Covid-19 has become a global event that has made a huge impact on public health as well as the world economy. To say that these are uncertain times is an understatement, but what we do know is that the campaign performance of small businesses has felt sudden changes as a result of this pandemic. Now that many countries have already gone through their second wave, everybody is still proceeding with caution. This may mean reactivating strategies that have been put on the back burner for weeks or months, like Google Ads campaigns. Below we will discuss how to carry out your Google Ads account audit and reactivate it with confidence.
Ensure Your Bidding Strategies Are Aligned with Your Current Goals
This is perhaps the most important thing to do immediately. You will need to make sure that your campaigns have a bidding strategy that aligns with your current goals and metrics. Your previously set Target CPA or Max CPC bid limit may not align with your current data. You may also not have any recent conversion data for Google to optimize your strategy. If you decide to start afresh in the post-Covid period with limited data, you may choose to default to a manual strategy or a beginner smart bidding strategy like Mas Clicks. You can also outsource this function to a reputed company that provides PPC audit services.
Add or Pause Keywords
Do not be afraid to pause keywords. Many successful companies that conduct PPC campaign audits will tell you that you should, at times, pause keywords as you will still be able to view the historical data while these keywords are on pause. In this post-Covid era where every penny counts, you certainly would not want to waste a single penny or impression on a keyword that does not go well with your current campaign’s theme and metrics. It will be in your best interest to pause the underperforming keywords and make sure that what you keep are the most relevant to your updated goals. You may also want to brainstorm new keywords to add in, aside from getting rid of underperforming ones. By doing this, you will ensure that your spending is being put towards keywords that you are confident are going to perform well. Use tools such as Google’s Keyword Planner which gives you great depth in details such as search volume based on specific locations and time frames.
Daily Budget Allocation
Your budget allocation pre-Covid will greatly differ from the current scenario. You will need to review what your spend looked like pre-Covid, during Covid and now post-Covid to analyse your spend goals for the future. You can use tools such as Google’s Budget Recommendations to help you. If your budget is based on incremental revenue and expenses of your 2019 and 2020 budgets, you would want to review these figures and draw out your revised spend expectations for 2021. You can then break it down and decide which campaigns are priority for you. Your overall daily budget is your projected monthly budget or spend divided by 30.4 (average number of days in the month).
Review Your Ad Copy & Landing Pages
As you carry out your PPC campaign audit, the thing that often gets left out is your ad copy. While re-evaluating your PPC goals post-Covid, it is advisable to review your ad copy and check to see if it aligns with any new keywords, landing pages or general branding. To give an example, you do not want to let a headline appear that mentions an expired promotion from 2020. Or if you have a new site, then you should check to make sure that your ad does not lead customers to an old landing page. While you reactivate your account, understand where you were prior to the pandemic and what has changed since then. Refreshing your ad copy will not only bring your page up to date but will also give your ad viewers something new to see.
Capitalize On Ad Scheduling
Covid-19 has changed the way people work. It has introduced the work-from-home culture in many countries. So you will need to understand the days and times that your ads perform the best. It is important to set up an ad schedule to run ads only during peak converting hours to make the most of your budget.
Revisit Your Location Targeting
Your ad reach and ad spend will both be impacted by the way you choose to set up your campaign’s location targeting. A simple example would be that if you were targeting the whole of the US prior to Covid-19 when you had access to a higher spend, you may want to reconsider and scale it back to just priority states or cities to align with a smaller spend.
Whether you have to start afresh or whether you have just decided to scale back, when you reactivate your Google Ads account, consider the above PPC campaign audit tips. Conduct a thorough Google Ads audit to make the best of your ad campaign.
