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5 PPC Tasks to Start Your Month off Right!Posted by Joe on August 4, 2009 in Basic PPC Strategies |
As I’m sure you are aware, it’s a new month! Now is the time to kick off your PPC campaigns with a bang. There are a few tasks that you can accomplish quickly in the next day or two that will help improve your performance for the rest for the month.
When optimizing your PPC campaigns, you should always make positive changes all month long. However, you should front-load as many of your tasks toward the beginning of the month as you can. Why? This way, when you make some great changes, your account will feel the effects for the longest amount of time possible.
Here is a list of five tasks you can accomplish quickly to get your month started successfully:
- Run a keyword report and focus on your top 10 keywords. It’s easy to get caught in the mire of hundreds keywords, especially if you’re managing a robust campaign. For this task, you should look at your most valuable keywords to see how they’re performing and what you can do to improve their performance right now. This can include bids, ad texts, ad group restructuring, negative keywords, etc.
- Are you testing multiple landing pages? Run a URL report to see if you have any weak performing variations that can be removed. This will also allow you to devote more traffic to your best performing landing pages. This way, you can get those weak landing pages out of rotation to start off your month right.
- Are you running ads on the Content Network within AdWords? Run a placement performance report and focus on the 3-5 websites with the lowest conversion rate and the highest cost-per-lead (or sale). I am sure there are other sites that may not be performing well, and there are sites that are doing great that you want to specifically target – but for this task, just remove those 3-5 sites that are hindering your performance.
- There is always room to expand your keyword list. Conduct a quick review of your website to see where you can add at least 1-2 new ad groups. Now, you don’t have to do all the extensive keyword research right now, but can you find a few core terms/phrases that could be expanded upon? You can then do the full research and expansion later in the month.
- Create new automated reports. Staying on top of your performance is crucial to maintaining your performance. You should create one report that provides the vital stats for your account and have it sent to you daily. Don’t overload this report with data because it will become a hassle to review each morning. Only pull the vital stats you need. This way, when you get into the office, you have an email waiting for you and you can review the previous day’s performance.
Of course, there are many other tasks to complete in any given month when managing a PPC account, but these are a few tasks that can improve your performance quickly. As you complete these tasks I’m sure you’ll see other elements of your campaigns that require attention. You should build this list and get to these tasks ASAP. This way, you’ve jumpstarted your PPC campaign for the month!
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August 4th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Nice list Joe. While you do point out there are other tasks that should be completed throughout the month, I would perhaps add the search query report to your list of priorities. For the amount of effort it takes it run the report, the level of insight it provides makes it more than worthwhile. For this reason it was voted the favourite AdWords report recently (can’t remember where though!)
What’s more, getting a good understanding at the start of the month of what people are actually searching for to find your products or services, will set you up nicely to make more informed decisions in other areas (e.g. your points 2-4) throughout the rest of the month.
August 5th, 2009 at 10:30 am
I must agree with you Alan. Here at Dragon, we always make sure we run a search query report at least once a month. This helps us identify new negative keywords.
Siobhan,
DragonSearch Marketing
August 5th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Joe,
Thanks for this great checklist. It shows the value of ongoing optimization! PPC is definitely not just a “set it and forget it” model.
Thanks,
Mike
August 5th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Totally agree, Joe.
Personally, I find the “Account Snapshot > Campaign Performance” section in AdWords very helpful for beginning of the month work.
In the date range field, I’ll plug in the previous month – in this case, July. I’ll compare that against the month before, June. I’ll start with “All Online Campaigns” selected and go down the “Difference” column. Then I’ll ask myself a series of hard questions about my stats: Were CTRs down? Were Conversions down? Did CPCs jump too unnaturally?
After that, I’ll start flipping through each of the Campaigns individually to find where my big problem children are, so-to-speak.
I find this process to be extremely helpful in pinpointing last month’s shortcomings and where I need to improve the most in the current month.