Every successful PPC campaign gets its results thanks to regular audits that are done to analyze the data. Whenever a digital marketing company develops a paid search campaign, they will install metrics that are used to determine if the campaign is achieving its goals.

An audit is done at various milestone dates to determine what can be done to improve the performance of the campaign and maximize ROI. In order to execute a successful audit, it is important to know the key components of an audit and what information you are looking for.

Check The Mechanisms

Each audit should start with a check to make sure that all of the monitoring tools are working properly and all of the information being collected is accurate. Some of the more important information to confirm is traffic, conversions, and bounce rates. This information will be critical in determining what needs to be tweaked to lower ad spend rates.

Work With Your Quality Score

You will be tracking a lot of metrics during your PPC campaign and all of that data can be very helpful. One of the most beneficial metrics you will have access to is the quality score as associated with your keywords. It has been estimated that properly utilizing your quality score can save as much as 50 percent on your keyword and PPC campaign costs. This is a significant savings that can have a dramatic effect on your ROI and significantly improve your quality web traffic.

Know Your Average Costs

With Google Ads, the average cost per click (CPC) on the actual search platform is $2.69 per click. Why does this matter to your PPC audit? Because your campaign goals are projections based on historical data. When you compare your results to actual numbers, you are going to get a much more accurate picture as to how your campaign is doing.

Your projections might say that you should have a CPC of $2.40 per click, but the data available indicates that your projections are too aggressive. It is important to know the real averages that campaigns are getting when you create your campaign projections. This will help make the information in your audit much more useful.

Compare Platforms

The consumers who use smartphone apps are not necessarily the same as those who are affected by banner ads on standard websites. If your audit is going to be comprehensive, then it needs to compare data within each platform to be accurate. Comparing data received from different platforms is interesting, but it is not necessarily going to help you to adjust your campaign to make it more efficient.

Keep Sight Of Your Original Goals

The purpose of an audit is to evaluate the performance of your PPC campaign and then make changes to maximize ROI. But it is also important to keep your original campaign goals in mind before you make any changes. Some campaigns are done simply to collect data and are not necessarily focused on increasing revenue. As you evaluate the performance of each marketing campaign, you should always be comparing current results to the original campaign goals.

Constantly Review Priorities

Are the priorities in your Adwords account and your campaigns in the right order? It can easy to be sidetracked by monitoring numbers that you are hoping to enhance, but it is extremely important to remember why you launched each campaign in the first place. Is your focus on your product lines, or are you looking to enhance your company’s brand. These overall priorities, when aligned with project goals, will help your marketing to stay on course.

Make Sure Your Parameters Are Still Valid

One of the most difficult parts of an audit is to maintain your company’s marketing parameters as you review campaign information. If you find out that your company’s campaign is unexpectedly doing well in a geographic area you are not even targeting, then do you make changes to your overall demographic? Remember that marketing plans, just like business plans, are dynamic documents that change along with the company’s fortunes. If you are getting data that is forcing you to rethink parts of your overall business philosophy, then you need to be prepared to react to that data.

Always Update Your Keyword Groups

When you update keyword groups, you do not need to delete old groups to make way for new ones. The data you are collecting is going to be valuable when it comes to tracking the performance of certain keywords, and those keywords can be enhanced when put into groups. If you find new groups of keywords that work together effectively, then add those groups to what you have and expand your marketing influence online.

If you’re thinking of hiring a digital marketing agency as PPC consultants, make sure you learn how to hire a PPC agency for the best results. An experienced agency will know how to monitor your PPC campaigns and tweak them to maximize ROI and increase sales.

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Pay per click advertising (PPC) is an excellent method for gathering up more traffic and getting more conversions, but if you aren’t careful, PPC advertising has some drawbacks. If you don’t know what you are doing before starting your first pay per click advertising campaign, it could wind up feeling like a costly mistake. Therefore, we have compiled a list of things you should know before beginning a PPC campaign to help you make the most out of this investment.

Understanding Long Tail Keywords

Without understanding how ads work, you’re jumping into PPC advertising blind. You simply do not just want to use “head” keywords nor the highest trafficked keywords. What you want is a string of words that your customers would use when looking for the services you provide. In essence, these words cannot stand alone as a “head” but rather work synergistically to create a “long tail.” Use keywords are lengthy, use specific keywords, and when combined make up a large portion of search traffic.

An example of a head keyword is “digital marketing.” As for a long tail keyword, we could use “free digital marketing courses online.”

In essence, long tail keywords help you get more for money by driving a larger number of people towards lower-traffic terms, instead of only a small number to higher-traffic terms. Less competition, less money spent.

The Different Types of Ads and Ad Listings

Second, you need to know where you are going to be putting these ads and what you actually want to use. There are many platforms out there to help you get started, but choosing them can be rather difficult.

Here are just a few places where you can try your ad listings:

  • Bing
  • Yahoo
  • Google Adwords
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon

Each has their own limitations. For example, Google only allows 25 campaigns per account and 2,000 ad groups per campaign. Meanwhile, Yahoo allows 20 campaigns and 1000 keywords per ad group campaign. You need to compare and see which platform helps you the most.

As for the kinds of ads you can use, you are probably familiar with both display ads, banner ads, and text ads already. Banner and display ads kind of work like advertisements in a newspaper–with pictures and other flashy bits to attract customers’ eyes.

Text ads, on the other hand, are what you usually see as the primary result on a Google search engine results page. Compared to display ads and banners, text ads are much cheaper and can be useful for people who are looking for something specific.

Create a Landing Page

One of the best ways to lead a potential conversion along the buyer’s journey is to have a proper landing page to welcome them to your website. Landing pages have a number of benefits include allowing for customized messages to incoming visitors, creating a cohesive experience or to push visitors to perform certain actions, such as downloading your free guide.

A landing page also helps you create a “call to action.” Ask yourself what you want to person visiting this landing page to do the most then construct the page according to that. Like, it you want them to download that ebook, you better than a link to the download.

Review Your Results Often

No, this doesn’t mean “every single day.” You will never be able to connect the dots if you find yourself glued to the numbers on your results page. Rather, wait for the analytics to accumulate enough data for you to figure out trends and patterns. From there, you can rehash your budget, create or end campaigns, and figure out a course of action. The best way to track results is to do it weekly and monthly, adding the numbers into a spreadsheet for quick review.

Remember, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy when utilizing PPC. However, there are certain rules and guidelines that you need to adhere to in order to see the optimal results for your campaign. Without properly researching your keywords, knowing where you want to advertise, and how well the ads are actually performing, you will not have that great of ROI. So be sure to learn how PPC advertising will work for you then go from there.