Find Budget Waste
In Google Ads
8 Simple Steps
Intro
In a recent study, Disruptive has audited over 2,000 Google Ads accounts and found that only 6% of all keywords delivered all the conversions, the rest were simply useless. In other words, on average 19 out of 20 keywords simply waste money.
According to our internal data, we see a similar story and keywords are our absolute internal "champion" (see the chart below). Yes, we do keep score of the mistakes we find on accounts when auditing them to find budget waste.
Today, we will share a simple method we often use when "discovering" client account for the first time. Things are often more complex, but this is enough to understand if you are wasting budget and estimate total amount of waste.
Google Ads 101
As mentioned above, there are many moving pieces in Search Ads (former Google AdWords). One of them, and perhaps the most important one, is keywords.
In a nutshell, the way the system works - you select keywords that are relevant to your business and to your landing page. Then you tune them using proper "match types" and add negative keywords. As a result, when a User searches for a keyword the system makes a bid on your behalf and your ad gets an impression. Then the User clicks, converts and now you have a lead.
In our experience, countless accounts fail to optimize Keywords properly or don't work on adding Negative Keywords often enough, as a result, your ads show for irrelevant searches which cost you money.
Here is a couple of examples of irrelevant searches:
1. A keyword that seems relevant does not convert for other reasons (e.g. "how to")
2. If you sell sunglasses and your ad shows up in search for "wine glasses"
2. DIY (do it yourself) is often an irrelevant search
The method described below will use your Google Ads data to see how many of the user searches did not convert on your
Identifying The Problem
Step 1 - Login to you Google Ads (AdWords) account
Step 2 - Click on Keywords
Step 3
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Click "Search Terms"
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From the dropdown menu select "Search Terms"
Step 4 - Select Date Range
When it comes to data - the more, the merrier. However, it’s up to you to decide how much data you need or what specific date range you want to review.
Step 5
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Click “Filter” as shown on a screenshot below.
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A dropdown menu will appear, select “Conversions”, then “Conversions” again and set the filter to lower than 1
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Click “Apply”
Step 6
Scroll to the bottom of the page.
You will see a row “Total Filtered Search Terms” and right under it - “Total: Account” row
Divide “Cost” in “Total Filtered Search Terms” by cost in the “Total: Account” row
The result is a percentage of spend that did not deliver any leads.
The account shown above has 62% budget wasted on keywords that don’t convert!! This means thousands of dollars that are wasted!
Now, don’t get me wrong, you can’t have all the keywords to convert all the time. However, you need to make sure that search terms that consistently don’t convert are added as negative keywords
Now you know what percentage of your budget is wasted!
Step 7
Click Download and select format.
Step 8
Go over the list of search terms and identify what keyword made you show up for this particular search.
Below we will show you a couple of examples of how it's done. First of all, to show up for keywords that are irrelevant to your business you don't have to select these particular keywords. For example, if you sell sunglasses, some of the keywords you advertise for may be "Sunglasses" or "glasses". If it's not optimized, you may be showing up for other irrelevant searches that contain words glasses:
Following our previous example with sunglasses:
1. Sunglasses New York - in case you have a local store located elsewhere, keyword "New York" will be irrelevant to your business, add it as a Negative Keyword
2. Buy Sunglasses Online - the same story here, if you have a local store and don't sell online, keyword "Online" is irrelevant, add it as a Negative
3. Sunglasses Repair - exact same idea, you don't repair sunglasses, you only sell them.
4. Sunglasses Near Me - as we can see from the data, this search term works great!
WE DO THIS DAILY
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