5 Fundamental PPC Performance Checks

It’s so easy to have tunnel vision on a PPC account, especially if you’ve worked on it for a long time… and with everything so automated these days, it's even easier to feel like you’ve got very little control over results when performance takes a nosedive! But the chances are, there will be some quick fixes to accounts which you are very much in control of and some which you might just not be noticing day to day managing the account! Our Associate Director, Sarah Williams, takes us through her top tips if you’re questioning your PPC performance…

• Your feed health

You’d be shocked at how many accounts I audit and find both disapproved products and those that are “limited” visibility wise because of things like missing attributes, imagery not being up to Google's feed best practices. So if you’ve recently noticed your PMax/Shopping campaign performance drop, have a check in to your feed and make sure you’re firing on all cylinders product wise with a 100% approved feed!

• Your products being targeted

Once you’re confident in your products all being eligible to show via your healthy Google feed, now is the time to check they are all being targeted via Performance Max/Shopping campaigns. It’s really easy to forget within these campaigns what is being targeted and what’s been excluded… especially for those who move around products between several of these campaigns quite often. So double check you’re targeting all of the products in your feed you’re wanting to via these campaign types, or you may be losing out on clicks and more importantly… sales!

• Your DSA targets

Another really quick and easy check within your PPC account is to have a look into what your DSA campaign/s are targeting. It’s very easy to set these live and let them run without double checking often what exactly they are targeting! Are the targets currently live pages/categories on your site? Are newer pages being targeted or are some pages being missed out? This check is often a great way to boost visibility on new pages which you’d forgotten about adding to the DSA targeting!

• Your best sellers

When I talk about best sellers, I mean both your PPC best sellers and your overall site best sellers (sometimes the same products, sometimes different!). Have a nosey monthly on these (if you don’t already), firstly to see how trends change with these over time, have new products taken over as best sellers or do you consistently have the same products as your best sellers? Either way, it is really important to note your best seller list, as one thing I do notice on accounts is sometimes because best sellers have dropped out of stock, you can begin to spot dips in PPC performance. Always good to keep an eye on to rationalise performance inconsistencies and also good to feedback so those responsible can get those products back in stock asap! 

• Your bidding strategies

If you’re questioning your PPC performance right now… what are your success metrics? Revenue? ROAS? CPA? If you’re clear what good looks like for the account, are your bidding strategies aligned to your key success metric? If you’re focused on generating 400% ROAS on the Google Ads account, but you have campaigns with bidding strategies set to target CPA for example, you’re really confusing Google and not letting the algorithm know the metric that matters to you… so how would Google ever be able to bid correctly? 

When you’re sure you're bidding towards the right measure of success, next, have a check on the target you’re setting for the metric. Is it realistic? If you’re wanting 400% ROAS, but most of your campaigns have never generated over a 200% ROAS, Google will struggle to achieve this so you’ll need to review what your campaign is running. Potentially the targeting is too broad and needs refining? Or you should consider phasing increases for the target ROAS figure over time so there’s no huge shock to the algorithm or performance!

There will always be some levers to be pulled (I hope!), no matter how automated Google Ads gets, so it’s always worth getting your head up from the usual day to day management of the account and thinking about the bigger picture on what information you’re feeding Google, which you still have full control over!

If you need a hand with uncovering how your current PPC efforts are performing, our team would be happy to conduct a free audit of your accounts and share our findings. Get in touch using the button below!