In a world where digital advertising is a necessity, Google Ads is undoubtedly one of the most popular platforms for B2B and B2C businesses to promote their products and services online. With its wide reach and targeting capabilities, Google Ads offers businesses the opportunity to connect with their target audience and drive traffic to their website… when done correctly. However, as with any marketing campaign, it's essential to evaluate the effectiveness of your Google Ads campaign strategy regularly. 

Let’s just cut right to the chase—it's estimated between 15-20% of all ad spend on Google Search is wasted or inefficient ad spend. That being said, is there a good chance your Google Ads campaigns are underperforming? Unfortunately, yes. This is where a Google Ads campaign audit comes in. An audit can help you: 

• Identify areas of improvement
• Eliminate wasted ad spend
• Optimize your campaigns for maximum ROI

In this article, we're exploring the top 5 reasons why you should audit your Google Ads campaign and the benefits a quarterly audit will bring to your business. Whether you're new to Google Ads or a seasoned advertiser, keep reading to learn more about the importance of auditing your campaigns on a regular basis.

1. You’ll Gain In-Depth Audience & Competitor Insights

Regularly auditing your Google Ads campaign allows you to analyze your target audience’s dynamic wants and needs. By reviewing your campaign's performance, you can identify which keywords, ad copy, and targeting options are driving the most traffic and conversions. 

For example, messaging or ad offerings that generated 100 new leads last quarter might not yield the same results this quarter. As consumers' demands change, your campaign messaging needs to change to accommodate their needs. It’s best to audit your campaigns to identify instances of disconnection—low engagement, slow lead capturing, etc.—between your ads and your audience. This is a critical piece in ensuring your messaging is consistent and resonates with your target audience. Otherwise, your ads will undoubtedly underperform.

What’s worse than your Google Ads campaign underperforming? Your competitors' ad campaigns outperforming yours. Auditing your paid search campaigns on a regular basis enables you to stay abreast of the competition and their share of the market. Through a thorough ad campaign analysis, you’ll be able to see how your campaign compares to your competitors' campaigns. From here, you can make meaningful adjustments to your ads to remain competitive and stay on top of industry trends.

Pro Tip: Leverage Google Ads’ auction insights report to “compare your performance with other advertisers who are participating in the same auctions that you are.” These insights will help you make data-driven decisions regarding your bidding and budgeting strategies across your campaigns.

2. You’ll Assess & Optimize Your Bidding Strategies to Succeed

Bidding strategies are an essential part of any Google Ads campaign. Regular auditing allows you to assess whether your current bidding strategy is working for or against you. For example, if you're consistently overbidding on keywords, you may be wasting ad spend. Conversely, if you're underbidding, your ads may not be reaching your target audience.

As you conduct your audit, we recommend optimizing your bidding strategies by:

• Leveraging bid adjustments to display your ads “more or less frequently based on where, when, and how people search”
• Manually setting your cost-per-click (CPC) bids if you’re working with a lean budget
• Making sure you're appropriately structuring your budget to maximize the effectiveness of your campaigns

Pro Tip: Ensure you have a healthy mix of Phrase Match and Exact Match keywords—especially in B2B segments. Why? Because Phrase Match and Exact Match keywords enable you to retain greater control over what your ads do or don't show for. This means that you need more keywords to reach every part of your desired audience, but you can at least be sure that you're not just wasting money on users that are (way) outside of your target audience.

3. You’ll Identify Errors That Can Affect Your Google Ads Campaign Performance & the User Experience

Google Ads campaigns are complex, and it's common for errors to occur. Regular auditing allows you to identify and correct issues like broken links, missing text, and other technical problems that can affect your campaign's performance. This helps ensure your ads are functioning correctly and delivering a seamless user experience.

Why should you care about the user experience of your campaigns? Because 88% of users won’t revisit a website after a bad user experience. In fact, on average, it only takes 15 seconds for website visitors to decide whether they want to stay on your website. Auditing your campaigns and checking for any error (big or small) is essential to capturing leads through your Google Ads. The truth is slow, error-filled ad landing pages with broken links, grammatical issues, and other inconsistencies increase the likelihood of visitors leaving your site for a competitor by tenfold.

Pro Tip: Hire an expert Google Ads consultant to audit your campaigns for you. Having another pair of eyes on your ads—the copy, the strategy, landing pages, and more—enables you to identify errors you may have overlooked.

4. You’ll Understand the Right Messaging for the Right Audience

Your Google Ads campaign will only be successful if your ad messaging attracts and engages your audience. But how do you know if your ad copy is effective? Well, your ad performance is a great way to measure whether your messaging is working. But taking it one step further with regular auditing allows you to review your ad copy and messaging over time to ensure it's always resonating with your target audience. 

By analyzing your ad performance and A/B testing different messaging, you can refine your ads to improve click-through rates and conversions. An audit’s insights might show that a particular buyer persona engages with your ads when you use puns in your copy. Or maybe your target audience ignores ad copy that sounds like a sales pitch. Whatever the situation is, a Google Ads campaign audit will help you figure it out.

In addition to your ad copy, the landing page messaging you choose is also critical to your campaign's success. A campaign audit enables you to review your landing pages and assess whether they're effectively communicating your message and encouraging conversions. By making necessary adjustments to your landing pages (in a similar fashion as your ad copy), you can improve your campaign's performance and ROI.

Pro Tip: Check out our blog, 3 Examples of a Google Ads Campaign Done Right, to discover three examples of companies that have mastered the pay-per-click ad and see how you can apply these tips to your organization’s Google Ads campaigns.

5. You’ll Know the Key Metrics that Need Attention

A Google Ads campaign audit enables you to monitor and adjust the key metrics that drive your campaign's success. By paying attention to critical metrics, you can identify areas for improvement and make adjustments to improve your campaign's overall performance. This includes tracking: 

• Cost per Conversion
• Conversion Rate
• Cost per Click
• Click-Through-Rate

While cost per conversion is the primary KPI for most lead generation campaigns, looking at its components for more actionable data can help you improve your campaign performance. For example, you might discover your ads are receiving a lot of clicks but not enough conversions. To improve this metric, you could review your landing pages and ad copy to ensure they are relevant and compelling to your target audience. 

Pro Tip: Consider adjusting your targeting options to reach a more qualified audience or modifying your bid strategy to optimize for conversions. These adjustments can help increase the likelihood of visitors taking the desired action, resulting in a higher conversion rate and, ultimately, a more successful Google Ads campaign.