The Power of a Comprehensive PPC Audit

In the fast-paced and competitive world of digital advertising, staying ahead requires more than just launching campaigns and praying for the best. It demands constant optimisation and strategic decision-making. This is where a PPC audit comes in. But what exactly is a PPC audit, and how does it help? In this blog we’ll reveal why businesses should consult specialists and explore 5 key benefits of deep-dive analysis. Let’s dive in.

What is a PPC Audit?

A PPC audit is a comprehensive review of paid advertising campaigns with the aim of identifying opportunities for improvement and maximising return on investment (ROI) from platforms like Google Ads.

Audits provide an insight into the overall health of PPC accounts by reviewing everything from campaign structure, conversion tracking, keyword selection, bidding strategies, ad copy, and more.

By scrutinising these elements, a PPC audit uncovers any potential issues; some of which can be fixed in an instant, and others that require a much more thorough intervention.

Why is a PPC Audit important?

Paid advertising campaigns are the cornerstone of many digital marketing strategies, routinely serving as the primary drivers of website traffic and conversions. However, in their eagerness to capitalise on this potential, many businesses rush to get started and take a “set it and forget it” approach that, while may generate some results initially, fails to harness the full potential of PPC.

The industry landscape is also constantly evolving, with Google Ads rolling out updates at a rapid pace. In 2023 alone, Google announced 38 changes including new ad formats, enhanced targeting capabilities, policy updates, and AI integrations. It’s a lot to keep up with, and best practices have evolved in light of these developments. What worked in 2020, most likely won’t work now.

Audits ensure latest features are leveraged correctly and pinpoint reasons for poor results, identify areas of wasted ad spend, and highlight what needs to be implemented to increase chances of success.

How do I know if I need one?

There are a number of circumstances that call for a deep-dive of your PPC activity:

Before launching new campaigns - an audit could reveal possible reasons why past ads underperformed and ensure new efforts are set up for success from the start.

Stagnant or declining performance - are your once high-performing campaigns now bringing in fewer leads? Audits diagnose issues hindering performance or limiting growth.

New competitors - have you noticed new players in your market? It could be time to take a closer look at your campaigns and adapt your strategies accordingly.

Significant changes to your business or industry - Major shifts in your business model, audience, or industry landscape could require updates to your PPC strategy.

Digital developments - have you heard of new features being introduced to ad platforms? Audits reveal if you’re missing out.

By considering these factors and conducting a comprehensive audit, you can stay ahead of the curve and keep your campaigns thriving.

Key Benefits of a PPC Audit

Now that we’ve explored the importance of audits, let’s explore the five key benefits and how these can optimise your campaigns:

1. Identify Wasted Ad Spend

Audits uncover areas of budget wastage and ultimately improve ROI. Common culprits include:

• Irrelevant keywords - are you paying for clicks on keywords and searches unrelated to your product or services? Google’s broad keyword matching can be great for extending reach but it also has a tendency to trigger irrelevant terms - particularly harmful if you have a limited budget.
• Poor ad copy - Irrelevant ads leave a bad first impression and lower your click-through rate (CTR), resulting in wasted ad clicks and non-engaged users.
• Incorrect bidding strategies - the wrong choice of bid strategy can inflate your cost-per-click and deplete daily budget. Equally, a bid strategy that underbids makes you less likely to show for high-converting queries.

There’s also a number of hidden settings that a lot of businesses overlook. For instance, the default location targeting option in Google Ads is “Presence or interest”. Keeping this selected means your ads could be seen in locations outside of your target market. This can be effective for some industries like travel, but 90% of the time this will steal budget away from the locations where you operate.

By analysing the common culprits and inspecting hidden settings, a comprehensive audit identifies areas of wasted ad spend and eliminates them.

2. Improve Conversion Rates

Beyond finding ways to reduce wasted ad spend, audits identify optimisations that will turn more clicks into conversions, resulting in more leads and sales. Here’s how:

• Landing Page Optimisations - a comprehensive audit looks past ad platforms themselves, and onto the page where traffic is being directed. Landing pages should have clear and effective call-to-actions, persuasive messaging, and perhaps most importantly; be functional and easy to navigate.
• Identify high-intent keywords - a PPC audit can help refine your keyword strategy by focusing on keywords that suggest strong-intent. This attracts more qualified traffic and increases conversion rates.
• Ads - Audits can suggest ways to make ads more engaging and appealing to your target audience. Adding more benefit-driven headlines for example can make your ad stand out and convey your unique proposition. Conversion rates improve further when ad messaging is mirrored and continued on landing pages.
• Ad Assets - Adding assets like sitelinks allow you to take up more screen real estate on the search engine results page and communicate your offer more effectively. An audit can help you choose the extensions most suitable for your business.
• A/B Testing - you should split test everything from ad copy, to bidding strategies, and targeting. This allows you to find the best-converting variations and then deploy them to maximise results. Detailed audits will recommend effective a/b tests that once implemented could unlock new growth opportunities.

Pinpointing these potential ways to increase conversion rates ensures businesses continue to see success from their campaigns amid the increasingly competitive landscape.

3. Optimise Account Structure

An efficiently organised PPC account lays the foundation for success, and a comprehensive audit is key to finding the optimal structure for your goals.

A themed approach to keyword grouping enhances ad relevance and Google rewards this practice with higher quality scores. This leads to lower CPCs and higher ad positioning.

While segmentation is important, modern accounts strike a balance and avoid getting too granular. This ensures campaigns have ample budget to feed data to Google’s automation and fully capitalise on smart bidding. Gone are the days of SKAGs (single keyword ad groups), hyper-segmented campaigns, and manual bidding.

A consolidated structure not only optimises performance, but it also sets the stage for future growth with any budget injections or keyword additions simply supercharging campaigns that generate consistent results.

There are, however, certain conditions that call for granularity and a more strategic approach. Any account audit should look at structure closely; it’s an integral element of success that’s important to get right from the start.

4. Protect Your Brand's Reputation

Introducing PPC to your marketing strategy opens your brand up to thousands of potential online placements, and not all of them may be appropriate.

Campaign types like Performance Max are great for establishing a large online footprint but there is less control for advertisers in terms of where the ads are being specifically placed. Further, Google’s black-box reporting makes it difficult to ascertain where ads are showing. You could be spending a large proportion of your budget on not-so-appropriate display ad placements.

Thankfully there are some ways this can be curtailed. The first one on your list should be to visit the ‘Content Suitability Centre’. Conventionally hidden under advanced settings, the suitability centre allows you to set account level inventory levels, exclude sensitive content categories or themes, and even ban specific website placements.

Setting account level filters like this is vital to protecting your brand reputation and ensures your budget is being spent efficiently.

It’s not just Google Ads where you need to consider brand safety. Many B2B or SaaS companies advertise on LinkedIn to reach key decision makers, but what many of them don’t know is that default settings allow your ads to be shown outside of LinkedIn and onto “partner” apps and websites. When coupled with the default audience expansion setting, brands could be targeting broader than they realise and on placements that don’t align with their messaging.

A comprehensive audit of all your PPC platforms is therefore essential to protect your brand, and ensure your strategic targeting is working as intended.

5. Future-Proof Conversion Measurement

Changes to the digital landscape mean ad platforms have had to introduce new conversion measurement protocols and data-privacy rules.

To prevent loss of data and improve the accuracy of measurement, companies should invest time in implementing durable tracking solutions like enhanced conversions and offline conversion imports, consent mode, and in some cases consider server-side tagging.

Comprehensive audits will identify your current tracking methods and should immediately prioritise any measurement updates required in the action points.

Do you need help optimising campaigns? Eyekiller offers deep-dives across all platforms using a constantly updated best practice checklist. Reach out today to connect with our PPC team and maximise your results.