Regular reviews of PPC campaigns are necessary to ensure efficient delivery of effective ad packages. It’s important to know what to look for so you can identify where the largest gaps in performance are, and account for them. I suggest a comprehensive review every quarter, however that works best for your industry (e.g., scheduled around the time of your industry’s big seasonal swings).
First, review the past: you’ll want to clean up your keywords. Did you add a batch of keywords last quarter to test? If they account for few-to-none of your conversions, consider getting rid of them. Barring a hideously ineffective landing page, those keywords are underperforming for you. Statistically speaking, your PPC account is likely doing this, and is likely spending around two-thirds of its budget on non-converting keywords.
Are ads targeting those keywords not getting impressions? The keywords are not getting searched. Are they not generating clicks or conversions? Your product or service is not relevant to users searching those keywords. Toss em.
You’ll also want to look forward. What’s coming up in the next quarter that you need to be on top of? Seasonality is real. Freeze winter-centric ads, bring up the warm weather copy. Is there a big product launch or other shift in your industry coming up? Plan for it. The best way to take advantage of a trend is to know it’s coming and be in front of it.
Feel free to add more speculative keywords. Staying in front of trends, industry shifts, and so forth takes experimentation. That can cost money, but it can also yield sales. You just have to be careful and judicious about how you proceed– and that means being willing to cut the underperforming targets at next review.
