Monitor and Review – Guide to Google Ads #5

Our fourth post in this Google and Bing ads series covered On-site Optimisation. Now, as we bring our guides to a conclusion it’s time to focus on the vital and ongoing activities that ensure top-notch pay per click (PPC) performance. It’s time to shift our gaze to Monitor and Review Google Ads.

Stage 4: Monitor and Review

It’s tempting, when your campaign ads are live and looking terrific, to take your foot off the gas. After all, it’s taken a while – and four blogs and counting – to get us this far. But you know what we’re going to say. And you’re right. It’s at this ads-are-live stage that your attention and commitment are needed more than ever. Happily, with a bit of forward-planning, monitor and review needn’t be a headache.

At Hookson, our monitoring strategy slots into three distinct sets of activities:

Daily Monitoring

Firstly, we analyse budget, keywords and ad groups.

Weekly Monitoring

Secondly, we monitor keyword positioning, landing page refinement and drill down into analytics.

Monthly Review

And thirdly, we compare objectives with results, in addition to agreeing future targets.

Each of these monitoring activities is designed to test, tweak and ensure the most hardworking PPC ads. So let’s take a closer look at each stage.

Daily Monitoring

Setting aside time to monitor Google Ads certainly pays dividends. Areas to keep daily tabs on include:

Budget

When analysing spend v conversions, it’s important to look at cost per click across your ad groups. Are there opportunities to adjust keyword bids? Moreover, is there a need to improve bids in exchange for a premium ad position?

Keywords

Harnessing the analytical tools we referenced in post #3 Campaign Set-up and Targets  will reveal high-flying phrases – as well as those to discard.

By monitoring the actual keywords and phrases that have brought visitors to your ads, you can identify similar words and phrases you want to classify as negative. These negative words can be excluded from your keyword list, meaning your ads – and your budget – reach only interested parties. An example might be a laptop retailer excluding searches for desktops.

Ad Groups and Ad Refinement

Keep ads working hard by staying on top of opportunities to create new ad groups – and pausing and refining underperformers.

By monitoring keywords and phrases, your ads – and your budget – reach only interested parties.

Weekly Monitoring

Keyword Positioning

Thanks to Google and Bing’s powerful analytical tools, it’s a snap to check the order your ad appears in a page. Determined by factors including keyword bids, ad relevance and Click Through Rate, average position is a metric that can help you refine these components of your ads.

Landing Pages

Reviewing and refining landing pages is a must. By making updates and tweaks aligned to successful search terms you’ll be offering visitors a page that makes good on your ad’s promise. That also builds trust and loyalty – in addition, it’s great news for SEO too.

Analytics to Monitor Google Ads

Weekly checks on visitor metrics reveal the true impact your campaigns are making on site traffic. However, beyond an increase in site traffic, Google and Bing’s suite of statistics dig deeper, revealing valuable behavioural insight including average bounce rates, visitor duration, event goals and number of pages visited. To monitor Google Ads, at Hookson we produce clear, jargon-free actionable reports for our clients. We also use the powerful Eloqua platform to help manage campaigns and generate leads.

Updates and tweaks make good on your ad’s promise. That builds trust and loyalty – and, importantly, it’s great news for SEO too.

Monthly Review

At monthly intervals it’s essential to review activity against your original goals and targets.

Above all, when you monitor Google Ads, broad questions to ask include:

• What ROI has been achieved based on conversions and event goals?
• Consequently, which ads, ad groups and keywords have performed well? Can these inform future activities?
• What can be improved upon? What didn’t work? Can we learn from this insight?
• Where is there potential for future activity?
• Looking ahead, are there changes, developments, new products or services that will impact future campaigns?

Review objectives against results

At the outset of your PPC campaign, you had a goal or, more likely, a number of goals in mind. For instance, these might be number of landing page visits, specific event milestones, conversions, sign-ups and downloads. Therefore, as part of your monthly review you should look at what has been achieved in relation to your goal(s).

Define new targets

As your organisation’s priorities change, and as your activities reveal more and more opportunities, new targets may well present themselves. Similarly, so will new audiences. For example: new ad groups. New keywords. New KPIs. New CPC. New SEO. New acronyms.

Hang on. Isn’t this where we came in?

In short, absolutely.

The road to Google and Bing ads perfection is a circular one. To sum up, insight from your Monitoring and Reviewing exercises should always feed directly into new or refined activities, ads and campaigns.

But the more you practice this stuff, the more natural it’ll become – and the more powerful, effective and ROI-pleasing your campaigns will be.

Can Hookson give me the Lowdown on Monitoring and Reviewing?

You bet. And plenty more besides.

Hookson is a Premier Google Partner agency. To clarify: we’ve demonstrated advanced skills and expertise across a suite of digital marketing disciplines. We also apply best practice to all of our AdWords campaigns and enjoy direct access to Google’s up-to-the-moment tech support and insight.

In conclusion, for a specialist hand with monitoring and reviewing, and with all of the stages we’ve covered in this series, speak with us today.