6 Common Questions of A PPC Executive

As a PPC exec, I get a lot of questions in a day. Most of these questions have straight forward answers which I often find myself repeating on a client-to-client basis. Which tells me that there really isn’t enough material out there to help inform people of the more common questions and concerns which can arise around PPC advertising. 

We are always on hand to assist with client query’s so if you have any other question that you think we can assist with then feel free to get in touch! Now, without further ado, here are my top 6 most common questions I get as a PPC marketer.

1. Could you tell us the spend breakdown between X and X?

Google ads can seem like a data minefield and it’s easy to get lost in the noise. You don’t want to start messing around with campaigns or settings in case you alter the set up and accidently tank your results. So, the question becomes, how do I pull figures while safe in the knowledge that I’m not going to alter the account? 

The answer is Google’s reporting system in Google Ads. Simply go to your ads account and select reports which can be found next to the search bar. 

You’ll be greeted with a lovely little drop down of pre-defined reports which cover most types of account data. But what if you need something a little more specific? No worries, just go to reports and create a custom report. There are multiple report types which can be created in Google ads, from your humble table report, clearly displaying data for analysis, to your titillating bubble charts, for when you want to spice up your board reports with some steamy, easy to digest visuals.

Whatever data you could ever need can be easily dropped into the pre-defined fields. Need to look up the spend of a specific campaign? Easy. Want to see where in your targeted locations has the strongest conversion rate so you can inform other marketing channel strategy? Childs play. Want to see how many invalid clicks that your campaigns have accrued? I’m not sure why you would particularly want too… But it’s an option! And that’ the point.

Google’s reporting system is very intuitive, they almost build themselves. So, get in there and have a go, it’s the best way to get used to it and you’ll never be waiting on that data again. 

2. Can we push more in X campaign?

You’ve got a campaign on your account which is bringing home the bacon. High ROAS, low cost, excellent CPC price, great returns. It stands to reason that you would want to push more budget into these campaigns to maximise your ROI. But can you? There’s a very easy way to tell if you can spend more budget on a particular campaign or your account and that is the ‘Impression Share Lost Due To Budget’ metric. This metric can be found in the campaigns tab of your Google Ads account (can’t see it? Go to columns and you will be able to find a check box to select the ‘Search lost IS (budget) under ‘competitive metrics’). 

You’ll be greeted with a percentage. This is the percentage of impression share that was lost over your selected date range due to ads being limited from serving because of the campaigns budget. This is a quick way to check to see if you can push extra budget into high performing campaign groups.

“But what if the impression share lost due to budget is 0%? Does that mean I’m not able to gain anymore impression share through my campaign?” No, not necessarily. Just because a campaign isn’t losing impressions due to budget does not mean that the campaign can’t be further improved. Google will also take ad quality into account during the auction process to determine whether to show an ad. Anyone could throw £10,000 a day at a campaign but unless it has a solid structure and high-quality score there is no guarantee that your ads are going to show for the maximum amount of impression share. This is what we PPC execs are here for though, to ensure campaigns perform as optimally as possible with the budget afforded to them. So as long as you’re with an agency like Infinity Nation, you won’t have to be worried about this.

3. Sales Are Down Today, What’s The reason For That?

This question tends to raise its head a lot and can apply across multiple different performance metrics. Conversion rate dropping over a day is another prime example of this question. Ultimately most PPC marketers will agree that 1 weeks’ worth of data isn’t an adequate time span to formulate any stead fast assertations. 30 days is usually the baseline amount of data that a marketer will want to be able to give a frank and accurate assessment of performance changes.

It can rightfully seem disconcerting to clients when a performance metric appears to take a dive over a day or 2, but the important thing to keep in mind is the overall performance of the account in relation to the current reporting period. If there is a substantial drop over a month, then absolutely, it’s time to call in the cavalry, but if you are only noticing a drop over the span of a few days, I implore you to hold off on raising, because this can usually be attributed to a market trend. Everything from unseasonably sunny weather to breaking news could draw customer attention away from the prospect of online purchasing. Typically, performance will usually bounce back when normality ensues. Often it can just be a case of a quite day, or even week. The most important thing to remember is performance against target, and how your agency is performing against it for the month. 

Don’t let a quiet day rattle you! With a solid strategy and account structure, and the right agency to help guide you through the digital landscape, you should ride out the quite days with lots of lovely profitable days too! 

4. Why Are We Running a Brand Campaign If We Already Rank Top On SEO?

Now, this is a completely valid question. You spend money for SEO optimisations to improve organic listings. You want to benefit from that as much as possible. So, if you are already ranking top for brand SEO terms then why bother spending PPC budget on branded keywords?

A brand campaign will be applicable on a case-by-case basis and will usually come down too how many competitors are bidding on your brand name. This becomes more likely an occurrence the more market share your company holds. With competitor bidding, ads for your competition will show above your organic listings when a prospective customer searches for your brand name, which increases the likelihood that these prospects will divert course and check out your competitions site. 

Brand campaigns generally fall into the category of brand defence and customer retention. Funnelling past audiences who are familiar with your products, site, or services into the site at a late stage of the sales journey. They allow the top of the search page to be dominated by your presence from both an organic and ads perspective, and as the ads target your brand name, you will in most cases be scored a 10/10 quality score on keywords. This means that CPCs will be dirt cheap, and you will show over your competition in almost all instances. But, this really is a case-by-case situation. If you haven’t got competition or re-sellers competing with your brand in the Google auction, they you probably don’t need a brand campaign. If you do, then the low cost, high ROAS that brand campaigns usually generate are worth the additional marketing budget.

5. How Long Is the Learning Phase?

Again, there isn’t a cut and dry answer for this, but generally it will take a new campaign a week to complete the learning phase. During this time, it’s best practice to not change things on the campaign as this can mess with Google’s automated optimisation algorithms. 

6. Why Don’t I Appear When I Google X Term?

This one is a classic. There could be any number of reasons why you don’t see your company’s ad when you search a particular term which you’ve been assured is being actively targeted on your account.

Usually, it will come down to the campaigns bidding strategies. There would be ways to maximise the visibility of certain terms. A maximise top impression share bid strategy could be applied with a very large daily budget for instance. This still wouldn’t guarantee you the top spot every time the term is searched for due to the nature of the Google auction. This strategy is also often not the most profitable when considering prospecting audiences.

To maximise the return of campaigns, alternative bidding strategies such as maximise conversions or target ROAS will generally generate a much better ROI, and in these instances, Google will be more selective over where the ads are served. Google will consider your past behaviours when determining what ads to show you, and if you have been on your site multiple times without making a purchase or have constantly googled a particular phrase to check if your ads are showing only to never interact with them (which you definitely shouldn’t be doing). Then Google will determine that these ads are not relevant to you and would be unprofitable to the campaign goals to keep pushing the ads to you personally.

Don’t panic! Just because an ad isn’t showing for you, it doesn’t mean it isn’t showing for everyone.Thank you to anyone who has read this far! I hope you’ve found this blog helpful. If you don’t work with us currently but think that we could assist in your business growth, then please get in touch! We would love to discuss how we can help grow your business in the digital landscape.