A Simple Pay Per Click Interrogation

I get a number of frustrated friends and associates asking me about their PPC campaigns and whether they think it should be better, or if it’s good. Sometimes smart people ask stupid questions. In my opinion it should never be a question — I mean not if you have to pose it like that. You’re either getting an ROI or you’re not; or you’re not interested in an easily measured ROI. If the latter, figure out a fucking way to measure it and get it going. If the former is not something presented to you or at least if your PPC management firm is not attempting to help you draw a conclusion then you need to move on.

For lack of time I can’t dig up more in depth questions which we’ve posed for people with mid-size+ pay per click spends but for most people, small business owners or people just trying to market something who are using a PPC agency the following questionnaire template will often bring to light some surprising information. Give it a try; you’ll either find out A)Your PPC Guru really is a fucking guru! (ugh, that word twice in one sentence… gross), B) He or She doesn’t know his or her arse from her earhole, or C) They’re dicks and blow you off or get defensive about t. Regardless of the outcome I’d want to know it.

Dear Dark Master of the Pay for Clicks Art, Please provide me the following:

List of keywords you are targeting, the cost per click/bids, number of clicks, and the number of impressions, average position , and individual as well as overall conversion rate – on a monthly breakdown for [3 months ago], [2 months ago], [last month] and a daily breakdown for  [3 months ago], [2 months ago], [last month].

Please also include which ad groups and campaigns these keywords belong to and the match types.

What pages of the site you are sending visitors to and what keywords are taking them to those pages?

Provide all of the ad copy that is currently running in the campaign and its performance data.

Are you running any site targeting campaigns? If so, please provide a list of websites that are being targeted.

Are you running the ads on content networks? If so what sites have you filtered out, if any? What percentage of the campaign is spent on the content network and what keywords are you running in it and what are the match types?

Are you doing any geographical targeting, limiting ads by time of day/day of week, language, etc? If so, please specify on an ad group level.

Have you made any strides to improve our Quality Score for Google Adwords? If so, what are they?

What have you cut eliminated, cut down on, or increased as a result of your analysis and campaign measurements during the course of the [# of months] we’ve been working together?

Share This