As we are approaching the halfway point in the year, you want to ensure your PPC campaigns are in the best shape possible going into peak season for many advertisers
Whether you’re getting great results, struggling to perform, or somewhere in between, below is a checklist of 12 features to help set your campaigns up for success.
Campaign performance is only as good as its ultimate objective. Just because you see year-over-year (YoY) revenue growth or improved return on ad spend (ROAS) doesn’t mean you can get the party poppers out.
What is the client’s priority objective? Has this changed? Is it still revenue growth? Or has it shifted more toward lifetime value (LTV) or profitability?
This is the first point because it’s the most important point. Get this right, and everything else will follow.
Accurate data tracking is more important than ever in the age of AI and automation.
Without the correct data, what are we doing here?
Google Ads conversion tracking is preferred over Google Analytics imported conversions because the former provides better integration (more conversions), cross-device or view-through conversion capabilities, and advanced features.
If you or your client can, prioritise a server-to-server method rather than adding tags to the website.
This will enhance data collection and privacy and make the management of the next two features more straightforward.
Once you’re happy with the Google Ads tracking foundations, go to the next step and layer on Enhanced Conversions.
This feature helps improve the accuracy of Google Ads tracking by sending hashed first-party conversion data from your website to Google in a privacy-safe way.
Google boasts it can increase your conversion coverage by 15% (I’ve seen a few numbers here, so I’m going for average).
Consent mode is similar to Enhanced Conversions, as it’s another feature to improve your conversion coverage.
With user consent and data compliance becoming an even greater priority for websites in the past couple of years, conventional Google Ads tracking, even with enhanced conversions, will have lower conversion coverage than it did a few years ago.
With consent mode enabled, Google will use its consent signals to data modelling to recover any conversion gaps.
Offline conversion tracking (OCT) solves the most common problem with my lead gen clients. Looking at our PPC reports, lead numbers are good, but the client’s feedback is that the quality is low.
What else am I supposed to do? This feature enables you to give a specific value to a lead.
This can be done by manually importing data directly into Google from your CMS or through integration options for automatic imports.
Successful implementation will then give you the ability to leverage value-based bidding strategies to take full advantage of the advanced data.
For ecommerce clients, it can be frustrating that item ID-level conversion attribution is limited to the ad click rather than the product.
If someone clicks on an ad for Item A and buys Item B, Item A will get all the credit and attribution, making product analysis tricky.
However, if you can implement basket-level data, then you will get additional reporting on items sold, AOV, basket size, and cross-selling products.
You also gain profit-level data per item, offering deeper insight into individual product performance and the role Google Ads plays – whether the product drives sales directly as the featured item in the ad or contributes indirectly as an alternative or cross-sell purchase.
These insights can feed into the overall product strategy of the website.
I know many of the tracking implementation best practices are outside the comfort zones of most PPC marketers.
While we’re now in a responsive search ads (RSAs) era, don’t overlook your ad creative. Try to keep things refreshed.
Use the ad strength feature as a basic guide, which will focus on a combination of relevancy and uniqueness in the ad copy, more from a mechanical viewpoint.
Layer on some creative messaging to stand out from your competitors, too.
Keep an eye on individual title and description performance within the Asset detail report (linked just below each Search ad), where Google highlights the best and worst performers.
Swap out the bad performers for new variations of the best.
Google has just announced that they will be expanding their asset-level report so you can see more data against each Performance Max asset, so you don’t just have to rely on the legacy Low, Good, and Best reporting.
At a broader level, test out two or three variations in each ad group; one with no pins and the others using a mixture.
Google will optimize its RSA copy to get the best CTR, but sometimes, that CTR doesn’t mean a higher conversion rate or ROAS.
Even if you generally trust Google to show the best copy and ads, keep that in mind and continue to test.
Two or three years ago, the thought of including broad match in this checklist would be laughable, but here we are.
Combined with Smart Bidding, using broad match is a very effective way to scale your campaigns for success.
Personally, I would still start off any new campaign with a mixture of phrase and exact match, but when a campaign has enough conversion data to utilize (30 in 30 days is a good place to start), start testing broad match variations.
Even for brand campaigns, where you historically would have stuck with phrase or exact match, you can safely use broad in combination with Google’s brand inclusion feature to ensure the algorithm focuses on Brand traffic.
Remember to keep an eye on those search terms and try to bulk them out as much as possible before using broad.
Experiments are a personal favorite of mine, and clients love them.
Using this feature, I regularly A/B test different landing pages, bidding strategies, broad match variations, and ad creatives.
They are quick and easy to set up within the Google platform and will keep your campaigns on their toes.
Remember to give them time. Google recommends a six-week period plus a conversion cycle, so the time lag is considered.
When analyzing performance, bypass the first two weeks (learning period) and focus on the next four weeks.
When setting up the custom experiment, you will be asked your two primary objectives.
Once the experiment has started, you can keep track of how things are going with the experiment summary report.
This breaks the A/B test into a base and trial arm, so you can monitor the statistical significance of the main KPI (Again, clients love this!).
Google has even expanded its experiment section further in the last year with Performance Max options to test against Shopping campaigns, other Performance Max features, and even testing feed-only asset groups vs asset groups with additional creative.
If you are a data nerd, this is the place to be.
Single-keyword ad groups (SKAGs) are no longer your friend.
Simplifying your campaign structure is another secret key that will unlock the power of success.
Smart bidding isn’t as efficient with multiple campaigns or ad groups with limited keywords in each. It likes its consolidated structures with centralized conversion data to sink its teeth into.
This is because our Search ads now have so many more copy variations than they used to (15 titles compared to only three pre-RSA).
At the same time, increased broad match coverage and phrase/exact match targeting expansion make it nearly impossible to contain specific search terms with an expansive structure.
So, if you can’t beat them, consolidate them!
When I audit an account, this is one I rarely see.
Most Performance Max campaigns tend to only have one live asset group.
If your campaign generates a higher percentage of Search traffic (something Mike Rhodes’s Performance Max script can help with), then you are missing an opportunity to tailor your ad assets.
If you go down the route of PMax campaign consolidation as mentioned in the previous point, this is even more important.
Segmenting asset groups enables you to control and leverage specific brands or product type messaging, which campaign consolidation might take away.
It just ensures that the Search, Display, and YouTube creatives with PMax are bespoke to the brand or product, rather than being too broad and generic with your assets and negatively impacting engagement rates and ad relevance.
Although some of the above can (and should) be implemented in Microsoft Ads, I feel the need to give them a special mention as Google’s little brother.
Microsoft Advertising is often overlooked because of its smaller scale than Google’s.
I often see better results on this platform because less competition means smaller-than-average CPCs in many verticals.
Now, this isn’t as pronounced as it was a few years ago, but it’s still there to be taken advantage of.
It is far from perfect (its smart bidding and Performance Max offerings are less superior to Google’s). Still, because of its first-to-market AI offering, the platform is increasing in popularity.
The little brother is growing up fast, so don’t miss out on the opportunity it brings.
Whether you’re refining what already works or overhauling underperforming campaigns, these 12 steps will help you head into peak season with confidence.
Prioritize tracking, lean into automation, and don’t shy away from testing – small improvements now can lead to big wins later.
As we are approaching the halfway point in the year, you want to ensure your PPC campaigns are in the best shape possible going into peak season for many advertisers
Whether you’re getting great results, struggling to perform, or somewhere in between, below is a checklist of 12 features to help set your campaigns up for success.
Campaign performance is only as good as its ultimate objective. Just because you see year-over-year (YoY) revenue growth or improved return on ad spend (ROAS) doesn’t mean you can get the party poppers out.
What is the client’s priority objective? Has this changed? Is it still revenue growth? Or has it shifted more toward lifetime value (LTV) or profitability?
This is the first point because it’s the most important point. Get this right, and everything else will follow.
Accurate data tracking is more important than ever in the age of AI and automation.
Without the correct data, what are we doing here?
Google Ads conversion tracking is preferred over Google Analytics imported conversions because the former provides better integration (more conversions), cross-device or view-through conversion capabilities, and advanced features.
If you or your client can, prioritise a server-to-server method rather than adding tags to the website.
This will enhance data collection and privacy and make the management of the next two features more straightforward.
Once you’re happy with the Google Ads tracking foundations, go to the next step and layer on Enhanced Conversions.
This feature helps improve the accuracy of Google Ads tracking by sending hashed first-party conversion data from your website to Google in a privacy-safe way.
Google boasts it can increase your conversion coverage by 15% (I’ve seen a few numbers here, so I’m going for average).
Consent mode is similar to Enhanced Conversions, as it’s another feature to improve your conversion coverage.
With user consent and data compliance becoming an even greater priority for websites in the past couple of years, conventional Google Ads tracking, even with enhanced conversions, will have lower conversion coverage than it did a few years ago.
With consent mode enabled, Google will use its consent signals to data modelling to recover any conversion gaps.
Offline conversion tracking (OCT) solves the most common problem with my lead gen clients. Looking at our PPC reports, lead numbers are good, but the client’s feedback is that the quality is low.
What else am I supposed to do? This feature enables you to give a specific value to a lead.
This can be done by manually importing data directly into Google from your CMS or through integration options for automatic imports.
Successful implementation will then give you the ability to leverage value-based bidding strategies to take full advantage of the advanced data.
For ecommerce clients, it can be frustrating that item ID-level conversion attribution is limited to the ad click rather than the product.
If someone clicks on an ad for Item A and buys Item B, Item A will get all the credit and attribution, making product analysis tricky.
However, if you can implement basket-level data, then you will get additional reporting on items sold, AOV, basket size, and cross-selling products.
You also gain profit-level data per item, offering deeper insight into individual product performance and the role Google Ads plays – whether the product drives sales directly as the featured item in the ad or contributes indirectly as an alternative or cross-sell purchase.
These insights can feed into the overall product strategy of the website.
I know many of the tracking implementation best practices are outside the comfort zones of most PPC marketers.
While we’re now in a responsive search ads (RSAs) era, don’t overlook your ad creative. Try to keep things refreshed.
Use the ad strength feature as a basic guide, which will focus on a combination of relevancy and uniqueness in the ad copy, more from a mechanical viewpoint.
Layer on some creative messaging to stand out from your competitors, too.
Keep an eye on individual title and description performance within the Asset detail report (linked just below each Search ad), where Google highlights the best and worst performers.
Swap out the bad performers for new variations of the best.
Google has just announced that they will be expanding their asset-level report so you can see more data against each Performance Max asset, so you don’t just have to rely on the legacy Low, Good, and Best reporting.
At a broader level, test out two or three variations in each ad group; one with no pins and the others using a mixture.
Google will optimize its RSA copy to get the best CTR, but sometimes, that CTR doesn’t mean a higher conversion rate or ROAS.
Even if you generally trust Google to show the best copy and ads, keep that in mind and continue to test.
Two or three years ago, the thought of including broad match in this checklist would be laughable, but here we are.
Combined with Smart Bidding, using broad match is a very effective way to scale your campaigns for success.
Personally, I would still start off any new campaign with a mixture of phrase and exact match, but when a campaign has enough conversion data to utilize (30 in 30 days is a good place to start), start testing broad match variations.
Even for brand campaigns, where you historically would have stuck with phrase or exact match, you can safely use broad in combination with Google’s brand inclusion feature to ensure the algorithm focuses on Brand traffic.
Remember to keep an eye on those search terms and try to bulk them out as much as possible before using broad.
Experiments are a personal favorite of mine, and clients love them.
Using this feature, I regularly A/B test different landing pages, bidding strategies, broad match variations, and ad creatives.
They are quick and easy to set up within the Google platform and will keep your campaigns on their toes.
Remember to give them time. Google recommends a six-week period plus a conversion cycle, so the time lag is considered.
When analyzing performance, bypass the first two weeks (learning period) and focus on the next four weeks.
When setting up the custom experiment, you will be asked your two primary objectives.
Once the experiment has started, you can keep track of how things are going with the experiment summary report.
This breaks the A/B test into a base and trial arm, so you can monitor the statistical significance of the main KPI (Again, clients love this!).
Google has even expanded its experiment section further in the last year with Performance Max options to test against Shopping campaigns, other Performance Max features, and even testing feed-only asset groups vs asset groups with additional creative.
If you are a data nerd, this is the place to be.
Single-keyword ad groups (SKAGs) are no longer your friend.
Simplifying your campaign structure is another secret key that will unlock the power of success.
Smart bidding isn’t as efficient with multiple campaigns or ad groups with limited keywords in each. It likes its consolidated structures with centralized conversion data to sink its teeth into.
This is because our Search ads now have so many more copy variations than they used to (15 titles compared to only three pre-RSA).
At the same time, increased broad match coverage and phrase/exact match targeting expansion make it nearly impossible to contain specific search terms with an expansive structure.
So, if you can’t beat them, consolidate them!
When I audit an account, this is one I rarely see.
Most Performance Max campaigns tend to only have one live asset group.
If your campaign generates a higher percentage of Search traffic (something Mike Rhodes’s Performance Max script can help with), then you are missing an opportunity to tailor your ad assets.
If you go down the route of PMax campaign consolidation as mentioned in the previous point, this is even more important.
Segmenting asset groups enables you to control and leverage specific brands or product type messaging, which campaign consolidation might take away.
It just ensures that the Search, Display, and YouTube creatives with PMax are bespoke to the brand or product, rather than being too broad and generic with your assets and negatively impacting engagement rates and ad relevance.
Although some of the above can (and should) be implemented in Microsoft Ads, I feel the need to give them a special mention as Google’s little brother.
Microsoft Advertising is often overlooked because of its smaller scale than Google’s.
I often see better results on this platform because less competition means smaller-than-average CPCs in many verticals.
Now, this isn’t as pronounced as it was a few years ago, but it’s still there to be taken advantage of.
It is far from perfect (its smart bidding and Performance Max offerings are less superior to Google’s). Still, because of its first-to-market AI offering, the platform is increasing in popularity.
The little brother is growing up fast, so don’t miss out on the opportunity it brings.
Whether you’re refining what already works or overhauling underperforming campaigns, these 12 steps will help you head into peak season with confidence.
Prioritize tracking, lean into automation, and don’t shy away from testing – small improvements now can lead to big wins later.
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy.
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy.
The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making
The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy.
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution
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