Google Ads Ads Account Audit with Recommendations
Nexus Auto Transport 485-992-3585
Audit by David Becklean
Look Back Period: Jan 2020 – Present
Special Questions/ Comments: Client has worked with Agencies as well as Google Ads Reps. Not happy with recent performance and looking for an audit with recommendations. Client is running Google and Bing Ads. This Audit is focusing on Google. Vertical is Auto Transport targeting the US Nationally @~150K/month. Due 23-24 Aug.
Microsoft ads typically have cost per acquisition that are double or triple from the same keywords on the Google side of the equation. Microsoft users tend to be older and less technically savvy than their Google counterparts. This is not a complete blanket statement however it does appear to be true more often than not. Microsoft allows you to import complete Google ads accounts into their platform. Assuming you approve my recommended shift and overall account structure my strategy would be to first implement that structure on Google and then literally export it out to Microsoft ads after it was complete. You will still see higher CPAs on the Microsoft side but at least the campaign structure and all additional targeting criteria will be upgraded at the same time.
Summary
The look-back period for this account goes to January 2020 the present day. The account has generated 11.5 million impressions which have resulted in 164,000 clicks to the website, yielding 18,100 conversion actions. The total advertising cost during this time was $995,000. The average click-through rate for the account was 1.43%, for reference I like to see a minimum of 2% in terms of click-through rate and also conversion rate for any Google account that I manage. A less than 2% click-through rate indicates that the account was either very heavy in display activity or there was a poor correlation between keywords and ad copy. The conversion rate for this time was 9.38% which is excellent. Average cost per conversion is sitting at $54.90 with an average cost-per-click of $6.08. Average cost per acquisitions are highly relative depending on vertical, as well as each individual business’s marketing and technology stack and the way that they approach sales. Depending on the average ticket of one of your transport costs a $55 cost per acquisition may be very reasonable.
- Campaign Structure & Bid Strategies- As presented the campaign only has one active search campaign. It is currently spending about $6,500 a day in ad spend. Previous campaigns have been paused or removed from the account. We see that there have been a variety of Bid strategies in play from Manual Cost-Per-Click to Maximize Conversion Value. It does appear that some of these removed campaigns were performing fairly well. For instance the ultimate campaign backup, it seems to have had a 8% click-through rate and a 7.5% conversion rate. Typically we do not remove campaigns from a Google ads account. simply pausing them or letting them run to their end dates will stop them from spending.
- Account spending at this level should have a more diverse campaign structure. Multiple search campaigns, display retargeting and a P Max campaign would be an ideal setup here. Many businesses choose to go after competitors’ market share with the competitor’s campaign targeting their brand names. We can also Target users who have been to the website but have not resulted in a conversion action. This is known as a display remarketing campaign.
- Recommendations: I recommend a more diversified but still search-first strategy for this Google ads account. In terms of keywords and campaign structure, you have more than enough budget to diversify the search side of the equation so that you have a brand protection campaign targeting your branded keywords (Nexus Auto Transport and Nexus-similar), a general product description keywords(Automotive Transporters, Covered Car Transport, Etc) , Automotive-Brand specific product descriptions (BMW Auto Transport) , a Display Retargeting Campaign showing display ads to users who visited but did not convert and finally a performance Max campaign utilizing all of the Google ads inventory, as a top of sales funnel feeder. Performance Max will also be an important standard moving forward and it is a best practice to get one of those up and running sooner rather than later.
- Budgets for these campaigns can be determined but obviously each one would have a fraction of what your overall ad spend is now. The idea here is to minimize cost per acquisition by letting each one of these campaigns focus on the keywords and having the system optimize towards those keywords rather than all of the key words together at the same time. Pursuing this strategy should increase our overall conversion production as well as decreasing average cost per acquisition.
- Devices- Device data provides some of the most compelling information from the report. If you look at the screenshot below you can see that there is a clear waterfall of activities from each type of device. First, let’s look at the mobile phone data, mobile phones generated 78.4% of Impressions during the look back. But only contributed 67.5% of all clicks and 62.4% of all conversions. If you compare that to what happened from computers you will notice a very different story. Desktop devices generated 17.4% of all Impressions which resulted in 30.3% of all clicks and 35.5% of all conversions. All things being equal, if you would advertise exclusively on desktop devices during the same amount of time and had ignored mobile devices completely you would have generated 5% more total conversion actions over the same time. That is without changing the campaign structure or making any other modifications. The second chart under the waterfall chart shows a breakdown of click-through rate, conversion rate and average cost-per-click. You can see that conversion rates through desktop devices are significantly higher than mobile.
Recommendation: It makes sense to focus on desktop traffic and people coming from computers. This is not to say that we will ignore mobile device traffic entirely; however we should apply a series of filters in the form of audience targeting, demographic targeting, location targeting, add scheduling, and other Bid adjustments in order to more narrowly Target our ideal customer. This includes targeting which device they come from which in your case is obviously better when they come from a desktop device.
- Location Targeting- We can see location targeting is in use on the account, mostly targeting the United States nationally as well as some selectively targeting states with bid adjustments.
- Recommendation:Obviously you’re going to continue to Target on a national level. I do recommend using bid adjustments for us users of between 5 and 10%.If you have historical data that indicates specific regions, states or cities are hot spots of activity, we can easily Target those areas.
- Ad Scheduling- When reviewing account performance it is clear that there is a consistent time of day and day of the week where you are more likely to produce a conversion action than others. Consider the screenshots below from your account, you can see that after 6 a.m. and before 10 p.m. there is a consistent volume of production coming through the account. If you look at the dark blue squares that are prevalent on Monday after 12 and before 5 p.m. and Wednesday after 1 p.m. before 6 p.m. you can see definite opportunities where we can use bid adjustments to outperform your competition and capture more of the market.
- Recommendation: I recommend putting bid adjustments of about 10 to 15% Monday through Thursday and specifically after 12 p.m. but before 6 p.m. during these days.
- Bid Adjustments – Bid Adjustments are a great way to let Google know what our ideal customer looks like and then tell the system that we are willing to pay more for that user during the auction process. This makes it more likely that our ads will show up in front of the ideal user and more importantly they will click through to the site and complete a conversion action. There are many different types of Bid adjustments, everything from extensions to locations to time of day are adjustable. I was able to find a handful of small adjustments here and there on different campaigns, for instance the ultimate campaign has a 25% adjustment on calls which is great to drive phone calls from the search engine results page for mobile devices. It doesn’t however appear that bid adjustments are being used comprehensively across all aspects of Google ads.
- Recommendation: I recommend putting Bid adjustments on all the criteria that makes sense for you. This would be reviewed in a step-by-step manner across all of your active keywords after the new campaign structure is implemented. I have discussed bid adjustments extensively in other sections of this report.
- Audiences, Placements – The ultimate campaign is currently using observational targeting with a handful of audiences being selected. There are no bid adjustments in place for these audiences. Likewise there are no selected placements, however the current campaign is a search campaign and therefore would not have placements as those only apply to display campaigns. A pass list of placements where display ads have shown is also screenshotted out below audiences
- Recommendation: Bid adjustments for your ideal audiences including Automotive enthusiasts,luxury auto owners, people moving, people moving to another state and other criteria are available for us to leverage through targeting. I would suggest a 20 to 25% Bid adjustment on these audiences. Exclusive audience targeting helps improve the quality of leads on any account at the expense of overall volume and increase costs. This is something to keep in mind long-term and may help if we run into issues and quality of leads down the road.
- Keywords – Not surprisingly brand, product description and product category are the top converting keywords.We can also confirm negative keywords are in use on the account; it appears that they’re mostly competitors.
Negative Keywords? Lots of Competitors
- Recommendation: There may be a couple opportunities for improvement here. Your brand and product category keywords are where the vast majority of search traction is going to come from. There may, however, also be an opportunity to Target keywords such as ”Porsche transportation” or “BMW transportation” or other key words such as “covered car carrier” or “fully enclosed Automotive carrier”. I realize that not all of your delivery vehicles are fully covered however this may be an opportunity to Target high-ticket transports specifically.
- I highly recommend reviewing the Search terms report for at least the last six months and add relevant searches as targeted keywords to the appropriate campaigns. I would also point out when it comes to competitors keywords, some Brands choose to actively Target competitors, and use aggressive ad copy in order to highlight your unique value propositions and attract potential customers from competitors.
- Conversions – Conversion data is likely okay. As long as we are getting lead/requests back into the ads account and it is accurate information we should not need to do any remedial work here.
- Recommendation: As long as you’re happy with the reporting that you have been getting up to this point I see no reason to change it. I do recommend making sure Google analytics for is up and running well ahead of the July 2023 cutoff.
- Ads – The most shown ads are screenshotted out below for search and for display. Ad copy here is very straightforward. I do think it’s interesting that the most clicked on and highest converting display ad is that of a Porsche going into a covered transport vehicle.For the search ad it appears that calls to action relating to instant quotes are very popular and therefore do well.
Recommendation: It is always a best practice to maximize the amount of square footage that your ads take up in whatever medium they are showing up on, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a desktop device or mobile device, we should always complete the descriptions as well as the headlines for all of the ad copy. We should also make sure that we have a full array of extensions available for the same purpose of maximizing the amount of real estate that our ads take up and presenting people another thing to click on. Your ad copy is fine, there’s nothing really wrong with it other than making sure it is fully fleshed out with calls to action and unique value propositions. Assuming we move forward with my revised campaign structure we would want the ad copy for each campaign to reflect the tone and purpose of each campaign that it was related to.
- Extensions – Structured Snippets, Sitelinks, Callouts and Call are enabled on the account. They are not applied evenly to all campaigns.
Recommendation: A great way to compliment search ads are Image Extensions. We can show your Brand Logo or images of Transporters loading cars or friendly drivers holding keys, etc. This allows us to attract more attention to our search ads by adding something visual in a field that is otherwise all text.
I also recommend using the complete array of extensions that make sense for your business. This might include examples of pricing, promotions, locations, and even lead forms. Lead Forms are great because you can grab a user from the SERP before they even get to your website AND you are changed the same amount as a typical CPC for the keyword that triggered the form. This data can be automatically sent to CRM’s like Hubspot and Zapier.
Finally, make sure that all extensions are enabled on all active campaigns in the new structure.
- Search Impression Share – Despite healthy budgets the account is registering less than 10% impression share. This means that your ads showed up less than 10% of the time that users were searching for your keywords, in your geographic targets.
- A list of competitors and their respective impression shares can be found below.
Recommendation: Impression Share is a direct reflection of your overall market share. You can reduce your geographic targets or you can increase your ad spend to get this number to go up and capture more of a given market.