How to Perform An Effective Audit of Your PPC Campaign

Getting started with Google Ads is easy. Attaining success, however, is a completely different story. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising requires a proactive attitude, and your campaigns will only yield results when you put in the effort. One of the most effective ways of doing that is by performing a PPC audit.

The question is, how do you perform an effective PPC audit?

Just ticking the boxes on a checklist with a perfunctory look through some metrics and a half-hearted attempt at optimizing a few ads is not enough.

If you really want to see results from a PPC audit, then you need to know how to it right.

What is a PPC Audit?

In Google Ads, a PPC audit is a structured evaluation process that helps you determine the efficacy of Google Ads account. Done right, it can reveal issues that are contributing to underperforming campaigns, and give you actionable insights that you can use to improve the overall performance and health of your account.

Today, you can find a host of automated services to run a PPC audit. Unfortunately, many of these lack proper context for your specific PPC goals. Ideally, in a good PPC audit you will:

• Identify items for review with a full understanding of their importance.
• Document the status of each item.
• Make comprehensive notes about items that require maintenance, and use these notes to guide your post-audit action plan.

Why You Need a PPC Account Audit

A finely-tuned campaign is more likely to succeed, which makes it more likely to make money instead of wasting it. Therefore, a PPC audit offers you several benefits:

• Identify areas of wasted spend.
• Discover new revenue opportunities.
• Enhances management process.
• Gain insights to guide marketing efforts.
• Validate assumptions.

How to Perform a PPC Audit

So, without further ado, let’s see how to do a PPC audit on your Google Ads account. We will look at several key areas, posing key questions, which you should focus on to maximize your return on investment (ROI).

Step 1: Goals

First things first – you need to clarify your business objectives.

Ask yourself the following:

• What is your primary conversion goal? (Phone calls, Form Fills, In-Store Visits, Purchases, etc.)
• Is conversion tracking set up correctly?
• Is call tracking enabled?
• Do your customers have an established buying cycle?
• Is there an established CPA (Cost per Action)?

Step 2: Campaign Analysis

It’s usually easy to review campaign settings quickly, however, occasional tweaking helps to keep things optimized. Review the following:

• Are you running distinct Search campaigns or distinct Display campaigns?
• Are you running YouTube campaigns?
• Are you running distinct remarketing campaigns for display, search or YouTube?
• Are you running campaigns dedicated to branded terms?
• Have you used a logical, descriptive naming convention for your campaigns based on common themes?
• Are your ad groups named and organized into relevant categories and sub-categories?
• Are you running campaigns that have similar audiences setup?
• Is there a credit card or back-up funding option on the account to prevent Google Ads from pausing due to billing issues?

Step 3: Settings Analysis

Your settings may always change depending on your review of other areas during the PPC audit. Here are the key questions to consider:

• Is ‘include search partners’ selected?
• Is mobile bid adjusts set up?
• Are your ads rotating evenly?
• Are you using day-parting?
• Is location targeting set up in a logical manner?
• Do you have language targeting setup in a logical manner?
• Is enhanced CPC (Cost Per Click) enabled for GSN (Google Search Network)?
• Have you double-checked your bidding strategy? For a new campaign it’s always better to start with “Manual Bidding”. Once you have enough data you may decide to test “Smart Bidding” options
• Are you excluding your ads from acquiring impressions from your own office and home IP addresses?

Step 4: Google Search Network Ad Group Analysis

This is a crucial area where you will look at keywords, ads, quality scores, and landing pages. It’s all about the potential for conversion. Think about these aspects:

• Has each ad group got less than 20 keywords?
• Do you have negative keyword lists at the ad group level?
• Did you check there are no ‘below first page bid’ ads?
• Have you configured appropriate match types on your keywords?
• For all keywords, is the average quality score above 7?

Step 5: Google Display Network Ad Group Analysis

Similar to the Search network, you must ask yourself important questions about the Google Display Network:

• Are ad groups targeting ‘display keywords’?
• Are ad groups targeting ‘similar audiences’?
• Are ad groups targeting ‘topics & interests’?
• Are ad groups targeting ‘managed placements’?
• Are you leveraging demographics settings?
• Are you adjusting site category options to exclude placements that are unrelated to your business? (e.g. mobile app ads, below the fold ads, categories that do not apply to you such as ‘adult’ or ‘gambling’)

Step 6: Ads Analysis

It can be risky to rely too heavily on Google’s algorithm. In your PPC audit, check the following to identify issues that the autopilot is overlooking:

• Are there at least 2 desktop ads being split tested on all ad groups?
• Are there at least 2 mobile ads being split tested on all ad groups?
• Do your display campaigns have banner ads in all sizes?
• Are you using gif creative instead of flat creative?
• Are you split testing your banner creative?
• In display campaign(s) are you using BOTH text Ads and image ads?
• Have you ensured there are NO disapproved ads statuses?
• Have you ensured there are NO broken links in your ads?
• Have you ensured there are NO grammar or spelling mistakes in ads?
• Do your ads include features, benefits, and an offer or incentive?
• Are your ads linking to the best landing page(s)?
• Do you have ‘Click to Call’ enabled for mobile ads?

Step 7: Bid Based Analysis

Don’t waste money on locations, devices, or time periods that aren’t working out.

• Are you making bid adjustments based on Geography?
• Are you making bid adjustments based on Device?
• Are you making bid adjustments based on Time?
• Are you making bid adjustments based on GDN for Topics & Interests, Gender or Age?

Step 8: Landing Page Analysis

While landing pages are external, they have a direct impact on your campaign performance, and they also influence key metrics in Google Ads. Think about this:

• Are you using dedicated PPC landing pages?
• Are you using landing pages for each stage in the funnel – top, middle, and bottom?
• Are you conducting A/B Split testing on landing pages?
• Are you running heat map analysis on your landing pages?
• Do you have Exit or Cart Abandonment software?
• Are your landing pages mobile-responsive?

Step 9: Comparison from Previous Period

With the previous period data at hand, you can make comparisons and get vital insights:

• Are your CPAs trending down for the current month?
• Are your CPAs trending down for the last quarter?
• Are your CPAs trending down this year compared to last year?

Step 10: Budget Utilization

Lastly, evaluate how your budget is holding up:

• Are Search Campaigns or Display Campaigns with conversions losing Impression Share due to budget limitations?
• Do you have zero active search ad groups that do not have any conversions in last 90 days?
• Do you have zero display ad groups that are active and do not have any conversions or view-through conversions in the last 90 days?

Take Your PPC Audit to the Next Level

Advertising managers need to do a PPC audit regularly to ensure their campaigns are running smoothly and generating the best possible ROI. Data analytics is a huge part of modern business, and the more you tap into it, the more success you will have in paid advertising.

Try running the Account Audit Report from PPCexpo to really cut to the core of campaign issues, and ultimately, run a PPC audit that boosts performance on all levels.