Solve Marketing — your remote marketing department

An audit of your advertising campaigns

is a prerequisite for their effective operation for your business. It helps to understand:

01
How things are going now.
02
Which keywords, ads, and strategies have worked and which have not.
03
Whether your budget is being wasted and how profitable your ads are.
04
What can be improved to make Google Adwords bring your business more requests from the interested audience.

We provide an advertising campaign audit service as part of a comprehensive marketing analysis.

In other words, an audit of advertising campaigns is a detailed, comprehensive analysis of absolutely all components of an advertising campaign on Google Adwords. It is also a search for not only problems or errors, but also missed opportunities.

The result of the analysis

s a detailed action plan that will help you:

01

Take contextual advertising to the next level.

02

Simplify management and scaling.

03

Optimize budgets.

04

Test hypotheses and dispel doubts.

05

Get data that can be used in other marketing activities.

06

Make sure it gives your business a constant flow of customers.

Audit of advertising campaigns =Data collection + Data analysis + Preparation of recommendations for the future

When is it necessary to audit advertising campaigns?

01/

Everything is not going
as we wanted

That is, your expectations from advertising have not been met. For example, there are few applications or they are not targeted, or perhaps the cost of attracting customers is too high and the investment in advertising does not pay off.

02/

Everything is going well,
but there is no growth

It happens that the number of requests for advertising does not change for a long time, and this worries the business owner.

03/

It's not clear
how things are going

This is the case when the number of applications increases during the period of advertising launch, but it is not clear whether the advertising brought them. This usually happens when analytics systems are not set up to track the sources of customer acquisition.

04/

Everything is fine, but there is
no limit to perfection

This also happens. In this case, an audit, as a sideways look, can be a step towards new achievements.

The principles

by which Solve Marketing audits Google Adwords campaigns

As we have already mentioned, the audit of advertising campaigns in our agency is part of a comprehensive service, marketing analysis. Therefore, we do not limit ourselves to stating the facts about your campaigns, but give recommendations on how to improve your lead generation strategy.

Therefore, the principles by which we work with audits are significantly different from pure advertising analysis.

Expertise

The audit is conducted by practitioners who:
- constantly work with contextual advertising;
- regularly undergo training;
- have Google certificates.
They know how to assess the current effectiveness of a campaign and its potential from a technical point of view.
Strategic vision

A marketer takes part in the audit. He analyzes:
- the needs of your target audience;
- the attractiveness of your offers and landing pages.
And gives recommendations on how to improve campaigns to reach more potential customers in the long run.
Applicability of the results

We believe that the audit of advertising campaigns should serve as a basis for customers:
- to improve the effectiveness of their advertising on their own;
- compare the state of affairs before the audit and after the implementation of recommendations.
That's why we design the document so that it can be used in practice.

How does the audit of advertising campaigns work?

This process consists of several intermediate stages. Each of them is important and affects the final result.

1 STAGE

First stage: collecting basic data

To analyze advertising campaigns in Google Adwords, we need
the following data:

the goals of the ad launch, for example, promoting a new product, improving brand awareness, receiving applications;
KPIs used to measure the effectiveness of advertising;
basic information about the business and the market in which the company operates;
plans for the future, such as expanding the range of products, entering new markets;
access to advertising accounts so that our specialists can see with their own eyes all the data available in them, for example, texts, creatives (in the case of display advertising);
access to Google Analytics of the website or landing page to which the advertisement leads.

In addition, to conduct a high-quality audit of Google Adwords contextual advertising, a specialist should know:

the peculiarities of your business and the duration of the transaction cycle in it, for example, for B2B, from the moment of clicking on an advertisement to signing a contract, it can take from three months to a year;
products or services that bring the most profit;
basic information about the business and the market in which the company operates;
what exactly should be considered a conversion — a request in a form, adding a product to the cart, a phone call.

2 STAGE

The second stage: the audit itself

Having received all the data, we proceed to analyze the technical part of the ad. This means that we will consistently study all the settings at different levels:

account;
campaigns;
ad groups;
keywords.

What do we pay attention to at the account level?

First of all, there should be a logic within it that is clear to everyone. Because abbreviations, acronyms, or obscure sets of letters in campaign names will sooner or later lead to chaos and difficulties in work. Especially if someone other than the person who created the account and understands how it works starts advertising.

You should also check the connection between Google Ads and Google Analytics. It is important to make sure that goals and events are correctly configured in Google Analytics (this is why we said above that it is important to know what action is considered a conversion).

During the Google Ads audit, you should also check the following points:

the presence and correct settings of scripts, automated rules, and other things if necessary (for example, e-commerce code if the project is an online store);
collection of remarketing audiences;
data transfer between services without distortion.

What is important to check at the campaign level during a Google Ads audit?

First of all, you need to make sure that you have selected the right types of campaigns that match the product you are promoting and the target audience. After all, Google Ads includes not only classic contextual search advertising, but also display network and shopping ads. You shouldn't always limit yourself to just one type, but not every business should use all of them.

To understand this, we ask you about the specifics of your business and the goals of your advertising campaign.

During the Google Ads audit, we also check:

schedule of shows;
selected devices;
geotargeting;
language settings;
bid strategy (manual, intelligent) and the ability to adjust them;
setting target conversion prices and advertising profitability.

Another important point is working with negative words. The list of them should be carefully studied and cross-checked.

What do we check in keywords?

The main focus here is on checking the quality of keywords and their usage.
For example, you should pay attention to:

relevance to search queries (broad, phrase, exact);
keywords with a large number of clicks but no conversions;
low-quality keywords;
correct distribution of keywords by ad groups.

What should ad groups look like?

You should start by checking the number of ads in the groups. Each should contain at least two search ads. All of them must be relevant to users' requests and the pages they lead to.

The landing pages themselves should open in all browsers and on all devices, without distortions in the layout.

During the Google Ads audit, it is important to check:

literacy of texts;
the presence of CTA in each ad;
the quality of the photo and logo (if it is contextual display advertising);
availability of extensions;
absence of rejected ads.

3 STAGE

Third stage: report and recommendations

We audit advertising campaigns based on a template. Therefore, we enter all the data into it. This format allows you to immediately structure the information so that it is convenient for the client who ordered the Google Ads audit.

Structured data also makes it easier and more efficient to prepare recommendations, because you can refer to a particular point in the document.

In the recommendations section, our clients receive the following information.

List of corrections

We offer options for correcting the errors found, and we give reasons why it is better to do so. In addition, we talk about the results of this or that change.
The optimal account structure

We show what it can look like and give detailed recommendations, including how to name campaigns and why.
Tips on how to integrate advertising campaigns into the company's overall marketing activities

We have already mentioned above that we look at all projects strategically. That's why we involve a marketer in most analyses. He or she gives recommendations on how to ensure that different channels and tools work together to maximize the return.

Important! Of course, we have described only a part of the work that is carried out as part of the audit of advertising campaigns. In fact, we analyze many more indicators. But if we list them all here, the text will turn into an analog of reference material, and few people will read it to the end 🙂

Marketing analysis

is the individual complex work of a team of experienced specialists. Get a free consultation to determine your next steps.

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Cases

We are marketing practitioners. We work as a remote marketing department for our clients.

For the past year:

$4 000 000

Earned for customers

80 000

Sales

Frequently asked questions about campaign audit

The requests of clients who come to us for an audit of Google Adwords campaigns often differ from each other. But there are some questions that almost everyone asks.

How much does an audit of advertising campaigns cost?

In our case, there is no separate price for the audit, as it is part of the marketing analysis we conduct. Based on the audit data, we give recommendations on how to work with lead generation.

But other companies may work differently, and they order an audit separately. In this case, the price of this service usually depends on the number of campaigns. If you have from 1 to 3, the cost is about 4000 hryvnias. If you have more, the price is discussed individually.
How long does a Google Ads audit take?

It depends on the number of your advertising campaigns and their scale. On average, it takes about five business days.

But we also ask you to take into account the workload of our specialists. That's why we tell you when we can start working on your analysis. And we specify that the time is counted from that date.
In what format does the client receive the results of the advertising campaign analysis?

To prepare recommendations for your project, our experts conduct a truly global analysis. It contains a lot of screenshots, statistics, numbers, lists, and tables.

However, it is not always convenient for a client to study such a voluminous document.

Therefore, we also prepare a shortened version in the form of a presentation. It contains:

- the most important data from the analysis;
- a step-by-step action plan for the future;
- links to the detailed analysis.

And, of course, the results of the Google Ads audit are presented to the client by our specialist who conducted it. This means that you can ask him questions that arise in the course of communication and immediately receive detailed answers to them.
How often do you need to audit advertising campaigns?

There is no single answer to this question. Usually, experts recommend conducting a Google Ads audit 1 month after the launch of the campaign. Even if you see that targeted applications are coming, there are often details that can be improved. This will allow you, for example, to reduce the cost per click or reallocate the budget in favor of campaigns or ads that work best.

Much also depends on your niche and its specifics, as well as the market situation.

If you work in a dynamic industry where things are constantly changing, you will have to audit your campaigns more often than in a stable and predictable industry.

At some point, you may have competitors who have also launched contextual advertising. In this case, it's better to revise your strategy to avoid losing your market position.

Therefore, the answer to the question about the frequency of audits of advertising campaigns is as follows: it is best to contact us, describe your situation, and get a specialist's opinion on when to conduct a Google Ads audit.
What mistakes do you find most often during a Google Ads audit?

Quite often, there are shortcomings in the synchronization of Google Ads and Google Analytics, which leads to a lack of understanding of the true effectiveness of advertising.

Also, not all accounts have the correct conversion settings. Sometimes you need to use both macro and micro conversions, but this is not available.

It also happens that the person who set up advertising and analytics does not quite understand what actions the user takes on the landing page. Because of this, you can specify the conversion action incorrectly. For example, instead of filling out a form, you may specify a click on a button and vice versa.