The $57.2M Google Ads Health Checklist
$57,200,000 revenue at a 10.98 ROAS.
Want the same?
Today you get behind the scenes access…
Into the health checklist we use to ensure:
Your campaigns perform at their absolute best.
Make no mistake about it…
Knowing these 11 features (some quite hidden) &
Exactly what to do with them…
Can make or break your Google Ads campaigns.
Here’s a quick overview of them:
1. Automated Created Assets
You want to double check your account-level automated assets settings:
And ensure most of them are turned off.
Here are a few exceptions:
- Seller ratings
- Dynamic images
- Dynamic business names
- Dynamic logos
It would be best however, if you turned off:
- Dynamic business names
- Dynamic logos
And instead added these assets in manually to ensure quality.
2. Auto-Apply Recommendations
Another account level auto setting you want to review.
You want to turn off the majority of these.
Here are the two exceptions:
- Use optimised ad rotation
- Upgrade your conversion tracking
3. Account Level Negative Keywords
This is one to look out for.
Especially when taking on a new account.
Be sure to review the negative keyword lists and where they’re being applied.
Otherwise you may have a campaign’s performance limited without realising it’s the negative keyword list limiting visibility.
4. Purchase Conversion Actions
One mistake I’ve seen too many times:
Campaigns optimising against conversion actions that aren’t “purchases”.
You want to ensure your campaigns are only optimising against the conversion action which is generating you direct revenue.
Otherwise:
Your campaign will optimise against secondary conversion actions which won’t benefit your brand or campaign at all.
You can still track secondary conversion actions, but be sure within your campaign “Conversion goals” setting to select “Campaign-specific” > “Purchases” to prevent secondary conversion actions being optimised against by accident.
5. Customer Acquisition Goals
In short:
We recommend not applying this to any campaign.
If you want to bid more aggressively within a campaign that’s performing well…
Simply optimise the bidding strategy directly within the campaign itself.
In addition to this, you should have separate campaigns for new customer acquisition which is a much better way to target these customers as apposed to leveraging the setting.
To double-check if it’s being applied to your campaign, simply go into the setting and make sure “Customer acquisition” is not selected.
6. Customer Match
By default “Smart Bidding and Optimised Targeting” is turned on within your account.
This can lead to a gradual decline in your performance if you aren’t careful.
Here’s why:
Google automatically uses all Customer Match Lists in Smart Bidding and Optimised Targeting.
If you’ve uploaded customer lists that aren’t commercial for instance:
- All email users
- Site visitors
- Add to cart
Google will start optimising against these signals within your campaigns.
And you don’t want that.
The only customer list you want Google to use is your actual customer list of people who’ve purchased from you previously.
If you haven’t done so already, review this as soon as possible and remove all non-commercial customer lists:
7. Location Options
A classic Google Ads campaign oversight.
Within your campaign’s location options, be sure to select:
“Presence: People in or regularly in your included locations”
This will ensure the campaign only targets people within your targeted locations.
The recommended default setting of:
“Presence or interest: People in, regularly in or who’ve shown interest in your included locations (recommended)”
Will target people outside of your set target locations.
8. Location Targeting
Such a simple one to implement but is not often done so.
Most campaigns have location targeting set to a country level.
Instead:
Target each state/region separately (within your target country).
This will give you much clearer data you can optimise against later down the line.
Otherwise, you may be spending in locations which aren’t profitable without realising.
9. Ad Scheduling
A similar scenario to location targeting.
By default your campaigns will show 24/7.
However:
Adding in a daily ad schedule will allow you to review the data and optimise accordingly.
For example, some brands don’t perform too well over the weekend, adding this in will give you this visibility and allow you to reduce exposure across Saturdays and Sundays.
10. Bid Adjustments
Whether it’s:
- Ad schedule
- Location or
- Device
Bid adjustments, you want to review and remove all of these.
If you want to bid more aggressively within a campaign, do it directly within the campaign’s bidding strategy.
Don’t do so with other types of bid adjustments, it’ll drive up cost unnecessarily.
11. App Exclusions
This a mandatory for the majority of accounts.
On an account level, you want to exclude all app placements.
In total there are 140:
- Apple App Store (84)
- Google Play (56)
Spending on app placements has minimal to no impact on campaign performance.
Want A 10.98 ROAS For Your Brand?
All of this can be incredibly difficult and time consuming to understand and manage.
If you’re wanting to scale your brand but don’t have the time or expertise to do so:
You can work directly with us to manage and optimise your campaigns.
To get started, fill out the form and take the first step to transforming your brand’s growth.