Its 99% Likely your Paid Media Campaigns are far from Optimal

Digital paid media is like stock trading. You are investing your companies hard-earned money and just a few mistakes can be the difference between extreme success or total failure.

Like stock trading, managing and optimising paid campaigns can be complex and is subject to trial and error. It’s very hard to keep on top of all the platforms and settings, even if it’s yours or your agencies full time job. In most cases there will be multiple channels being utilised from Google Ads, to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and potentially programmatic or premium (direct buy) media placements. So it’s hard “to see the wood from the tree’s” when you are managing so many small component parts that make up and overwhelming big picture.

View a sample of what is included in an Algorithm Paid Media Audit and Recommendations.

So, here’s a list of the most common questions (or things to check) to help ensure that your money is being invested for the best possible return:

• What is the current performance of tracked goals and actions (trended)?
• How does current performance vary by landing page?
• Which competitors have a strategy most like yours? Are they more or less aggressive than you?
• How does performance vary between different devices (desktop, mobile and tablet)?
• Are partner networks of inventory adding any value to your performance (like the Google Search Partner sites, for example)?
• What is performance like at Campaign, Ad and Keyword / Placement level. Critically are bad things eating your budget and are the good things being restricted as a result?
• How does performance vary by day of week and time of day?
• Which are the highest non-converting items, that are wasting your budget?
• Which traffic is irrelevant (negatives may be required)?
• Are your budgets capped and therefore restricting higher performing campaigns?
• Which elements of your ads (headlines/descriptions) are performing well or poorly?
• Which display placements (websites) are eating your budget without any performance being associated
  with them?
• Are your remarketing audiences set up correctly (or set up at all)?
• Are your ad and analytics accounts linked up correctly?
• In simple terms what needs to be fixed in what priority order to make the biggest positive impact on your campaign?

Lastly, don’t forget the importance of Conversion Rate Testing, just a few simple tests and variations could transform your conversion rate. Find out more about the basics of Conversion Rate Optimisation in our recent guide.

If you are not sure where to start to optimise your paid media efforts, contact us for further assistance.

Article Author : Simon Lloyd