How to Easily Do a Quarterly Cleaning on Your Ad Account
A clean Account is a lean account. Make the most of your budget by keeping it updated with 7 essential steps.
So you created an ad account last quarter and it’s still running ads. You’re still good to go, right? Well, if you’d like to avoid wasting spend and prefer not to lose your sanity in the process… you probably want to revisit those settings to ensure your account is still aligned with current goals.
Unless you’re advertising to a stale audience list with an unchanged product/service (psst… this should actually never be the case), you’ll need to make sure your ad campaigns are evolving with your business goals. Being able to find and make changes to specific components of your campaigns is the key here and a cleanly organized account is the way to accomplish this.
Of course organization can mean different things to different people, but here are the 7 essential components you need to keep in mind when doing your quarterly ad account clean-up.
Campaign Naming Conventions
Are the accounts themselves sorted into clear campaigns and ad groups? How can you tell? Much like a grocery store groups similar items into the same area, it’s helpful to group the content in the accounts into units that make it easier to find what you’re looking for and name them appropriately.
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To implement a sound naming convention for your account, think about the account’s structure – what separates each campaign from other’s you’ll create in the future. The more specific you can be with your campaign names, the more manageable your account will be. Choose a naming convention and be consistent with your verbiage between different accounts, campaigns and your general work.
{READ MORE: NAME YOUR CAMPAIGNS LIKE A PRO}
User Permissions: Users vs. Admins
Keep an eye on your user list to be sure only the correct people have access to the account and with the correct permissions. Be sure to remove any old employees who might have retained their account information and add anyone who will be helpful to have on your team.
Campaign Scheduling
Determine the campaign run time using the account or campaign goal as a guide. Are you running an e-commerce limited time only sale? Are you a SaaS company trying to increase in-trial sign ups and demo leads? Understanding your campaign KPIs will guide how you schedule, budget and optimize for each campaign’s corresponding goal. It also provides clarity into campaign health and quickly highlights immediate changes.
Before you start scheduling all your campaigns away, make sure that you have done your due-diligence and researched the optimal times for target audience engagement. Apply this handyPaid Ad Dashboard by Tom Edmondson to your Google Analytics for a clear view of best conversion times / days, then adjust your schedule accordingly. For AdStage customers, you can easily schedule your campaigns, ad groups/sets, and ads to automatically turn on/off based on the times and/or day you’d like to show your ads.
Budget Pacing
By far the touchiest part of the process. If you’ve got an unlimited budget then you’re probably all good here… But the chances of that are pretty slim, right? Most paid advertising companies have an auto-bid function calculating the recommended price per click they, but it’s up to you to determine if that fits within your budget. Again, check your analytics reports and increase or decrease budgets as needed.
The key here is to be aware. You should never hop into your campaigns only to learn you’ve overspent your budget or bids. Know what you have to work with, know which campaign each portion is going to, and monitor it regularly. If you’re an AdStage customer you can use Automated Rules to perform campaign tasks that trigger based on performance criteria you set. For example, you can easily pause/start campaigns, and even increase/decrease budget or spend, based on metrics like cost-per-click, cost-per-acquisition, click-thru rate and much more.
Conversion Tracking
What’s the point of watching a baseball game if no one is keeping score or stats? The same could be said for creating an ad campaign without measuring the results. Review the goals of the campaigns and decide what metrics will signify success. Make sure the conversion tracking is properly applied! This is a common mistake that can cost you valuable data.
There are multiple types of conversions you might want to track – do you care about form submissions? Purchases? Engagement? Decide what metrics you want to know and make sure the tracking code is linked to those specific parts. For example, having your conversions tracked on your landing page won’t tell you if a customer completed their transaction.
{READ MORE: CONVERSION TRACKING}
Ad Copy
Are all your ads approved to run? Or are there some lingering in the unapproved list that need to be updated and resubmitted? Remember that relevance is fleeting so you’ll probably want to make sure all keywords and ad copy are still applicable to your goals. Check that each ad has consistent copy across your headlines and landing pages – also don’t forget to include edited a prominent CTA.
Placement/Targeting
As daunting as it can be to jump into someone else’s frame of mind and organizational structure, taking over an account usually has some benefits – the leg work is done and the waters have been tested. Once again, refer back to your data. Is your targeting on point? Are you seeing a more specific audience converting? Tailor your ads and targeting to reflect that.
Quick Recap
To easily do a quarterly cleaning, check these 7 things in your ad account:
- Campaign Naming Conventions
- User Permissions
- Campaign Scheduling
- Budget Pacing
- Conversion Tracking
- Ad Copy
- Placement and Targeting
After you’ve performed all these audits try to document the changes you made if the original campaign owner will be returning. If the campaign is all yours now… Relax! Everything is organized and should run itself with minimal oversight, just don’t forget to revisit these items every so often to keep things relevant and organized.