Tips To Review Google Ads Performance

Learn how to review your Google Ads performance & find out if you need to change budgets or add extra optimizations to your Google Ads campaign?

I want to take you through the 3 steps you need to follow to improve the performance of your Google Ads campaign.

The thing that you need to remember is that this happens to all Google Ads campaigns and at some stage you will see a drastic drop in clicks, impressions and conversions. 

So in this video I am going to take you through the metrics you need to look out for but more importantly what steps you need to take to get your Google Ads campaign performance back to where it needs to be giving you those clicks & conversions that you need every day for you business. 

The first step is that you need work out whether this is “Learning Phase or a Trend” 

Always remember 2 things about Google Ads:

1. It is an auction
2. It is the way that Google earns money

So if a new advertiser comes into your market & targets your keywords with their shiny new big budget Google’s auction will actually start to test their ads in the top positions which means that your ads are now no longer appearing in the top positions as much.

Now if those ads from new advertisers start to get some clicks and they are willing to pay more for those clicks Google will start to show your competitors ads more & more - because they earn more money from those clicks. 

And this the reason for why you are seeing the sudden decline in clicks … and conversions

But before you go & increase your Google Ads Campaign budget and start a bidding war, you need to work out whether this is a Learning Phase or a Trend.

And the reason for this is because if the your competitors can’t maintain their CTR, Keyword Quality Scores & Ad Rank your ads will again start to appear at the top of the positions. 

So when you see a drop in Click, Impressions & Conversions: The MOST important step is to NOT PANIC in the first 2 weeks, especially if you still have healthy CTR & Conversion rates of above 5%.

The reason for why you wait 2 weeks is that Google’s learning phase takes around 7 days, so that allows for the learning phase to be completed on the competitors campaign, and then gives you another 7 days or data to see if your performance has returned.

As in most cases performance will return by just completing your regular scheduled optimisations - as long as you are using the correct optimisation strategy & process. And to help you with that you can download my Free Google Ads Optimisation Checklist which lets you know exactly what you need to optimise in your Google Ads campaign every day, week & month. 

 If you have discovered that this is just a learning phase where Google is testing some competitors and your clicks & conversions have returned — that GREAT News as you can just continue on your current Google Ads Strategy.

But it if is a trend - meaning that the competitors have either stayed in the market or their ads now have a better CTR & Ad Ranks so that they are constantly outranking you - and your performance has not returned you need to focus on  the second step which is to focus on the most important metrics within Google Ads.

So if after 2 weeks performance has not returned you need focus on the metrics of :

•  Click through Ratio (CTR)
•  This is the most important metric to focus on because the higher CTR you can achieve means that Google is more likely to show your ad because remember Google gets paid when your ads get clicked on!
•  Look to get this above 10+ (at least) or if you are already higher than 10% look to get a 10-20% increase in your CTR
•  As a high CTR puts downward pressure on CPC & increases your ad rank. 

You can increase your CTR by:

•  Running extra search term audits to filter out keywords that are not relevant and are not being clicked on
•  Update your Ad Copy making sure you have:
•  KW focus: to assist with KW Quality Score
•  Authority Markers, Call to Action & Emotional Triggers: to encourage the user to click when they see your ad

And the next metric you want to focus on is:

•  Conversion Rate: 
•  A higher conversion rate sends signal to Google that people are finding your landing page relevant.
•  Remembering that Quality Score & Ad Rank also include website usability & relevance factors.
•  So by increasing your conversion rate you can increase your Ad Rank to help you gain more clicks & ultimately more conversions

You can increase your Conversion Rate by:

•  Updating your Ad Copy & running extra split tests over 14-21 days. 
•  Split testing your landing pages & offers

To increase your CTR & Conversion rate getting your Ad copy right is a very important step you can watch my training on Ad Copy Secrets here.

The third & final step is to focus your optimisations on the Ad groups that have the most spend

And the reason for this is simple, if you are optimising the parts of your campaign that are spending the most money it means that your total account performance will improve much quicker.