A good portion of successfully managing a PPC campaign is QC - quality control. Whether you are doing the work yourself, managing a team or outsourcing, staying on top of the quality of the work being done is critical to success.
Everything flows from the setup of a PPC campaign. Choosing the incorrect keywords or using incorrect landing pages can seem like minor mistakes but can have big consequences. One of the first keyword expansions I ever did was for an online education company. I was building out keywords for the different courses that they offered such as criminal justice, nutritional science, etc. Since this was a well known brand, the keywords were supposed to be more general so that we could capture a larger number of searchers. However, due to a poor checking on my part, the keyword “online banking” went live for the account. Needless to say, it wasn’t a very successful keyword but it was my first lesson as to the importance of checking and re-checking your work before making anything live. This same idea can be applied to most if not all other aspects of setting up a campaign from the keywords to the bids to the account/campaign settings.
URLs are also important. Dan Horton found the Aston Martin’s ad in Google isn’t working properly. This shows that you should be checking to make sure you’ve got the write landing pages, correct tracking tags and ALSO that your ads still work for users when they search for them. Using programs like excel or keyword and bid management tools can help you work faster, but at the same time, a small problem can be carried through to the rest of your keywords.
Reporting the wrong numbers can also be bad. Incorrect reporting can portray good performance when in fact the account is underperforming. It can make you and your company look bad in front of the client - especially if they’re the ones who point out the mistake. Inaccurate reporting can also lead to the wrong decisions being made for the account. Strategies and tactics change significantly depending on where the account stands and the degree to which it is either protiable or unprofitable.
These are just a few examples of the importance of having proper quality controls in place. Finding small problems now can keep them from becoming large problems in the future as well as saving you time and heartache. If you’re managing a team or outsourcing, don’t rely on them to double check their work until you can fully trust that they will do it correctly. Being able to spot the small problems before they are live will bring you one step closer to having a successful search campaign.
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