If you have launched a Google AdWords campaign, you already know the most important thing: it will take regular monitoring to keep your ads running effectively. After months of monitoring, adjustments, and tests to improve the campaigns, it is time to take a step back and get the bigger picture on the health of your AdWords efforts and find new ways to improve.
You can get started immediately by writing down the different lead, traffic, and conversion goals along with how you are tracking these key performance indicators. As you move through the details of your account, you can use this framework to evaluate your account’s health with these three reviews:
1. Settings and Structure
The overall structure of your campaign will help keep you organized and running efficiently. As you review your campaigns, pay careful attention to the following:
- Campaign Bidding Structures
When changes happen, you want to have a quick way to evaluate your response. For example, Google is taking the 30% cap off of their Enhanced CPC bidding setting. Do you know which campaigns use this and if this change will be beneficial? (Mediapost.com) - Targeting Settings
There are multiple ways to target using Adwords: device, geographic, demographic, contextual. Have you set bidding adjustments for the factors that are driving traffic? - Ad Delivery Method
You wrote down your goals to generate leads, improve brand exposure, or drive conversions. Do you have your ads set up in the right network to reach these goals?
2. Ad Groups & Keywords
This is the area where you have been spending the most time adjusting and tweaking, but now is the time to take a look at some of the bigger items:
- Negative Keywords
There are certain topics that require more negative keywords to show your content to the right audience. If there are excessive amounts of negative keywords, is it time to consider a restructure with narrower keyword structures? - Average and Max CPC
You may have been getting the ‘Limited by Budget’ messages. This is a perfect time to compare averages and limits to industry benchmarks.
3. Ads & Landing Pages
Here is where the rubber meets the road. Ads and landing pages are the face of your campaign that the customer sees. You should have already been testing different variations. As you take a step back, keep a careful eye out for consistency and user experience:
- Consistency
Using consistent wording and calls to action will not only benefit the user experience, but will improve the quality scores on your keywords. Do your Ad Groups and Keywords carefully align with the content in your ads and landing pages? - User Experience
A trained eye will look for content and images that resonate with the audience. A professional eye will go a step further and make sure that there is nothing hindering the customers from a streamlined experience. Does your landing page have all the elements that will draw in users (Kissmetrics Infograph)?
Taking careful notes during your review leads to an action plan for a better performing campaign. If you are looking for help from a certified Google Partner to review and optimize your AdWords account, Contact Informatics today.
