Pay per click (PPC) advertising campaigns can be very lucrative, when they are done properly. Therefore, if you want to run successful PPC campaigns, you need to have a PPC audit process in place to help you get the highest ROI for your advertising budget.
Here are eight PPC audit steps that will help you write and maintain more effective ads.
1. Understanding the Metrics
You have to thoroughly understand all the metrics involved in a PPC campaign, if you don’t want to lose money.
For example, what is your quality score and what can you do to improve it? How many impressions are you receiving for each of your ads and what can you do to get more impressions? What is your click through rate (CTR)? How many of those clicks are coming from a mobile device? And are your mobile marketing campaigns properly optimized for mobile as well?
2. Find Your Wasted Ad Spend
If your ads are not converting, you need to find out why. For example, are you using any negative keywords. If hundreds of people are clicking on a few negative keywords, you are unnecessarily wasting your ad spend. Making this correction only takes a quick glance at your keywords and can be easily fixed in just a few seconds.
Here’s how to build a negative keyword list:
- Use the keyword planner tool to find negative keywords. You can start by searching for your target keywords, then analyze each keyword to find terms that you don’t want applied to your business (like “free” and “jobs”).
- Use the search terms report to find negative keywords. You can sort this report by highest number of impressions to see a list of the most popular search terms that trigger your ads. Review each keyword to find terms that you don’t want applied to your business and add it to your negative keyword list.
- Do competitive research for negative keywords. Perform a Google search using your primary keywords and review the results. If you see keywords in the title of the results page that isn’t transactional, add those terms to your list.
3. Proper SEO Optimization for Your Website or Landing Page
If your website or landing page has not been optimized according to proper SEO standards or using the proper link building strategy, your campaigns are going to receive a low quality score and this will increase the cost of your ads.
Here are some simple ways to optimize your landing page for more conversion:
- Be consistent with your message. Your ad copy and your landing page need to relate.
- Make sure your landing page answers the visitor query.
- Give them a reason to click. Make sure your call to action (CTA) buttons tell them clearly what they’ll get.
- Earn their trust. Include social proof on all your landing pages to prove that humans have interacted with your product or services.
4. Assess Your Click Through Rate
If your click through rates are low, you need to try different techniques to see which ones raise your click through rates. A/B testing is the best strategy to boost click through rates.
Here’s a simple way to do it:
- Identify your highest trafficked ad.
- Create another Ad to complete against it.
- Review the CTR after a few days.
- Pick the winner and test again, but creating another Ad to compete against it.
Keep trying different things to see what works.
5. Daily, Weekly and Monthly Monitoring
It’s imperative you have a PPC monitoring schedule in place if you are running any type of PPC campaign. All the major search engines have different types of analytics programs available to alert you of problems and trends before they become major issues, if you take the time to implement them then monitor them.
6. Keyword Optimization
Keyword research and optimization should be an ongoing effort. Additionally, you should be assessing and using long-tail keyword optimization as part of your PPC strategy just like you do for your other keywords. Long-tail keywords generally offer high-intent at a low cost per click and very little competition.
7. Demographic Targeting
Are you using demographic targeting as part of your PPC campaign? You should be. For example, why spend money on ads that will attract all traffic if you only sell products for one gender? Demographic targeting should be used and monitored if you don’t want to waste your ad spend.
8. Audit Your Website or Landing Page for Mobile Responsiveness
Many of your viewers are probably going to be clicking on your PPC ads from a mobile device. Therefore, you need to make sure your website and/or landing page can be easily viewed on a mobile device.
Your PPC campaigns are great for selling, but they can also be used to grow your email marketing or mobile list. Once you have an email list, you can send SMS text to educate and sell to your list indefinitely. This is a great way to receive passive income without much extra effort.
