If you have an ongoing online marketing campaign, you’re already familiar with the effort that it takes to maintain a good performance rate. Using Google AdWords and other marketing tools, data collection and analysis become easy. Companies often invest large amounts of money in advertising without noticing consistent gains in sales, conversions and awareness.
Always remember that every rupee spent on advertising should help you make more money. Marketing is an investment, not an expense. A good marketing campaign always involves identifying what works and what doesn’t, so that constant changes can be made in future campaigns. A PPC audit is a great way to test whether your advertising budget is gaining some traction.
Here’s how you can improve your search engine marketing ad campaign by conducting a PPC audit:
What Is a PPC Audit?
Before you try to fix your unsuccessful campaign by running a PPC audit, you should understand what it is. Setting the right goals and expectations from your audit will help you achieve better results. A PPC audit is an ‘end to end’ analysis of a PPC campaign to determine the weak areas and make the program fetch better returns on investment. PPC marketing is very complex and gets harder to track and understand with time. With a wide range of metrics to analyse and the constantly changing policies and features from Google, managing a PPC program is not an easy task. However, when done correctly it can completely transform the performance of your existing model. Various companies provide PPC services so you can outsource the entire program and receive expert help for your struggling campaign.
Why Is an Audit Necessary?
PPC audits are necessary for businesses that believe that their ad campaigns could do better. This may be because a campaign that performed very well in the past is not able to generate the desired results anymore. This could also make sense for businesses that are generating the required traffic but are not able to keep up with the exponentially increasing costs. Optimisation is the key to maintain a good ad campaign that delivers the maximum result from an investment.
What to Check During an Audit?
A PPC audit will allow you to completely restructure your program by giving you a clear view of where your campaign requires attention. Most PPC models perform well in some places and need work in others. The main goals of your audit should be to locate these weak areas and try to eliminate them in your next PPC model. Look out for these while you run an audit:
- Overview of ad campaigns: Make sure you are running enough ads and targeting the right users.
- Overview of keywords: Keywords keep changing online, ensure that the keywords that you are using are not outdated.
- Budget allocation: More money does not always mean better results. Set realistic goals and allocate money accordingly.
- Comprehensive analysis of your account: Make sure you check all the important metrics and make a list of the areas where your program is lagging.
Generals Metrics to Analyse
There are various settings and metrics that decide how well your ads are performing. This is invaluable data that is collected in real-time to help you understand the behaviour of your users. You can find a best SEO company in India to do this for you, or try understanding the metrics and doing it yourself. Here is a comprehensive list of some of the most important metrics to check while doing an audit:
- Click-Through Rate
The CTR of your campaign decides its relevance. This is arguably the most crucial component of your campaign. The quality of your user base depends mostly on how much they are clicking on your ads. The only way to generate revenue and increase web traffic is by ensuring that users continue to stay interested in your ads and interact with them frequently.
- Conversion Rate
Similar to the CTR, this metric tells you how many users clicked through and performed the desired action on your page. A high conversion rate indicates that users are excited by your product or service and are compelled to purchase on your online store. Paying for hundreds of clicks and generating traffic is of no use if they do not take meaningful actions on your website.
- Cost Per Conversion
A very simple metric, the cost per conversion gives you the exact number that you are spending to acquire a new customer. If this number is more than the customer is worth to your business, then your ad campaign needs fixing.
PPC is a very intricate process that changes actively over time. The only way to increase the chances of your program succeeding is to have good content, a promising product or service along with having strong metrics. Regular audits can help you maintain your standing in the market and help you make the most out of your advertising budget.
