GOOGLE ADS AUDIT
A big IT company turned to us for an independent audit of contextual advertising since their advertising campaigns didn’t bring desired results despite the budget invested in them.
We were given read-only access to the client’s Google Ads account and standard access to the Google Analytics account.
Also, there were established the main points for auditing the project:
- account structure
- analytics (conversions, remarketing audiences)
- campaigns (campaign types, analyzing the most active and top-performing ones)
- ad copies (format, effectiveness, conversions)
- keywords (clustering, frequency, match type)
- optimization (recommendations for improving existing campaigns and advertising in general)
To streamline the audit of the advertising campaign and not to miss a single detail, we compiled a checklist covering the main criteria. But before we started checking these points, we asked the client what the purpose of PPC was to make sure we clearly understood the brand’s goals.
GOOGLE ANALYTICS VS. GOOGLE ADS
How to audit conversion tracking? Google Analytics counts only one conversion per session, for example, if a user fills out the same contact form several times in one session, this still counts as one conversion. But Google Ads counts each filled-in form. Of course, this depends on your settings.
CORRECTNESS OF WORK
How to audit the correctness of work? There are three typical mistakes associated with conversion tracking:
- a conversion is counted twice (1 action taken = 2 conversions counted)
- conversions are duplicated (2 different conversions count for 1 goal)
- conversions do not match the names (“Form submission” = actual “Click”)
One of the most frequent mistakes is that non-conversion goals are imported into the ad account and included in conversion tracking, for example, starting a chat. In fact, this action doesn’t suggest collecting personal data, so it is recommended to remove this goal from the account. At the same time, you can include Jivosite events that can be considered conversions, for example:
- In-chat email form submitted
- Callback requested
- Mobile call
If you notice something similar in your account, we recommend reconfiguring it. If you do not know how to set up Google Analytics and Google Ads, you can always contact our agency. We know all the ins and outs of advertising, including setting up Google Ads accounts.
We also recommend setting up micro conversions from clicks on social icons on the site. Microconversions help to understand user behavior on the site, providing insights into optimizing the site for higher conversion rates and helping Google understand what kind of users to look for.
GOOGLE ADS
Google Ads audit involves checking several main points: the account, analytics, campaigns, ads, and optimization. The number of leads and ad performance directly depend on the quality of ads.
Let’s take a more detailed look at each point.
ACCOUNT
First of all, we checked the correctness of segmenting advertising campaigns by types. Creating a joint advertising campaign for different goods and services often leads to draining the budget. Separating ad campaigns for different services is a good rule of thumb to follow if you’re focused on getting a profit. When segmented properly, ads are shown to interested users and, therefore, generate income.
CAMPAIGNS
As mentioned earlier, you should create different advertising campaigns for different products and services. This section highlights what to consider when setting up each individual campaign.
Goals. Similar to advertising accounts, campaigns have goals. However, you don’t have to indicate these goals, they are additions to the main goals and reflect the main tasks. If you decide to set up these goals, make sure they are consistent with the main ones.
It’s worth trying setting up a campaign goal to allow the system to set up for searching for interested audiences more actively, for example, Leads.
Strategy. Many companies use manual bidding from time to time, doing this to pursue certain goals. First, it’s worth switching to automatic strategies to accelerate to Maximize Clicks (with a bid limit), and then, after reaching 30 conversions, switch to Maximize Conversions. The Maximize Clicks strategy is more efficient than manual bidding. When using this feature, the system automatically increases the maximum cost per click if it is likely to lead to a conversion. Otherwise, the bid decreases, allowing you to get more conversions within a given budget.
Setting an ad schedule. The ad schedule depends on the product in the first place. But for starters, you can set your ads to be displayed round the clock and watch how the statistics change. After collecting data for each individual product or service, you should set your ads for the most profitable hours. Despite smaller quantities, you still can occasionally get low-cost leads at nighttime, so night hours aren’t excluded from the schedule for data collection.
To prevent your ads from being shown on children’s sites, we recommend setting up content exclusions. We also recommend completely disabling ads in mobile applications, because this is only suitable for a narrow segment of businesses.
Most extensions were already created, but it was also worth using extensions for mobile devices and structured snippets. It is important to try using a new type of extensions, image extensions, which appeared in May 2021. It allows you to stand out from the competition, attract attention, and increase CTR:
Keywords. Starting from April 2020, using the broad match modifier is no more effective.
We recommend switching to the exact match, which helps reduce cost per click and get rid of search queries that don’t bring results, or phrase match for mid-frequency search queries.
Audiences. No audience segments were selected. We recommend adding them to optimize ad performance, experiment with interests, etc.
The selected age was 18-24 years old. Is this choice relevant to your niche? Will they convert? We recommend considering this question, and, if necessary, switch off this setting.
As we can see from the indicators, the conversion rate is 0, although the client has been spending money on this audience segment.
Ad groups. We set 0.01 bids for ad groups, although you can manually adjust the bids for each keyword. In fact, only one of all the groups was effective and brought conversions, all the rest didn’t trigger any actions. It was worth either stopping them or updating semantics:
Ad copies. Speaking of ads, it’s worth mentioning that you can have different advertising campaigns for mobile and desktop platforms. Everything depends on the niche and the budget, but there are some tips. You can consider splitting your campaigns, but it doesn’t make any sense with a small budget, since neither platform will have enough budget to collect necessary statistics.
In addition, it’s inconvenient when using automated strategies since machine algorithms know better when and on what device type it’s better to show the ad.
When excluding devices, you should consider their nature. Mobile phones and tablets are closer than desktops and tablets. Therefore, it’s recommended to exclude mobile phones and tablets from desktop campaigns and desktops from mobile campaigns. Also, you should exclude TVs in any case.
Only one responsive ad worked in each ad group. We created 2 to 3 text ads and 1 to 2 responsive ads within each ad group. This helped increase ad strength and CTR, reducing cost per click and making it easier to win auctions without extra expenses.
Ad strength. The audit showed poor ad strength, so we recommended including keywords in ad titles and adding CTAs to motivate users to visit the website.
Auction statistics. Due to the small budget and selected manual bidding, ads appeared in irrelevant positions on the first page of the Google search results, and received only 27% of impressions over the Google search results:
Negative keywords. Checking incoming traffic.
Only generic negative keyword lists had been added to the campaign. Before the campaign was stopped, changes had been implemented rarely and without checking the traffic. We recommended updating the list of negative keywords on a weekly basis. Our client had many search terms with the words meaning, what is, etc.,which is irrelevant and drains the budget.
RESULTS
The audit brought positive results. The issues we’ve identified aren’t critical, and the client’s Google Ads account was set up properly from many points of view. If the client decides so, their account will undergo some minor changes.
We provided the client with a detailed report highlighting more specific points related to this particular company. It will help them not only by setting up a Google account, but also by planning the launch of new campaigns.
