You probably don’t need me to tell you that you can start driving traffic and pulling sales nearly overnight by setting up an AdWords account and launching a Google Ads PPC campaign. 

The value of a well-run campaign is self-evident.

And the keyword in that statement is “well-run.” 

You can make boatloads from a PPC campaign. Or you can waste an endless sum of money and make Google richer in the process.

The campaign will do your online business little good if you can’t convert some of that initial investment in the campaign into revenue for your business.

Yet it is quite possible to spend a lot of money on PPC and not make a single cent from the efforts. 

Fortunately, eCommerce PPC management specialists know their trade. 

One of the tools in their arsenal is a set of PPC audit services, which are designed to show you how your current campaign is performing. 

…As well as how it can be improved. Here’s what you need to know. 

What PPC Audit Services Can Show You 

What value you can get from PPC audit services ultimately comes down to what the report shows. 

Overall, these are some of the most important takeaways you can get from a PPC audit. 

• Device Breakdown 

Our eCommerce PPC management specialists are highly skilled with respect to audience and device targeting, but even so, we are particularly attuned to the performance of existing campaigns. This is only one of the prongs by which we target our customers’ campaigns. 

All the same, a PPC audit will show you (if you don’t already know) who your PPC provider is targeting and where. 

It will also show whether your ads are reaching more users on desktop or mobile, which should be of particular interest to you because your users may predominantly shop on one over the other. 

In more explicit terms, it’s a waste of money if you are reaching 90% of desktop users in your target audience, but other research shows that none of your purchases come through desktop users. In that situation, more should be spent on reaching mobile users. 

Just an example, but that should paint the picture quite clearly. 

• Current Audience Targeting 

There are plenty of ways to target an audience for the purposes of a PPC campaign. Some of these factors are demographic, such as age, marital status, and gender; others respect purchase history, interest, and other similar factors. 

All in all, audience targeting makes one of the biggest, if not the single biggest facet of targeting in a PPC campaign. 

That is to say, your ads need to show up in front of the right people that are actually interested in making a purchase. 

If they don’t it doesn’t matter if all of the other pieces of the puzzle are aligned. Your campaign won’t make money. 

• Current Location Targeting 

Perhaps not as important with respect to performance as audience targeting is (although this, itself, is still a component of audience targeting, technically) geographic targeting will make a difference in the performance of a campaign. 

Some campaigns are location specific. PPC audit services can uncover where most of those impressions are occurring and if they are geographically relevant to your audience, because if not, once more the campaign will not generate return as desired. 

• Performance with Respect to Current Keyword Strategy 

When you hear the word “keyword” your mind might automatically shift in the direction of SEO, but the little-known truth is that keywords have a massive impact on PPC as well.

This is because you need to bid on keywords in order to show up in the ad results above the organic listings. 

You also need to exclude certain keywords, specifically those that have high volumes but which are generally irrelevant to your ads. If you don’t exclude them, your ads will show up for them, which almost inevitably leads to the possibility of getting clicks but no conversions, which will become costly.

You want to pay for as few useless clicks as possible. Ideally, you would get a sale from every click, but in the real world, that’s not possible. 

However, PPC audit services can help expose areas in which you should (or shouldn’t) be targeting specific keywords. 

• Bid Strategy Opportunities 

Similar to keyword strategy is bid strategy; actually, this is an offshoot of it. 

There is a misconception among some entrepreneurs that the best way to go about bid strategy is to keep overall spend as low as possible. 

On its surface, this makes sense because bids are an expense and one way to minimize expense is to minimize bids. But in practice, this is not how it works. 

Sometimes you have to spend money to make money, and in this case, in order to get impressions (and clicks) for those competitive keywords, you need to pay (bid) more to show up in the search results. 

It costs more, but showing up for the most relevant keywords will help guarantee more clicks that will result in conversions. 

And there is a good reason it costs more to be more aggressive with your bid strategy. There are other competitors in that space vying for the same keywords. If you don’t pay for them, they will, and they will capture more clicks and conversions as a result. 

So, while it will cost more to be more aggressive with your bid strategy, it also has great potential to profit your campaign. 

• Opportunities for Landing Page Optimizations 

Another thing PPC audit services can show you is where (if anywhere) your campaign stands to benefit from landing page optimization. 

Some eCommerce PPC management providers don’t offer landing page optimization services, so they just create ad groups and assign landing pages from the existing URLs of the client website. 

This can work, in some instances. In others, the messaging of the ad copy just doesn’t line up with the landing page. This requires one of the two to be adjusted.

Sometimes, this is this landing page itself. A landing page that is not in line with what the ad copy advertises, and from which the visitor can’t talk the direct, desired action, will result in bounces.

Which, in turn, will rack up expenses for the client paying for the campaign. 

PPC audit services can expose opportunities here. 

• Other Soft Factors  

There are other things an audit can demonstrate, many of them unique to each campaign. For instance, an audit can expose weak areas of ad copy, opportunities to target different keywords or products from those that are currently being targeted, and other factors. 

• Recommendations for Campaign Type 

An audit may also be accompanied by specific recommendations for ad type gathered from the data in the audit.

There are all sorts of campaigns; social campaigns, search campaigns, video and shopping campaigns, display campaigns, and more. 

Not all work equally given a business’s model, but a provider of PPC audit services will make recommendations about how to proceed and why. 

• Overall ROI 

Last and perhaps most importantly, PPC audit services can show you how your existing campaign is currently performing with respect to impressions, CTR, spend, and overall ROAS and ROI – if that information is privy to the auditor. 

At any rate, the goal for most eCommerce PPC campaigns is to maximize profit so that you get the most in return from each dollar you spent. This is equivalent to maximizing ROI. 

An audit can break down your current expenses and show weak areas in your current strategy that can be improved with the eventual aim of improving ROI. 

The Best Part About PPC Audit Services: They’re Free

One of the best things about the PPC audit services we offer is that they are free. This is a huge benefit to some customers, especially those that aren’t sure how to proceed with a PPC campaign or even if there is anything “amiss” with their current campaign. 

A PPC audit will help you answer those questions and lay out a framework for the next steps – and you can get those insights free.

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