PPC Audits: Keywords and Quality Scores, and Click-through Rates, Oh My!

Kevin JaquithINBOUND MARKETING

Before you put your money where your marketing is, determine how your hard-earned dough can best serve your brand. Pay-per-click campaigns (PPC) use monetized ads to generate clicks, attract new faces to your website, and expand your audience. Unfortunately, buying an ad doesn’t automatically equal a deluge of traffic. To ensure your plan is both profitable and productive, you need a PPC audit.

What Is a PPC Audit?

Where you spend your money is as important — if not more so — than how much you’re spending. A PPC audit identifies which paid platforms are best suited for your business now as well as in the future. We’ll analyze the systems you have in place, recommend ways to improve performance and develop an actionable plan that will give you a clear path forward.

Why Do We Need It?

How do you stack up against your competitors? When it comes to marketing, a smart strategy and stellar execution can make even modest budgets seem mighty, and that helps you not just keep up with the Joneses but leave them in your dust.

A PPC audit answers three essential questions that affect this game of contrast and compare:

  • What can you change in order to be more successful?
  • Are you maximizing ad spend?
  • How can you develop a comprehensive PPC strategy?

Gather that data and you’re equipped with the information you need to build a better mousetrap (so to speak).

What Is the Value of a PPC Audit?

If you’re apprehensive about diverting some of your marketing budget into a PPC audit, fear not — there’s a hefty payoff waiting just around the bend.

The biggest benefit of your PPC audit is the ability to find new PPC opportunities that differentiate your brand from your competitors. Instead of going to battle on an already crowded playing field, you can find new, less-populated avenues you can use to gain leverage and grow your audience.

Secondly, an audit helps maximize your ad spend by evaluating your keywords, audience, messaging, and ad copy.

Lastly, the data gathered during a PPC audit sits as a benchmark, allowing you to develop a strategy for the future and giving you a point of reference as you look to gauge your progress and unearth more ways to improve overall PPC performance.

What Happens If We Don’t Do It?

Are you eager to fritter away your company’s funds on misguided campaigns and ineffective ads? We didn’t think so. Fail to invest in a PPC audit and you risk wasting money on the wrong kind of ad spend and you’ll also likely see your competitors beat you for ad position as you suffer from poor conversion and lose out on potential new leads. It’s a triple whammy of strategic sadness, and it’s so easy to avoid.

Devote a relatively small portion of your resources to a PPC audit now, and reap the rewards later. It really is that simple.

Set yourself up for success with a look at our PPC Audit Checklist.