Google Ads – when to conduct the first performance analysis?

The best time to conduct the first major analysis of the effectiveness of your Google Ads efforts would be 2-3 weeks after the campaign has been launched. This will give you enough time to collect data while allowing you to react quickly if necessary.

The best time to do this is after the campaign has been launched.

Analyze campaigns in the search network

Conducting an analysis afterwards allows you to determine which keywords and ad groups bring the best results and which ones are worth excluding or modifying. The first analysis is just the beginning of the campaign optimization process. The key to achieving the best possible results will be regular monitoring and adjustment of activities.

What should you pay attention to when optimizing your Google search ad?”

We covered this issue in its entirety in the article „How to conduct an analysis of the effectiveness of Google Ads activities?” However, we will cite some basic indicators that are key in evaluating the quality of activities and their profitability, and we will analyze which indicators to analyze depending on the type of advertising. 

Goals of Google Ads campaigns

Defining goals – before analyzing the effectiveness of your efforts, it’s good practice to remind yourself what goals you want to achieve with your campaign. Do we want to increase the number of visits to the website, increase the number of contacts with potential customers or increase sales? Determining the campaign’s goals allows you to focus on the most important indicators and take appropriate action. If you don’t know what goals you want to pursue with your Google Ads campaigns, be sure to read our article „Campaign KPIs – what are they and how to set them?”. From it you will learn the most important issues concerning determining key performance indicators and how to determine and interpret them.

Keyword analysis

Keyword analysis – keywords are a key element of Google Ads campaigns, so you should pay special attention to them when analyzing the effectiveness of your efforts. Check which keywords brought the most clicks and conversions and how much they cost. It’s also worth paying attention to keywords that didn’t bring any clicks or conversions. You may want to exclude or change them, thus reducing advertising costs. 

Ad groups—analysis

Analysis of ad groups—Ad groups allow you to better target your ads and tailor them to your customers’ needs. When analyzing the effectiveness of your efforts, it is worth noting which ad groups yielded the best results and which should be modified or excluded. You may find that some ad groups attract interest but do not bring conversions. If this is the case, it is worth considering changing the ad content or better matching the ad group to customers’ needs.

Results quality analysis – another important element of analyzing the effectiveness of Google Ads activities is to assess the quality of results. It is worth paying attention to indicators such as Quality Score and click-through rate (CTR). A higher quality score means a better quality ad and, thus, a lower cost per click. On the other hand, a higher click-through rate means that the ad attracts customers’ attention and translates into more clicks, which usually means the best advertising results on the Internet.

Cost analysis—The final step in analyzing the effectiveness of Google Ads is cost analysis. It is worth checking how much individual keywords, ad groups, and campaigns cost as a whole. Not all the most expensive keywords will bring good results. In this case, it is worth considering changing the strategy or excluding these keywords.

How to optimize Google Ads?

After analyzing your account and advertising activities, you will face the challenge of optimizing them. So familiarize yourself with the most important data indicators you will need to optimize your campaign.

Highlights – as the name suggests, this ratio determines how often your ad has been displayed to users. A display is recorded each time your ad appears on a search results page or other page on the Google network. Hint – there may be a situation where your ad displays at the bottom of the page, and the user does not scroll down the SERP (search engine result page) to the bottom, thus not actually seeing the ad. This is not a dangerous precedent, as you pay for clicks on your ad, not displays; however, if you ever notice that despite many impressions, users are not clicking on your ad, you can try using a rate-setting strategy that will allow you to display your ad at the top of the search results. Take care of the displays if your marketing goal is to build awareness of your brand.

Google advertising – CPC (cost per click)

Clicks: a click is counted when potential customers click an ad. The number of clicks helps determine how attractive an ad is to users viewing it. Well-tailored ads are more likely to get clicks.

Click-through rate (CTR): The CTR is the percentage of people who access a page using an ad displayed to them. The value of a good CTR will vary depending on the product or service being advertised and the network on which your ads will be displayed. To increase CTR, focus on creating compelling ad text that is closely related to your keywords. Tip – we often focus on increasing CTR without considering the quality of traffic that comes to our site through ads. A high CTR indicates that the ad is inviting and users are eager to click on it, but this does not necessarily mean they will find what they are looking for on the site. Ensure that your ads clearly communicate what users will get when they click on them. This will allow you to attract users who are actually interested in your products or services.

Conversion analysis

Conversions: a conversion is counted when a user interacts with your ad and performs an action you specify. Conversions can range from purchases and registrations to phone calls to your business. When setting up conversion tracking, you specify what is counted as a conversion. To see the number of different conversions achieved, you can segment the data table by the action causing the conversion. If you don’t know how to implement and configure conversions on your site, you can find out in our article “Conversion tracking“.

Average cost per click (CPC average): an ad’s average cost per click. It is the ad cost divided by the total number of clicks. This is one of the most important ratios to consider when optimizing your campaign. Depending on your chosen strategy, you can focus on lowering the cost of clicks as much as possible, thus getting more users for the same amount, or you can focus on getting more expensive clicks that are also of higher quality and more likely to lead to conversions. The average cost per click can vary dramatically, depending on your industry, keywords, the geolocation in which you display ads or even demographics. That’s why optimising cost-per-click from different angles, such as ad groups, for campaigns, product types, and landing pages is important.

To access the real-time and historical data you need to evaluate your efforts effectively, you can use a dedicated tool like Google Analytics 4. In our article, we share useful tips, such as how to perform data analysis: Google Analytics 4 – tips that will make your daily work easier

If you want to professionally determine the KPIs of your marketing campaigns and choose the right promotional channels, you can use the services of Digital Agency The agency is primarily engaged in the planning and implementation of online marketing activities, which may consist of brand building, search engine advertising, public relations, creating marketing communications, optimizing online campaigns or data analytics. The agency’s marketing department will assess budget allocation, recommend PPC advertising solutions, and make any website changes.