A PPC Audit Might Save You Thousands Every Month

How PPC or Pay-Per-Click Works

The idea behind PPC is relatively simple. Some websites offer prime digital real estate, where a marketer can promote their brand on that site but has to pay for it. PPC is different. Advertisers pay only if and when someone clicks on their ad. It is understandable that for many, this is a preferred way to advertise.

Are you wondering, “why should I audit my PPC account”?

A PPC audit provides you with information to help you make data-driven decisions to improve your advertising strategy to generate a better return on your advertising budget.

Check Conversion Tracking

Tracking conversions correctly is critical for understanding how your campaigns are performing and identifying which campaigns drive the most conversions. Watch for these signs of poorly implemented conversion tracking:

A suspiciously low conversion count
- If your conversion count is low, you're most likely not tracking all conversions. Check to see if you've neglected to add tracking codes to some new landing pages or neglected to track phone call conversions.
Identical click and conversion counts
- It's impossible to have your click and conversion counts be the same if the tracking has been set up correctly. For example, this happens if you mistakenly add the conversion tracking code to your landing page instead of the “Thank You” page.
Very high conversion rates with low sales numbers
- You are likely tracking product page visits instead of hits to your “Thank You” page.

If you feel your audit results could be better, here are some PPC tips to help you save money while getting you the results you're paying for.

Click-Through Rate

Click-through rate is essential. Each time there is a click on your ad, you pay a certain amount of money. The idea is to get people to click through to increase sales and improve profits. The writing of engaging ads for Google Ad Groups and Bing Ads will increase your quality score. Raise your score, and the result will be a higher CTR or click-through rate.

Ad Extensions

Ad extensions help increase the percentage of click-through rates. The purpose of extensions is to make ads more clickable. Google Ads offers several extensions that can help your business regardless of its nature.

Geolocation

You also need to pay close attention to your geolocation settings. This allows marketers to display ads only within a specific region or area. Unfortunately, this practice is occasionally overlooked by those who run PPC campaigns. As a result, they fail to set the correct geolocation parameters or do not set any at all. Keep in mind to schedule settings for optimal business hours of operation for physical locations.

Dayparting

Dayparting is also an effective technique enabling marketers to maximize visibility during preferred hours of the day or night. Again, this is very helpful for business owners with a brick-and-mortar location.

Negative Keywords

Having negative keywords can be good. The point of using negative keywords is to reduce the number of visitors to your site that are not going to buy your service or product anyway. Consider creating a negative keyword conflicts report.

Negative keywords include those you've excluded from your ad campaign to focus only on the effective ones. If you are new to paid search, compile a negative keywords conflict report. Otherwise, some of the negatives you added to your account may actually be costing you money.

Find New Keywords

Focus on finding new keywords for your campaigns. Some marketers lower their bids and reduce spending. Also, find new keywords to boost traffic. Those new keywords could have a significant impact on click-throughs. They can also raise your campaign quality scores. Optimize bids for mobile devices and experiment with device targeting.

Optimize Bids for Mobile Devices

Because of the sheer number of people searching the Internet with their mobile devices, it makes sense to work this into a marketing plan. The number of people who search for services and products on their mobile devices will only increase with time. You should also be aware that many searches that end up on a desktop or laptop began with a mobile device search.

Refine Match Types

Overly broad matches can occur if you don't refine match types. For some marketers, failure to pay attention can cost money. Like all phases of digital marketing, you need an expert eye and an alert mind to stay on top of the game. If things get tough, seek out the experts who make their living in digital marketing.

Stacked Bidding

While discussing match types, consider carefully if using stacked bidding makes sense for your campaign. Stacked bidding is when you bid on two or more match types for a single keyword. For example, if bidding on the keyword “crab cakes,” you want to bid on this keyword at both the Exact and Broad match types. Broad match offers greater volume, where Exact match provides greater relevancy. Stacked bidding is definitely worth considering.

Review your campaigns to identify keywords you're going after using stacked bids. Reconsider stacked bidding if you are not getting the volume you want. To ensure you get the most of your advertising dollar, conduct a pay-per-click audit to identify areas in your campaign that could use performance improvement.