A Google Ads account audit is the process of evaluating the effectiveness of your accounts.
An audit can reveal painful hidden issues that need to be addressed.
Once you’ve identified these issues, you can get to work improving the overall health and performance of your account.
The good and the bad of Google Ads
The Good
Intent – You will be reaching people that have intent and are ready to buy as they search the keywords your targeting. The customer journey usually begins with a search engine.
Instant Results – Paid search ads appear online immediately and gain a lot of traction in a short period of time.
Exposure – Search engines are the top channel used by consumers when researching a brand or product. Google is by far the most used search engine.
Measurability – Google Ads platform provides performance results that help you get an idea on which ads are performing best.
Multiple formats – Google Ads has lots of other formats to work with, not only search ads. Each of these ad channel plays a different key role in your marketing strategy.
ROI – Pay per click (PPC) can bring businesses a greater return on investment. When coupled with good search engine optimization. On average you can expect a return of $2 for every $1 spent.
The Bad
Low costs are not guaranteed – You pay the lowest price relative to your competitors, and some keywords can be pretty expensive. The more competitive the keyword, the more expensive it may be.
Management – How effective you are at optimizing your ads and structuring your account properly plays a big role. Constantly monitoring and adjusting your campaigns as the data accumulates.
Automation only helps so much – Google’s machine learning is great, but you still need to know how to work with automation. We don’t recommend using auto-apply recommendations as this could increase your costs without you knowing why.
Staying up to date – Google is constantly updating their features and capabilities to make the platform easier to use. This can make it harder and more confusing to use if you are not able to learn and stay up to date on these changes.
How to find out if Google Ads is worth it
The below questions can serve as a guide in helping you determine whether Google Ads is actually worth it for your business specifically.
– What do you want Google to do for you? – What is your profitability scenario? – What are your startup costs?
What do you want Google to do for you?
Google Ads can:
– Help you show up for people searching for your brand, products, or services. – Help you show up for people searching for your competitors. – Get in front of prospective clients via audience and persona targeting. – Promote your physical store to those in close vicinity to it.What is your profitablity scenario?
Directly profitable:
This is when you are making money directly from Google that’s more than you’re spending on the platform. You must not forget to account for any costs for management (whether internal, external, or your own time) but likely you’ll want to keep using Google if it’s making you money.Indirectly profitable:
If your conversion tracking or attribution is not working properly, but you still notice that your Google Ads is making, because without it you see a decline in sales. Work on cleaning up your tracking and focus on optimization.Breakeven:
If you are making the same money you are spending then you will have to make a call. Ask yourself, is the additional value helping you move product? Are your margins high enough that even though ad costs are breakeven, the sale on the whole ROI positive? Is it worth the additional work for fulfillment? Do you typically have return customers? I.e. could this first break-even sale end up being highly profitable given the LTV of the user?Unprofitable:
This will depend on what your goals are for running Google Ads. – Is it to make money? Then if you’re not doing that, Google Ads might not be worth it for you. – Do you want to raise brand awareness? – If you’re trying to conquest competitors you may lose money, but your goal will be reached. If you are okay with these then Google Ads may still be worth your time. No one can say for sure if Google Ads would be great for your business, the best way is to give it a go and see how you perform.What are your startup costs?
This will depend on whether you plan to run your Google Ads account by yourself. This could save you some bucks on hiring an agency, but could cost you in time and education on the topic. It is a complex platform to wrap your head around and the amount of data you will be required to look through is enormous. Using the incorrect bidding strategies could cost you and could get out of hand really quickly. If you are going to do it on your own, understand that it takes great effort and understanding of the platform to make a campaign successful.Hiring an agency:
This will cost you upfront in management costs, but could save you time and spending money on testing and education.
