Google AdWords are an essential form of marketing for many businesses.

However, the world of Google is rotating with blurring speed, which means that unless your campaign is being monitored on a weekly basis you are likely losing efficiency with every passing day. You may be paying far too much for the results you’re getting.

5 Key Questions (to ask yourself and your agency) about your Google AdWords spend:

1. Is your Google AdWords campaign improving your business?

Every marketing dollar should tie directly to revenue. Marketing tools exist to measure and report the results of search, click, and subsequent action. If you’ve created landing pages with compelling content, clear calls-to-action, and submission forms, the entire inbound ecosystem can be measured and optimized for success.

With the right tools and advice, you’ll know exactly how your campaign is impacting your business and what to do to improve the results.

2. Are you paying too much for your Google AdWords?

Do you know which keywords and search terms are you chasing and why? You could be pursuing expensive terms – the ones for which everyone else is vying which drives costs up and puts you in hard fought competition for those terms. It’s often possible to pursue low-cost alternative search terms that will result in better conversion.

A comprehensive keyword and search term analysis will help you increase results and decrease costs. It’s conceivable that might need to spend more but more often than not increasing the efficiency of your campaign and improving after search conversion will allow you to spend less than ever.

3. What insights have you gleaned from your Google AdWords campaign?

Our clients are often surprised about what they learn from their Google AdWords campaign. In some cases, they’re taken aback when they realize the majority of their traffic is coming from mobile. This would highlight the need to optimize the website, landing pages, forms, and eCommerce for mobile devices.

Clients are also more aware that their website infrastructure must reflect the insights gathered from their campaign. For example: Is the most often searched information available at the top of your homepage? If the answer is no, let the work begin.

4. How can my Google Ad campaign be improved?

You can conduct more testing, audience segmenting, and hyper localization and then follow the paths that are most efficient and cost effective. Also be sure to employ Negative Keywords to make sure search results do not appear in a context that may be unfavorable to your product or proposition.

It could be that up to 35% of results display next to unfavorable content if left unchecked.

5. What is considered a good click through rate (CTR)?

CTR’s (the number of clicks versus the number of impressions generated by the campaign) can vary anywhere from 0.6% to 2% depending on the industry and whether the prospect is on desktop or mobile. But the click through rate, although important, can be a false metric. It’s meaningless if no one converts to an inquiry (and ultimately a sale).

If you’re simply letting your homepage do the conversion work and waiting for the phone to ring, your results are likely pretty low. Your campaign could be so much more efficient.

The bottom line is that a business cannot evaluate a CTR without knowing CPA – Cost per Acquisition. For example, if you are paying $150 per click but every click through converts to a sale and you are selling the item for $799 — that’s a great CTR (even though it may look terrible on paper). It’s all in the interpretation of the data.

Your marketing department or marketing agency’s goal should not be to spend your ad budget but to improve your business and garner as much intelligence as possible to help inform your business decisions. Question your ad spend, and demand answers!

Want To Know More About The ROI On Your Google AdWords Spend?

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