid:

• First page bid – the amount needed to be displayed on the first page of Google’s search results
• Top page bid – the amount required to be displayed at the top of Google’s search results (i.e. the best position)

When Google says budget limits your ad, it means that it’s performing below its potential. You must look at the first page and top page bids and decide what you can afford to improve it.

In the example above, the estimation for the first position bid is $27.30, and for the top page bid it’s $22.00. Can you afford $27.30? If it’s an important campaign, then you might decide it’s worth the extra expense. However, the more affordable $22 is a top page bid and that coupled with the lower price might be the right combination for your campaign.

Sometimes Google will indicate that your budget is capped, but when you look at your ads, they seem to be performing OK. Here, you don't need to make any changes – it all depends on how many clicks your ad is getting. For instance, the ad has reached its budget cap, but it has 76 clicks, which is fine. If it was getting zero clicks, you might want to bump it up. But, again, this comes down to budget.

3. Reallocate budget for individual cost per click bids

What’s going wrong?

When you set up a campaign, you can choose to spread your budget equally across your ads in bulk. This way, all your ads will have the same maximum bid based on the budget you select. It’s easy for an ad to reach its limit this way – normally because it’s doing slightly better than the rest. This means good ads can end up being penalised.

How to fix it

Over time, some ads will do better; others will do worse. The ones performing well may reach the budget cap quite quickly. The key here is to identify which campaigns are performing and which aren’t and to tweak them accordingly. Let’s look at an example.

The things to think about include:

• The position you want
• The page you want to appear on

When we set up these two campaigns one was allocated a $1000 budget, and the other was only allocated $500. What we found was that the $1000 budget wasn't being used up, but that the ad with the budget of $500 had already reached its cap.

The answer here is to reduce the campaign cap for the first one and increase the cap for the second. It’s important, to always keep an eye on your campaigns. It’s common that you might have to stop half-way through a campaign and reallocate the budget cap.

4. Review your keyword match type

What’s going wrong?

When you set up an ad campaign, Google will ask you to select a keyword match-type, which will influence who sees your ad. Choosing the wrong one can lead to your ads underperforming. There are three different types:

• Broad match
• Phrase match
• Exact match

Your choice of keyword match type is dependent on how broad or specific you want to be. To illustrate this, imagine you're a company that provides cyber security products, and want to use the keyword 'company data breach.'

Broad match has, as the name suggests, the broadest reach of the three types. If you set a broad match type, your ad could be triggered when someone types in anything that is related to data, company data or data protection. The downside of this is that people who click on your ad might not be interested in cyber security, they could just be looking for data.

Phrase match is a more targeted approach that matches variations of the phrase used in your keyword. For example, your ad will be triggered when someone searches ‘most recent breach of company data,’ or ‘am I at risk of a company data breach?’

Exact match will only surface to people who search for ‘company data breach’ exactly. With this type, you can feel far more confident that the people who click on your ad will find it valuable. It will reduce your clicks but should produce a higher conversion rate.

How to fix it

So, if you notice your stats aren’t looking as good as you would like, it might just be a case of having the wrong keyword match type. A general rule of thumb is that the more specific you go, you get fewer people seeing your ads; however, those who do will be more likely to click through and like what they see.

If your keyword is set to broad match, it might be worth changing it to phrase match. People are probably seeing your ad, and maybe even clicking on it, but are finding that it's not relevant to them.

If you make it more specific you know that people will be more interested. It’s about finding the perfect balance so that the right people see your ad, which will impact your CTR.

5. Check your AdRank score

What’s going wrong?

Google gives every ad campaign an AdRank score, which influences where your ad will rank. Without these, the highest bid would always win, and large organizations could easily outspend their competition. But you might have a lower budget and a better ad. Google wants to reward good ads because a better ad will create a better customer experience for its users.

The algorithm factors in:

• The keyword quality and relevance
• The landing page quality and relevance
• The budget

If you notice a campaign is underperforming, it could be because one or more of these factors is letting you down.

How to fix it

You need to figure out what is causing your low score. To make matters easier, Google is here to lend a hand – pointing out the cause of the issue. In this example, the keyword relevance is above average, but the landing page is below average.

Next, you need to use Ad Diagnosis – a tool that helps you solve any problem. Google will guide you to a solution by pulling up the area you need to improve by providing the relevant information.

Once you have identified the culprit, it’s time to work on making the relevant adjustments. Unfortunately, unlike the three other fixes, the AdRank score solution can create several related tasks that you must complete before the fix can be implemented. For instance, if it’s your landing page that’s not up to scratch, you will need to change the content and design. You may have to temporarily take down the site so that you can work with your designers, copywriters and development team to improve the experience of customers who visit it. It might be days before the landing page is back up and running and your campaign is getting the clicks and conversion that you would like.

There is a lot written about AdRank scores on the web, but there’s no perfect solution to achieving a perfect score. The easiest way to boost yours is to tailor your ads so that they better reflect your keyword choice. As always, practice makes perfect.

In the next post in our Managing PPC campaign series, we’ll be discussing how to make a killer report. Make sure to follow us on Twitter (@takefiftyfive) and Facebook to know when we publish the next post!

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by aidan.danaher

Guide to monitoring your PPC AdWords Campaigns

• Part three in our five-part series on PPC ads success
• Guide for daily monitoring of your Google Ads campaigns
  
• Key tips on how to measure Google Ads success

This is the third post of our ‘Managing your PPC’ blog series. By now, you know the basics of PPC, and you’ve set up your campaigns. Today, we’ll be guiding you through the monitoring of your PPC campaigns — the day-to-day basics you should follow to keep your Google Ads campaigns on the straight and narrow.

Please note: for this blog series, we’re focusing on creating your Google Ads campaign(s) on the ‘Search Network’ only. In short, this means it will only appear on Google search, rather than running on third party websites and YouTube channels.

What should you be monitoring in your Google Ads campaign?

Once you log into Google Ads, you have an overview of your campaigns dashboard, which will give you a quick and clean overview of how your campaigns are doing.

Depending on your workload, I’d recommend checking in with your campaigns on a daily basis, even if it’s just to check all is going to plan. At first glance, it can be slightly overwhelming looking at all the different stats, charts and drop down menus. To be honest, for simple campaigns or a quick health check, you’re only going to need to look at a few of these.

Now, before you panic that you’ve gone over your budget in 3 days or you’ve completely underachieved the estimated clicks, make sure that you’re looking at the right time frame. If you’re the only person in your team using Google Ads, this won’t apply to you, but it’s useful to know for those working in a bigger team. Every time your campaigns ends, the date selected sticks, so when you log in, you’re viewing from the date which was previously selected!

To make sure you’re getting the right data, clicks and spend, choose the time frame you’re looking at:

So now we’re looking at the specific dates, we can start checking all is in order. To make things easy, we’ll be looking at the dashboard view.

It’s worth noting that Google Ads can present your dashboard with campaigns that may not be a real snapshot of your campaigns. If you make changes to your ads or keywords mid-campaign, for example, it removes these from certain dashboard views. To put this into context, Google will deactivate any existing keywords you’ve changed if you’re viewing your campaigns. If you’re doing a weekly report for your team or client, and you’ve made changes to your campaigns, you want to report with the 'all campaign' views. This will make sure you’ve got any existing keywords that may have previously been used in the campaigns, which may have been removed.

• As indicated in post #2 , you should have a campaign budget, and ideally, a weekly budget. It’s always worth checking that your current spend is on target, or within the budget. By checking this every day, you’ll spot any campaigns that are using up a lot of the budget. If you need to increase your budget or the length of the campaign, this can be done in ‘AdGroup settings.’
• The Cost Per Click (CPC) is the amount it costs you when someone clicks on your ad. This will vary per keyword based on the competitiveness. In each AdGroup, I’d recommend setting the maximum CPC per keyword, rather than setting an average for each keyword – remember you want to spend the least possible!
• Looking into your CPC bidding strategy a bit further, you can bid based on the position and page you’re aiming for. If your AdGroup had a generous budget, you could afford to bid higher for those top positions. To make sure that you can fully understand your bid strategy, make sure that you’ve added the appropriate

Budgeting and bidding on Google Ads campaigns

So, let’s say you’ve got a large budget, and you’re trying to get your ad to show for a relatively competitive keyword. Ideally, you’ll be bidding above the ‘estimated first position bid.’ You don’t need to bid much above that estimate, but a little higher. If perhaps you’ve got a smaller budget, then you can bid for top page, and then first page bid.

• You can view these on the top tabs and broken down into different extension options. I’d recommend adding:
  • Sitelink extensions
  • Structured Snippets

In this view, you can see which structured snippets have performed best for your campaign and make any necessary changes.

• The stats that you and your client are likely to be interested in are the ‘clicks’ and ‘CTR’ (click through rate), as this indicates if you’re doing things properly. To get a good idea if your campaign is performing, you want to work out the weekly estimated clicks you’re going to get with your budget.
• The number of clicks will determine the CTR, so the higher the number of clicks the better. There’s a lot of information out there saying what the perfect CTR, but I trust HubSpot. For B2B ‘search’ – remember if your campaign is GDN or Search, which for this campaign blog series it is, you want anything between 1.3-2.5%. If your impressions are high, but clicks are low, then your CTR isn’t going be high. This is a good indication that perhaps your ad copy isn’t relevant, or the keywords you’re using aren’t appropriate. Either way, a low CTR is a warning sign.

Now might be a good time to note that things don’t happen overnight, and as we know, good things take time. To get a real indication of your campaign performance, it’s best to wait a week before making changes. If you’re reporting to your stakeholders on a weekly basis, it’s a good chance for you to get a 7-day-view of the campaign—leaving enough time to justify a change to your campaign.

• You need to consider “all” keywords in the AdGroup generally. If you make changes to keywords, Google Ads will remove the old keywords unless you have them in a particular view. If you don’t view this as a whole, you might not get accurate spends and clicks.
• Changes can take longer than a week to take proper effect, so you have to be patient and maybe wait for ten days to decide if something is working.

As my team and I do, I’d highly recommend you reporting to your team or client on a weekly basis. Even if it’s just to give them an idea of how your campaign is doing—if you’re on track to hit or exceed click target, whether the budget is under control and if your ads are relevant for the audience you’re trying to reach. Given your PPC campaigns can be a hefty investment, it can be too risky not to monitor.

In the next post in our Managing PPC campaign series, I’ll be discussing when things go wrong and sharing our PPC disaster recovery plan to help get your campaign on track. Make sure to follow us on Twitter (@takefiftyfive) and Facebook to know when we publish the next post!

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by aidan.danaher