Something is not right.  You have that niggling feeling that you aren't getting as much out of your investment in Adwords as you could.

How do you know if your campaign is running as well as it could?

First things - is it generating quality leads and/or sales?

That is the most important factor.  If it's increasing your profits, then that's all good then. 

Unlesss....

You aren't getting a good return on your investment

If you are paying $1000 a month for your Adwords campaign including management fees and you are seeing a $1500 increase in revenue, then that's good too, right?

But revenue doesn't mean profit.  If that $1500 only results in $500 profit then you are at least $500 worse off.

This is why tracking the sales that comes from Adwords is very important. 

So, what are the signs within the campaign itself that indicate it could be improved.

The Seven Signs

1.  There is no conversion tracking in place

If you haven't got Google Analytics linked to your Adwords Account and have conversion tracking in place you won't know how successful your campaign is.  Conversion tracking is when you can measure each enquiry form completion, document download, sign up or sale.

Even if your business is one that can't track anything tangible, you could look at factors like time on site.

2. The click through rates are low.

What is an acceptable click through rate (CTR)?  It's hard to say, but we consider anything less that 3% an area for improvement.  We do see clients with click-throughs of 1o%, 35% and higher but this is unusual except for very specific search phrases.  The more generic the phrase, the lower the click through rate.  If you've got click through rates between 0.0 and 2%, I'd be looking at those keywords and dumping them, or trying to improve the click through rate.

Look at the click through rates of each keyword individually, not the campaign as a whole. Dump the ones that are getting low CTRs. Look at the CTR of your Ads as well, and test out different wording to improve their click rate.

3. Low quality scores

If your quality score is less than 5, this can increase the amount you pay for the click and lower the position at which your ad is shown which will in turn lower your click through rates.

4. Large numbers of keywords.

If you have a large number (20, 30 or more) all under one Ad Group and/or with only one or two ads being triggered this is a sign of a poorly targeted campaign.

There is no 'rule' about how many keywords in each group, but the smaller the number the better targeting you can do.

5. Broad Match Types

If you set your keywords to use the match type 'Broad' then you could be getting a lot of search phrases triggering your ads that are not that relevant to your offer.

For example a broad match on 'hotel' could include 'luxury hotel', 'cheap hotel', 'back packers hotel' 'five star hotel' 'hotel with casino' 'family friendly hotel' etc.  And you can see not all of these would be relevant to an exclusive, 5 star hotel.

For more see Keyword Match Types Explained

6. Low impression numbers

This can be simply because your budget it set too low. Once you met your daily limit of click charges (if you've set one) your ads will stop showing.

You may also be targeting keywords that people simply don't use when looking for your products or services.

Or it could be that your target audience doesn't look for what you offer via search (Yes, it DOES happen).

OR - no one wants what you have to offer - worse case scenario, but that happens too!

7. Low conversion rates.

Click through rates good but still no sales? 

If you know you have a compelling offer, It's probably your landing page at fault and will be because of:

• One size fits all landing page (or sending them to your homepage)
• Lack of relevance between their search phrase, your ad and the offer on the page
• Poor design - including cluttered, illegible pages with poor grammar
• No clear call to action
• Too many distractions

Refer to the article Crafting great campaign landing pages to see how to improve this one.

There are lots of things you can do to improve performance of a campaign so you have to always be testing and trying new things. Keep what works, and stop doing what doesn't!