Protecting Your PPC Account Health in 2024

If you are a PPC marketer, you should know the importance of regular audits of Google and Microsoft Ad campaigns. Ignorance in doing the same can cost your client and lead to an avoidable expense.

This article has brought you some techniques and strategies for optimizing PPC campaigns and avoiding common pitfalls that can cause a significant amount to your clients.

These pitfalls and their solutions are well-researched and came to light while auditing our client's businesses, and that is why we have created this informative article for you to avoid similar mistakes as PPC marketers. So let’s go and read till the end-

Most Effective Strategies to Protect Your PPC Ad Campaign

Always Check Your Campaign Goal Settings

Google ads are versatile and have options for every goal of yours. They have settings at both at account level and campaign-specific goals. However, you need to be very careful about these settings as they can lead to many clicks but no conversion.

·???????? If your ad campaign is not working, don’t just discard it and create a new one, instead-

·???????? Check your campaign goal settings and make sure that you’re measuring what you want to measure.

·???????? Always set a goal-specific setting that your client is willing to achieve and be sure about how you are going to utilize it.

Default Settings You Should Never Use

Before making your ad campaign live, you should clear all the default settings on Google ads despite them being convenient to have. You should clear default settings such as-

1. Broad Match without Smart Bidding or Audiences

Google advertises its broad match setting as a tool to get-

·???????? Improve target Cost Per Action (CPA) by 35%.

·???????? Keywords that are unique and unused but most useful.

·???????? Improve your Ads ROI by delivering better performance.

This all is true only if you use a broad match setting with smart bidding and audience targeting options. Your ad campaign needs to reach the right audience.

Make sure you always allow layering on smart bidding and target audience.

2.Broad Match Campaign Setting

Another setting in the broad match campaign that needs to be careful about is-

·???????? On: use broad match keywords for your entire campaign and off: Use keyword and match types.

·???????? You need to select the option carefully as the “On” option will restrict you from adding future possible matches.

·???????? While selecting the “Off” option gives you flexibility to add future possible matches.

3. All the Networks

Two settings that are on by default are Search Partners and Display Network while creating a new Ad campaign.

·???????? In the case of a B2B ad campaign, it is essential to turn off the Search Partners option, as it does not give any good results and takes your control over the ad campaign. If you have enough ad budget, you can test this option carefully.

·???????? Google has smart campaigns that run along with Search Partners and Display Network. However, it has been seen that display campaigns will take all your ad budget and are challenging to optimize. A smart choice is to run both Search Partners and Display Network separately. Remove the Display Network option from the settings in this case.

4.Location Targeting Method

The default target location setting doesn’t always bring people from your targeted location but in opposite target people who are looking for your target location. These settings can lead to traffic from unwanted locations.

·???????? If this setting is on, you may think your ads are showing to the people located in Indore but on the contrary, it has been shown to all the people who have searched Indore at some time.

·???????? If you go into your location target settings to look where your ads have run, you will find out they might be showing to the people in Bhopal, Pune, Mumbai, or Delhi.

·???????? To remove this issue from your ad campaign, you should turn on “people in or regularly in your target locations” to cut down unwanted locations and increase the visibility at targeted locations.

5. Exclude Locations That Charge Tax

You should learn about the locations that charge tax and if your ad campaign does not have anything to do with those locations, you should remove these countries from the setting.

·???????? There are seven countries namely Austria, France, India, Italy, Spain, Turkey, and the UK that have regulatory operating costs (or DST fees) and they charge tax for any ads that serve there.

·???????? If your ad campaign settings are set to “people in or who show interest in” you might get traffic from these locations costing you extra money over your PPC cost.

·???????? All you need to do is exclude these seven locations if you are not targeting them specifically.

6. Conversion Counting Conundrum

Making sure that you are counting correct actions without repeating them before reporting is very crucial for conversion counting for your client’s ad campaign.

·???????? The conversion counting can be a tricky business as it can confuse you in many ways.

·???????? Always check what’s primary, what’s secondary, and what the sources of those conversions are.

·???????? Many times we set one action point and then decide to switch to another without removing the first one, it could give you wrong conversion counting. So always be careful.

Hidden Settings

There are various hidden setting in Google and Microsoft ads settings that needs to be addressed.

Automated Extensions

·???????? Generally these are on, irrespective of whether your ad requires them or not.

·???????? If your client is into e-commerce business, automated extensions can work as you have multiple products but for other businesses, it may not as it would be challenging to set up bespoke extensions.

·???????? It is better to turn them off for B2B ad campaigns and to do that you will need to-

o?? You have to click these three dots above the “more” button on the right-hand side of the screen.”

o?? Then you click account-level automated assets.

o?? Click a more button again, then you click advanced settings and finally, you get to the screen where you can turn these off.

·???????? Turning off all the extensions such as Call out, structured snippets, images, and site links for B2B business is essential.

Expanded Audiences

·???????? With these settings you can expand your ad showing to the other audience that are similar to your selected audience.

·???????? With a new marketing campaign, it is fine if you want to expand your reach, but for a remarketing campaign, this needs to be turned off as it can ruin the campaign goal.

·???????? To select “out of expanded audiences” you need to do is-

o?? Group settings.

o?? Select the option to edit ad group targeting.

o?? Go into every single ad group where you’re doing targeted audience segments and turn this setting off.

o?? Make sure you go through the online UI and turn off optimized targeting for every single campaign that you don’t want it to run.”

·???????? Make sure you do this before initiating a Google ad campaign.

Microsoft Ad Group Settings

For the Microsoft ad group setting, you need to be careful about various other options that are different than Google ad group settings. These settings can be used to your advantage, such as-

·???????? You can schedule ad groups.

·???????? You can use campaign settings.

·???????? You can apply independent website exclusions.

·???????? You can make independent bid adjustments and ad distribution (this is also where you opt out of the Microsoft Advertising network).

·???????? You can make independent location bid adjustments and age settings.

Avoiding Common Pitfalls

Common pitfalls of PPC ad campaigns that we found while auditing our client’s PPC accounts and some advice to get out of them are mentioned below-

CPCs Still Matter

·???????? There are smart bidding options available now and we can rest by using these tools for Google ads but it can get very wildly out of control with smart bidding. To avoid that CPC needs to be taken care of.

·???????? It is important to set a CPC bid limit even if it is too high because ultimately we are getting charged at Cost-Per-Click. So, it’s very important, especially if you’re using maximized clicks or a portfolio bid strategy in Google Ads, to go in and set a maximum CPC bid limit

Keeping Tabs On CPCs

·???????? You can use a free script to keep tabs on CPCs. There are various free CPC scripts available online.

·???????? This script works as a notification for your ad budget. All you need to do is program a script by adding the CPC threshold amount. This will notify you via email if the bid goes above it and you can make changes if required.

·???????? This does not change anything in your PPC account.

·???????? You can change the CPC threshold at any time. And this script is run hourly?

·???????? You can use a script that tells you if your client or someone from Google Ads has applied recommended changes in your ad campaign without letting you know.

·???????? There are scripts to get mail if someone whom you do not know and authorized to make changes has made some changes to your PPC account.

Keep Rules in Check

·???????? It is important to create rules in the beginning as it can save you a lot of time in the future. However, it is important to be careful while drafting rules.

·???????? In the Manager Account (MCC), the default setting is to run the changes at the MCC level. Now, it is ok, if you are applying the rule to specific accounts for ad campaigns, they will apply to only those accounts whether you’ve set the rule at the MCC or client account level.

·???????? However, if you have a rule that only says ‘raise the bid by 50%’ or ‘reduce budgets by 10%’ at the MCC level, you are going to piss off many clients.

·???????? So make sure if you do not have a specific rule, you make changes to the client account level and not the MCC level.

Auditing Your Account

To conclude this article, it is important to emphasize the following points-

·???????? It doesn’t matter if it is a new account or an old one, you need to go through all the settings and conduct an audit to check all your settings to ensure you have all the options selected that are required.

·???????? It is important to quarterly audit the PPC ad campaigns to know if anything has become rough. Copy campaigns, copy ad groups, and forgetting to change the settings are common problems that can faced if an audit is not done.

·???????? So in the list of your New Year resolutions in 2024, add a PPC account audit as well for the better health of your ad campaigns.

NOTE:-

These are the common pitfalls and their remedies for a PPC campaign. These are the must-to-follow tips to save your client a lot of costs and expenses.

We hope you have enjoyed this newsletter, and for more, you can always subscribe and read other newsletters too!