Management Checklist: Weekly, monthly and daily reviews

Managing a PPC account, despite all the hype about automation and machine learning is still a manual job.

All these capabilities actually make it more complicated. Set it and forget it, but at your own risk.

PPC professionals who manage large numbers of accounts in B2B and ecommerce, as well as other industries, are the best at understanding this.

Many of these pros were kind enough offer their insight to be included in the simplified PPC checklist. This checklist can be used for account reviews daily, weekly, and monthly.

Let’s dive deeper into each item.

Daily account review

The development of new campaign elements, particularly:

What: You’re introducing something to the wild. You want to make sure everything goes as planned, even if it was executed well.

Budget pacing

This one is also in the weekly section. You may not need it every day depending on how large the campaign is, but you want to find a suitable cadence .

It’s usually a bad sign if a campaign overspends or underspends at the end a month, quarter or custom length. This means that you may have missed potential opportunities , or you spent more than your budget.

One campaign may be difficult to spend the budgeted amount, while another campaign is consistently over-budget.

Check any flags, disapprovals or other notifications that may be relevant to address

Why? These are the things that always happen, even to the most skilled professionals.

Only difference is that the most skilled pros are able to quickly correct errors or appeal when necessary.

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Terms.

Weekly account review

Recommendations

Why? Dismissing irrelevant information will increase your optimization score, and possibly train the machine-learning system algorithm to provide better recommendations in the future. You should also consider trying a recommendation that is actually useful.

Be aware that Google makes it easy to “Apply” changes, so make sure you are clear on what you’re appraising.

Budget pacing

Why? See the daily checks section.

If you check this every day, it will automatically be receiving weekly attention. Either way, you should be able to see that budget pacing matters, especially for enterprise-level accounts, where a hard budget limit is spread across multiple campaigns and ad groups.

Conversions

Why? If necessary, pivot spend on campaigns with higher conversion rates and lower cost per conversion. You’ll be the hero.

Report on search terms

Why? You don’t want to waste money on keywords that aren’t relevant to your business. You don’t want to miss out on keywords that you should be bidding for.

Abnormal performance spikes (up/down)

Why? It is always better to be the one to spot and analyze abnormal performance spikes than being caught off guard. You should also check if there have been any optimizations that are having an impact.

You can also catch performance spikes early and fix them if you monitor them regularly.

Display placements

Why? Display can quickly be replaced by poor quality or incongruent placements if it is not regularly checked.

You should check every week to see where your display dollars are going. Don’t be afraid to make exceptions if you feel you’re spending too much.

Keywords/search terms

Why? Check weekly to make sure you aren’t wasting your budget on terms that don’t fit your needs.

This allows you to track keyword performance and determine if they should be deleted. This allows you to see search trends in real time, which could be a source of opportunities for you to capitalize.

Device performance

Why Sometimes it is important. Mobile campaigns may not convert if you are a small-sized supplier. They might convert better. They might convert well, but the cost per unit is too high for them to be profitable. It’s easy to see why!

Why? Be sure to not pay too much. It is a good rule of thumb to optimize for success metrics that are more affordable.

Performance of a country (traffic spikes and performance variations).

Why? This only applies if you are running campaigns in more countries than one. Don’t assume that performance will be the same across borders if you are.

Monthly account review

Performance analysis and review in depth

This is essential to the management of a PPC campaign. Performance changes are inevitable. It is your responsibility to understand why and which actions to take.

You’ll also get more buy in if you can simplify complex topics and make it easy for clients and other stakeholders.

Client KPI metrics

What: Ensure that the campaign performance you manage is in line with the client’s business goals. This is the time for analysis and to make any necessary adjustments.

Why: An analysis of YoY trends will provide an apples-to–apples comparison, since you are looking at the same time period.

Analyzing MoM data can help you to identify key turning points that lead to the YoY number.

Report on auction insights

Why? A competitor with more money than you can quickly alter the dynamics of your PPC campaigns. It is not bliss to be ignorant.

Keyword research

Look for keyword ideas that are relevant to your campaigns.

Before you allocate budget towards them, it is important to fully understand the volume, intent, cost, conversion likelihood, and other factors.

Audit of quality score

What: Low scores usually mean low performing campaigns.

Analyse the data to increase low scores. This will ensure that the keywords you bid return ads relevant for the query intent, and eventually lead to a landing site that converts.

Audit of Ad Copy

Why? You’ll be able to optimize your PPC campaigns by constantly improving your ad copy.

Take a look at the individual ads copy snippets, and how they are assembled.

Is there any thing that could use a pin? Is everything submitted headline? Test new ads based on past performance.

General deep data analysis

Why? It is important to understand the workings of each hypothesis and then test them with experiments.

For PPC success, it is important to review your performance regularly

It is not advisable to let your attention drift from your campaigns too much, even with automated ad platforms. Paid search accounts can become unmonitored and even go sour.

Although it is not an exhaustive list, the following checks will ensure that your PPC campaigns are on the right track.

The post PPC management checklist: Daily, weekly, and monthly reviews was first published on Search Engine Land.

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