Is it time to review your Google AdWords performance? Maybe you’ve been neglecting to do your reviewing because it all seems a little overwhelming. So many metrics and data to sort through!
You want to get qualified leads and clicks for your ads. It can actually be fun looking at all the data so you can optimize everything to get those quality leads and get your click-through rates exploding!
With a little “how to” you will be able to pull out the key performance triggers and all the relevant data to see how your google ads are doing. Buckle up, and just go for it! ? You need to know how things are performing so you can optimize for bigger and better results.
Understand What You’re Looking At
That’s a big step. Understanding what you’re looking at!
All your AdWords performance data is compiled in tables. Each column has a different performance metric. The names in those columns include campaigns, ad groups, ads, etc. and they run across the top of the columns like a dashboard. Those names are called entities.
Each entity has a hierarchy so you are able to drill down into the tables at each level to see more detailed data.
Analyze Your Ads By Sorting Them
When you want to analyze an entity like ads, keywords, campaigns, or any other one, FIRST sort them by a metric. There are several metrics that can be measured for each entity to indicate their performance. Some metrics are impressions, clicks, click-through rate, quality score and the average cost per click.
- First set your date range with broad and recent data. Use the last 30 days.
- Then sort by the metric you choose to analyze Clicks, CTR, Cost, etc in descending order.
Now you can compare and measure which entities are doing good in the metric you’ve chosen and which are lagging behind. You can optimize now to get them to perform better.
Here are a few metrics to look at.
Low CTR
If you find your ads have a low CTR, it simply means nobody is clicking on your ads ? Something needs to change or you’re just sending out ads for no return.
Maybe your ad isn’t compelling enough or it could be irrelevant to what people are searching for. Work on creating new ads and make them super compelling.
CTR is the easiest metric to measure but very important. It will ultimately determine the cost you’ll pay ? for your clicks.
Low Impressions
Low impressions mean your ads aren’t running very often ? Time to find out why!
- It could be the search volume is low for your keywords.
- Or your bids are too low.
- Or your quality score is too low.
View the “Lost Impression Share” columns to find out why. Whatever the reason, you’ll have to fix it! You may have to raise your bids in order to top competing advertisers. And if you have to improve your quality score then you can create more relevant ads.
High Cost per Conversion
Everyone runs ads to get more conversions like driving inquiries or generating sales. But if your AdWords performance metrics are telling you that you have a high cost per conversion, it means you’re cost is too high for the number of conversions you’re getting. Too much money going out, and not enough conversions coming in! ?
You can either lower your bids to lower your overall cost or create new ads. Make new ads that are more specific about your offer. That can help limit the number of people who click and don’t convert. This will improve your conversion rate and lower your cost ?
Take A Look At How Your Keywords Are Doing
Use your keyword in your ad copy whenever it’s appropriate. Don’t stuff keywords in your ads because it really looks unnatural and not only that, it will confuse the message.
? Google will bold your keywords in your ad and make them pop out ?
Keywords reinforce the relevance of your ad. People searching for the keywords you use will see the value you have to offer.
When optimizing your keywords, focus on your budget for the best keywords ? You want the best ones to get the results you want which is conversions!
Find high-quality keywords and invest in them. If your ads aren’t doing too good because of certain keywords you chose, then pause those low-quality keywords or demote that ad.
Check How Your Ads Are Performing
You pay good money for your ads, so always check your AdWords performance ?
Check to make sure the messaging is what you want your customers to see. Be sure your ads direct people to the exact page you want them on when they click through to your website.
Your goal is to create the best ads possible that will result in conversions. Create an ad and duplicate it and change the headline. Then wait and see which one performs the best. Test a variety of messages too. Those ads are competing with other companies. So you want to keep optimizing those ads so that yours come out on top.
Sometimes you may think your favourite ad will perform the best, but you find out a slight variation of that ad did much better. Pause the ones that don’t do as well, and keep working with the best performers improving them and varying the components.
Analyze Your Campaign Performance
Your campaigns, and the ad groups within them, contain keywords that will target the people ? who search for your offer.
So you want to optimize the goal of allocating money to the best performing campaigns. These are the ones that will most likely have conversions.
To do this, rank your best performing campaign by its cost per conversion. And you already know that the lower that cost is the better. Make sure your daily budget is greater than its average daily cost.
Then check the next campaign the same way and continue this process until your whole budget is completely distributed.
Your goal is to have your campaigns bring in more money than they’re costing you. That’s called a positive ROI. When this is the case, then you should most definitely put more money towards your budget.
Make Sure You Keep Track Of How Your Ads Are Doing Over Time!
In order to see how your ads are doing over time ⏰ you should review line graphs. This will show you how and when a metric has changed.
Look for peaks ? and valleys and trends. You want to use that data to measure the impact of the changes you’ve made. You’ll see what happened when you changed a certain headline or some content in your ad.
Also, keep an eye on how the seasons affect your ads.
All it takes is a little time and effort to analyze your Google AdWords performance. Get comfortable navigating your performance tables. As you practice you’ll soon be able to read them with ease and make changes accordingly. Have fun exploring the different metric columns. Read the tooltips. You’ll soon be familiar with everything. Data shouldn’t be intimidating! It’s the only way you’ll learn to get better results for your ads. Dig in and know your data!