Category: Google Ads
If you run Google Ads for your own business, you probably don’t have time to log in every day. You’ve got a business to run. But leaving an account alone for months is one of the most common ways small budgets get wasted. Searches change, competitors come and go, and Google keeps adding new settings and recommendations.
The good news is that you don’t need hours. A short, regular check, once a month, will catch most problems before they cost you much. September is a good time to start, with the summer over and the busy run-up to the end of the year ahead.
Here’s what to look at.
Start with the big picture
Open your account and set the date range to the last month. Compare it with the month before, and with the same month last year if you have the data.
Look at four numbers: what you spent, how many clicks you got, how many conversions (calls, form enquiries or whatever you’re tracking) came in, and what each conversion cost. You’re not looking for perfection, just for anything that has changed a lot. If spend has gone up but conversions haven’t, something needs looking at. If conversions have dropped suddenly, check whether tracking is still working before assuming the ads have stopped performing.
And compare the figures with what you’ve actually seen in the business. If Google Ads says you had twenty enquiries but you only remember five, either tracking is counting things it shouldn’t or enquiries are being missed somewhere.
Check the search terms
This is the most valuable couple of minutes in the whole check. The search terms report shows the actual searches people made before your advert appeared and before they clicked.
Scroll through last month’s list and look for anything that isn’t a potential customer: people looking for jobs, training, free advice, a different service or a town you don’t cover. Add those as negative keywords so you don’t pay for them again.
While you’re there, look for good searches you didn’t know about. If people are finding you with words you hadn’t thought of, consider adding them as keywords, or using them in your adverts and on your website.
Look at where and when
Check where your clicks came from. If you serve Salisbury and the surrounding towns but a noticeable share of clicks came from further afield, your location settings may need tightening.
Then check when your clicks happened. If a lot of your spend is going on evenings or weekends when nobody answers the phone, consider adjusting your ad schedule.
Read the recommendations, but don’t just accept them
Google Ads has a recommendations page, and an optimisation score that goes up when you accept them. Some recommendations are useful. Others mainly lead to spending more, such as raising budgets or switching to broader keywords.
Read each one and ask whether it’s genuinely good for your business. As we said in our post on getting the most out of your PPC, Google’s advice is helpful, but Google also earns money from every click.
It’s also worth checking whether anyone, possibly you, has switched on automatically applied recommendations. If it’s on, Google may be making changes to your account without asking. Make sure you know which ones are switched on, and why.
Check your adverts still make sense
Have a quick look at your adverts. Are the offers, prices and opening hours still right? Is there anything seasonal that needs changing, such as a summer message still running in the autumn or a Christmas closure coming up that needs mentioning?
Use Google’s ad preview tool to see your adverts as a customer would, without clicking them and paying for it. Then open the page each advert links to on your phone and make sure it still works, still loads quickly and still says what the advert promises.
Check your budget and your competitors
Look at whether each campaign is spending its full budget, and how early in the day. If a campaign regularly runs out of budget by lunchtime, your adverts aren’t showing in the afternoon at all, which may mean you’re missing calls from people who search later in the day. You can raise the budget, narrow the keywords or locations so the money goes further, or move budget from a campaign that’s doing less well.
It’s also worth a quick look at the auction insights report. It shows which other businesses are appearing for the same searches as you, and how often. If a new competitor has appeared, or an existing one is suddenly showing much more often, it can explain why your costs have gone up or your clicks have gone down. You can’t control what they do, but knowing about it helps you make sense of your own figures.
Note down what you changed
Keep a simple note of what you changed each month and why. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy, a few lines in a notebook or a document will do. When you look back in a few months, it’ll help you work out what made a difference, and it’s invaluable if someone else ever takes over the account.
When to get help
If your monthly check keeps turning up the same problems, or you’re not sure what the figures are telling you, it might be time to get someone to look at the account properly. A fresh pair of eyes often spots things that are easy to miss when you’re close to it.
If you’d like help, the friendly, experienced team at Spire Digital manage pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns for businesses in Salisbury and the surrounding area. Give us a call on 01722 320 500.