Google Ads Audit for Sim Racing eCommerce

 

 

Google Ads Ads Account Audit with Recommendations

520-863-0517 Turn Racing

Look Back Period: May 2022

Special Questions: None asked.

Summary

As presented the account has generated 2.2 million impressions which has resulted in 21,100 users being brought to the website. That comes out to a 0.95% click-through rate, for reference , we like to see a minimum of 2% click-through rate and 2% conversion rate on anything related to Google Ads.  This click-through rate is indicative of a display or cross network heavy account structure.  Of these users, 169 resulted in a conversion action being recorded in the account.

That comes out to 0.43% conversion rate which, again, seems to be very low. Total cost during this time was $5,520 which means your average cost per conversion action was $32.69.

Depending on your average order value, that may or may not be a sustainable cost for Google ads. It does stand in sharp contrast to your average cost per click of $0.26 which is much closer to a Display Network click cost rather than the cost of traffic coming from the Search Network, which typically drives better leads and more sales.  Depending on your overall budget and objectives as well as marketing competitors we are confident that the following recommendations will increase your overall sales and lower your cost per acquisition.

Further qualitative analysis and review of your website leads us to recommend the following:  search and shopping are going to be a critical aspect of everything that you’re doing. You have a very niche product that is serving a very small market.

 

  • Campaign Structure & Bid Strategies-

We see two Performance Max campaigns, one smart campaign and a search campaign. The majority of Impressions have come from the Performance Max retargeting campaign. Based on the traffic from the other campaigns we would have to surmise that the performance Max campaign is either over serving a limited pool or targeting outside of the bounds of retargeting based on 1.3 million impressions. The website traffic search and sales performance Max campaign seem to have fairly decent click-through rates at 2.95% and 3.7% respectively. We also see some conversions coming out of this account but it still looks like they are just getting started and really don’t have a lot of information to go off of.

Bid strategies are set to maximize conversions, maximize clicks or maximize conversions Target cost per acquisition. We also see Google search partners and Google Display Network enabled on the search campaigns. ad schedules are allowed to run all day and we see bid adjustments for location and devices on the website traffic search campaign.

  • Recommendations: With only a handful of products and serving a very niche industry we recommend focusing on search campaigns. A search first strategy is going to increase the overall efficiency of the account. We feel that there is not enough organic volume to be competitive at the current budgets for and Performance Max campaigns. Search represents an excellent opportunity in terms of connecting with the right user at the right time looking for the right product. We suggest segmenting your campaign in the following structure: 1) a brand protection campaign using brand keywords that are  already generating conversions out of the account. 2) a competitor’s campaign targeting competitors brand names who are making similar products. 3)  a product description campaign with keywords focused around “Sim racing steering wheel”. 4) shopping / performance Max campaigns connected to your Google Merchant center.
  • We recommend opting out of Google Search partners and Display Network for search campaigns. These are great ways to increase Impressions and clicks however they don’t actually result in any bottom of funnel conversion actions which is the primary reason that you guys are in Google ads.
  • We also recommend going to a maximize conversion bid strategy or a maximize conversion value bid strategy based on testing and data generated from the account over time.
  • Ad scheduling should be enabled if we are going to shift our  Geographic targeting to North America only. Otherwise, if we are still going to Target globally we need to narrow down the peak times of ad distribution for each geographic area and show ads during those times.

 

  • Networks- Network data confirms my suspicions as presented in the summary. The vast majority of Impressions and clicks have been generated from Cross Network performance Max campaigns. We also see the vast majority of conversions coming from there. However, one thing I want to point out is the data coming from Google Search. Here we see that search represented only 1.5% of your total impression served yet that generated 17.8% of your overall clicks and 35.7% of your overall conversions.  This “inverted waterfall”  represents the more efficient nature of the Google Search Network in terms of generating traffic to your website and also overall conversions. Consider if you would have not advertised at all on performance Max and all of your advertising dollars had gone towards Google Search, you can see from this change alone that you would have significantly more overall conversions produced per click.
    • Recommendation: obviously as part of the search first strategy,  restructuring campaigns to include dedicated search campaigns for brand protection, et al.  will result in this data shifting to the Google search network. We still recommend having Shopping/ Performance Max for e-commerce products however  we stand by the efficiency of search over Shopping/Performance Max, at this ad spend level. Display Network and search Partners traffic should be avoided at all costs.

 

  • Devices- Device data compares almost perfectly with network data showcase directly above. We can see that the vast majority of impressions in clicks generated came from mobile devices at 73.6% and 66.7% respectively however this decreasing waterfall continues with only 55.1% of conversions coming from mobile devices. contrast this to the activity on computers which generated only 19.6% of Impressions yet yielded 23.6% of clicks and a whopping 44% of total conversions generated during the look back.

Recommendation:  There are more than one optimizations that can be made here in device data. Obviously, it’s a mobile first world and we can never discard mobile phones completely, however, the data indicates that there is a clear efficiency bias towards users coming from desktop computers. if you had spent all of your money on desktop devices alone you would have generated more conversions per click then advertising with mobile also in the mix.  This is something that is best dialed into over time and through trial and error and testing on the account. We do not recommend switching all at once, However we do recommend positive adjustments of approximately 10 to 15% be placed on computers.

 

  • Location Targeting-Location data indicates that the majority of conversions produced so far have come from the United States, we do see some activity coming from overseas as well. Depending on your overall Google ads budget and short-term and long term objectives it may make sense to focus exclusively on North America or other Geographic areas which are shown to have an abnormally High number of video game users per capita.

 

  • Recommendation: We recommend at least testing location targeting to focus on North America exclusively. If this test doesn’t result in an efficiency increase in the account, then we would also recommend researching which specific Geographic markets have abnormally High numbers of video game users per capita and include those as well.

 

 

  • Ad Scheduling- Typically ad scheduling analysis provides more fruitful information in this account. To be completely transparent the conversions generated out of this account are all over the place. there does seem to be a slight concentration of activity between noon and 6:00 p.m. each day, however we’re also seeing back side of the clock activity between 12:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. as well as early morning between 6:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. and evening hours between 7:00 and midnight.
  • This is undoubtedly because the account was targeting countries across a wide variety of time zones.
    • Recommendation: Assuming we’re going to limit the geographic reach of our search campaigns to North America only I would suggest generating more data in the new configuration and evaluate after 2 to 3 months of continuous activity.

 

 

  • Keywords – Keywords are definitely within the realm of what your company is offering in terms of products and brand names however they are all set to Broad match. We also see that no negative keywords are in use on the account.

Negative Keywords?

  • Recommendation: First, we recommend using phrase and exact match keywords for our search campaigns.  broad match tends to include a wide array of similar  terms however not always terms that result in bottom of funnel conversions.
  • We also recommend adding negative keywords to the account. This is done by reviewing the Search terms report and excluding any terms that are not germane to our current endeavor.

 

  • Conversions – Conversions are being recorded in the account and we also have conversion values being reported back. The ratio between added to carts and actual purchases it’s about One to six or put another way you are converting 16% of the users who add to cart. This seems to be a little on the low side. Our experience indicates that an average checkout rate should be somewhere between the  high 30s to low 40s.
    • Recommendation: There may be an opportunity to increase your overall conversions by figuring out what is causing a relatively low checkout rate on the account.  if we could pick up 10 or 20% there it could translate into some significant volume of sales for you.  There are typically website speed issues involved which test the user’s patience and therefore result in lost sales. More investigation into this is required however the bottom line is you do have conversions in the account and they are reporting back which is all we need to get started.
    • We would also like to remind you that the clock is ticking on GA4 / GTM Event Tracking Upgrades. Your UA Tracking and Goals will stop working on July 1 2023 and we can help you get new tracking setup before then.

 

 

 

  • Ads – The responsive search ad enabled on the account has generated the most performance in terms of clicks to the website.

Recommendation:

 

  • Extensions – We see a variety of assets currently enabled on the account. These include business name, business logo, sitelinks, call outs, structured Snippets and also the price extension. They are all active in generating clicks.

Recommendation: We recommend utilizing the full array of available assets, formerly known as extensions, in the account. You have done a good job of utilizing them all so far. We would recommend a quick review of any other extensions that may be applicable but you appear to have covered all your bases so far.

 

 

  • Search Impression Share – Search Impression share is below the 10% minimum threshold for reporting.

Recommendation:  Right now you are not spending enough on the platform for us to gauge what percent of the market your ads represent.