Managing a PPC account can be daunting. There are various campaign types, objectives and settings that you need to navigate, and without guidance, they can seem confusing or poorly explained. It can also be challenging to find good information about Google’s best practice recommendations. A poorly set up account will often lead to poor results and waste of advertising budget.
Before explaining Eyeweb’s recommendations, understand that Google has some great beginner resources. The Skillshop Google Ads certification is the best place for a beginner to learn about the different Google Ads features and what everything means. However, the resource is a fair time commitment at nearly 4 hours worth of learning material, so read on if you’d like the basics.
PPC Acronyms
Firstly, we appreciate that people in the PPC industry frequently use acronyms which causes overly complicated marketing to speak and confusion.
To get you up to speed, we’ve put together a convenient cheatsheet:
PPC - Pay per click
CPC - Cost per click
CPA - Cost per acquisition
ROAS - Return on ad spend
IMPR - Impressions
Cost / Conv - Cost per conversion
UX - User Experience
ROI - Return on investment
PPC Account Structure
To understand how your advertising budgets are performing, you’ll need to wrap your head around the campaign structures within the account. Firstly what types of campaigns are you spending money on?
Search Campaigns - Text ads that appear at the top of Google Search Results pages
Display Campaigns - Image/Video ads that appear on the sides of web pages
Shopping Campaigns - Product ads that appear on Google shopping results and search results
Video Campaigns - Video adverts that play at the start or during YouTube videos
It is also essential to understand what services the campaigns are advertising and which landing pages they are using. This will help you know which services you are spending budgets on and how much of a return you are getting for this investment.
For example, a web design agency might be running a couple of campaigns:
A search campaign for their web design service
A search campaign for their SEO service
For you to effectively manage your PPC agency in this instance, you should be asking questions like:
How much spend has been allocated to each service?
How many conversions (leads) has each campaign generated?
How much am I paying on average for a conversion (lead) from each campaign?
These questions will help you assess the commercial viability of each campaign and determine where to invest your advertising budget. Eyeweb is used to working with businesses in the local area to improve their PPC performance which is why we are often one of the most recommended PPC agencies in Hull.
PPC Account Hygiene
What is your agency doing on a weekly/monthly basis to actively improve your account and justify its management costs? Many Google campaigns can be set up with automated bidding strategies, and the Google algorithms learn over time but left unchecked, the budget can be wasted on undesired keywords and audiences.
Some questions to help you check what is going on:
Are they checking search terms and adding negative keywords?
Are they testing the new ad creative? Which ads are performing well / not so well?
Are your agency suggesting which campaigns to increase budgets and which campaigns are not performing well?
Are your agency suggesting how to improve your website landing pages used in campaigns?
Does each campaign have at least one responsive ad per ad group?
PPC Reporting
It is important to review things with your agency on a weekly/monthly basis. We would advise having a reporting dashboard set up so you can easily check on performance and measure effectiveness against KPIs. We use Google Data Studio to pull through Google Ads data into an easy-to-access dashboard that simplifies the reports and eliminates irrelevant data. With the upcoming changes to Google Analytics and GA4, it is more important than ever to review your reporting processes and make sure that you are reporting on leads and ROI.
Final thoughts
We find that transparency and collaboration with clients lead to the best results. After all, you know your target audience best and which leads are the most valuable to you. If you would like help with your PPC strategy or friendly advice, please contact us through our contact page.