1. Wijnand Meijer | @wijnandmeijer
Quality & Learning Manager | iProspect
Re-Evaluating Success:
The Value of PPC Audits

2. Wijnand Meijer
• Quality & Learning Manager at iProspect Amsterdam,
the Netherlands
• Started with PPC in 2006 for SMB accounts on my own
(True Clicks)
• Joined iProspect in 2009 to work on larger accounts as
Sr. Consultant
• Currently writing out an AdWords Audit article series (13
down, 6 to go) on the Certified Knowledge Blog, also written
posts for PPC Hero and several Dutch blogs
• Specialized in PPC audits for the last 3 years
• nl.linkedin.com/in/wijnandmeijer

3. Why Audit?

4. Why Audit?
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Tracked at least 1 goal
Had negative keywords
Had 2+ ads in majority of ad groups
Didn't have ad serving problems
Had sitelinks in every search campaign
Used exact match
Didn't have the same sitelinks in every campaign
Had at least 2 extensions
Tracked calls (when it mattered)
Had sitelink description in brand campaigns
Tracked all their goals
Used remarketing
Didn't use traditional broad match
Used modified broad match
Regularly tested ads
Had negative keywords list(s)
Had mobile preferred ads
Tested mobile ads
Used RLSA
Best Practice Analysis of 350+ accounts (mixture of SMB, Enterprise
and mid-sized), actively being managed, spending over $600 million /
year
Implemented Not implemented
Source: Brad Geddes @ Market Motive, January 13, 2015
And that’s just 19 best practices (out of 100+ you could check)

5. Goal of PPC Audits
• Audits start with a thorough analysis
of best practices and results.
• But don’t stop there, include specific
and actionable recommendations.
• Even better: prioritize these
recommendations.
Start with goal setting, tracking, quick
wins and cutting waste.
• Be an audit ninja: try to estimate the
impact of your recommendations.

6. Google’s Audit: the Opportunities Tab

7. Audit Starting Point: Goal Setting
• Goal Setting
• Tracking
• Campaign Settings & Bid Adjustments
• Ad Extensions
• Impression Share & Auction Insights
• Quality Score
• Account Structure
• Keywords & Match Types
• Ad Copy
• Testing
• Lin-Rodnitzky Ratio
• Shopping Campaigns
• Bid Management
• Landing Pages
• Mobile
• Remarketing
• Display Network

8. Goal Setting- Essentials
ROAS Example:
M = 40%
A = 50%
ROAS target = 1 / (M x A) =
1 / (40% x 50%) =
1 / 0.2 = 5.0 or 500%
This means for every dollar you invest in paid
search, you’ll want at least $5 in revenue.
CPA Example:
M = $500
A = 50%
C = 30%
CPA target = (M x A) x C =
($500 x 50%) x 30% = $75
That’s what you’re willing to invest in
acquiring 1 lead.
 Define a non-branded efficiency target (e.g. CPA or ROAS) based on:
M = Your margin (Ecommerce: in % | Lead-gen: in $)
A = The part of this margin you’re willing to invest in acquisition
C = Lead-to-sale conversation rate (if you’re a lead-gen advertiser)
 Make sure these efficiency targets are leading your optimizations (and budget isn’t)

9. Goal Setting- Advanced
 Approximate (or calculate, if possible) the value (in terms of eventual revenue) of
all micro conversions on your website, such as:
• Newsletter sign up
• Downloads
• Using the store locator (alternative: determine an offline multiplier)
• Sharing (on social media)
 Include the customer lifetime value. Or it least the value beyond the first
purchase / interaction (e.g. value in first year).

10. Goal Setting – Advanced
Example of profit without lifetime value and in-store & word-of-mouth multiplier:
Example of profit for same advertiser including lifetime value and multipliers:
Be as conservative as you want to be with customer lifetime value, the value of
micro conversions and in-store / word-of-mouth multipliers.
But pretending these things don’t exist or have no value will cause you to greatly
undervalue your marketing efforts (which has far-reaching implications).

11. Goal Setting – Advanced
Source: Avinash Kaushik: Your Web Metrics: Super Lame or Super Awesome?

12. Goal Setting – Cutting Edge
How do you currently treat your efficiency target?
A) I absolutely want to achieve and keep a certain target CPA or ROAS
B) I’m mostly interested in the combination of volume (# of conversions or revenue)
and efficiency (CPA or ROAS) that maximizes my profit. So I’m flexible in trying
different CPA/ROAS targets to find out.
 Do you acknowledge the trade-off between volume and efficiency and are you
therefore willing to test different efficiency targets to find the profit maximizing
combination?

13. “Quality and process improvement
programs are like teaching people how
to fish.
Strategy maps and scorecards teach
people where to fish.”
Robert S. Kaplan

14. We already have checklists

15. But checklists have their drawbacks
• Checklists are often too simplified: yes or no
What do you answer when it’s ‘yes’ 70% of the time?
• Checklists give no weight to answers, however, not everything is equally
important
• Most checklists don’t differentiate between high priority and low priority
• People like to work with grades on a 0 - 10 or 0 – 100 scale to get a quick
feel for performance and a sense of achievement when grades go up.
• The solution: a prioritized, weighted scorecard, currently checking for over
140 best practices

16. Framework of the Audit Scorecard
• Topics are scored in order of priority and best practices are categorized as:
• Essentials
• Advanced
• Cutting Edge (if applicable)
• Different types of questions:
• Checklist type: yes or no when it makes sense
• Percentage: how often is a specific best practice implemented (when it’s
easy to count)?
• To what extent… : with these questions, we rely more on human
analysis and interpretation as it’s not a straightforward check or count

17. Sneak Preview

18. Sneak Preview

19. Thank You!
 Download your free copy of the AdWords Audit Scorecard over here (it will be
updated regularly):
http://bitly.com/adwords-scorecard
 Want to Learn More? My audit articles so far: Introduction, Goal Setting,
Measurement, Campaign Settings & Bid Adjustments, Ad
Extensions, Impression Share & Auction Insights, Quality Score, Account
Structure, Keywords & Match Types, Ad Copy, Testing, The Lin-Rodnitzky Ratio
and Google Shopping Campaigns.
Coming up: Bid Management, Landing Pages, Remarketing, Google Display
Network, Mobile and YouTube.