When evaluating a PPC (Pay Per Click) campaign, the progress is judged by a variety of KPIs like CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) or ROAS (Return on Ad Spend). Setting these performance standards may sound like a simple best practice, but achieving those standards can be more difficult and tricky than a business might think. Having an account manager from a PPC company on board to navigate the waters will be critical. However, not all account managers are created equal. An account manager that is focused on the long term progress, rather than short term and potentially misleading results, is the type of account manager you want on your team.
Ineffective tactics, lazy strategies and a handful of attribution tricks can severely impact the success of a PPC campaign. Working with transparency and fully understanding how PPC campaigns work and how to measure accurate attribution, is the best way to harness your business’s customer acquisition potential, and reach those performance standards you are striving for.
5 Tricks Your PPC Company Should Be Using
1. Excessive Spending On GDN “Remarketing”
“Remarketing” Google Display Network campaigns is an ineffective, last ditch effort at improving attribution. Changing up names of campaigns under the guise of remarketing will negatively affect the ROI over time. However in the short the term, the ROI may appear to be improving as attribution credit is pulled away from outside channels, particularly when the brand has an existing strong audience. Eliminate repetitive campaigns and keep the budget focused.
2. Duplicating Conversion Actions
When setting up Conversion Tracking in Google AdWords, it can be common for conversion actions to be duplicated. Multiple Conversion Actions will likely result in a CPA number that is improbable. To prevent this, make sure your AdWords campaign only has one conversion type enabled. If additional assessment should be needed, Google Analytics can be helpful.
3. False Conversions
Are your conversions coming from actual humans? Be leery of false conversions as a result of robot leads from cheap clicks. A conversion shouldn’t count unless it is a quality lead. Integrate the use of a CRM in your process so that leads can be tracked all the way from start to finish.
4. Give Credit Where Credit Is Due
Due to a brand’s existing relationship with its customer base, some PPC company account managers are given credit for efforts that did not directly involve them. It is important to keep brand queries excluded from other campaigns so those results don’t blend in with the PPC campaign and falsely improve the conversion rates.
5. Ineffective Attribution Models
Attribution models that result in fake conversions can lead to credit being assigned that has been calculated on an estimate. Knowing the difference of a PPC approach that counts a single conversion against a keyword versus multiple conversions, in the case where a user might make a purchase again, is key. Counting multiple conversions can cause confusion when evaluating small batches of data. Focus instead on only assigning one conversion to each user.
Taking the time to re-evaluate your PPC campaigns to see where the budget is going, how campaigns are set up and how effective they actually are at bringing in real conversions, is a process that takes time. Ultimately, no matter how long it takes, cleaning up your campaigns is the only way to find accurate, measurable performance standards. Call Softline Solutions for help evaluating your current PPC strategies.
