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Help
Hey folks, just looking to get some advice..
I run ads for a med-sized business in the travel sector. We use Google, Meta & Bing, mainly Google though for most volume.
We’re quite strict with conversions & CPA. Our campaigns are structured as follows:
Campaign Level(Destination Type) Ad Group Level (Destination)
We have a main campaign that targets destinations which consist of ad groups/keywords that are relevant to the destination or of the name of the destination itself.
Our 2nd main campaign is more of a generic campaign that is again relevant to the services we provide.
We then have smaller campaigns for the area of the destinations such as city, town etc as well as a couple of display remarketing campaigns and finally a brand campaign.
Generally, most of our volume is driven from our high spenders (Destinations & Generic) Before I started work on this client, the previous account manager incorporated broad match, and generally it brings in a lot of volume in terms of conversions, similar to exact & phrase as we spend a lot of money.
The issue I have is hitting targets. The client has daily, weekly & monthly conversion targets we must meet and anytime their not met, they start to panic. My previous clients we always used to focus on monthly metrics as I know there will definitely be daily fluctuations and weekly too. CPA is secondary.
The targets are created based on past year’s performance with a target growth number to achieve.
Performance generally on PPC has been ok, conversions are consistent however other channels let us down such as organic, email, social etc. but the pressure falls on me to reach the conversion targets regardless.
One thing that is annoying though is the fact that I’m looking at too much data. I’ll look in to Google ads for the previous day, but won’t see the full conversion data due to time lag/attribution. if I go in to analytic, some of the conversion data will be missing due to cookies, and the backend is not segments to see which sales came from where. all of the above is leaving me to feel a little overwhelmed.
I guess I need some advice on:
1. How to manage expectations
2. How to better view data accurately in terms of conversions in one place rather than trying to cross reference.
3. Broad match – previous account managers say: keep it running, the algo will figure it out. This goes against everything I’ve been taught on my previous role.Sometimes we’re down on conversions overall so much that I need to get the spend up massively to counteract it, but this also doesn’t work as well due to the time lag to convert. What is the best way to deal with this properly?
How do I scale efficiently to get more conversions, and having CPA as an afterthought?
With conversions in mind, apart from the conversion rate, what else do you look at to improve?
Looking back Historically at G Ads data in pivots, we seem to be consistent with sales, CvR
With my previous clients, I’ve always focused on ROI/ROAS, to ensure their returns are hitting the goals, with this clients it’s all about the sales.
PPC is their main driver for their trade, so when we’re not hitting targets, they assume it’s PPC that’s not performing properly.
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Can anyone help?
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Thanks!
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1 Reply
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Oh man. In my opinion having daily, weekly AND monthly lead goals seems pretty extreme for the reasons you mentioned – fluctuations are going to happen. You can’t control demand, you can only capitalize on the existing demand and search volume. I’d definitely tell the client this also limits the number of changes you can make, which could end up hurting performance in the long run. If monthly numbers are met, do daily lead numbers really matter? I’m not familiar with the travel industry so maybe they do. However it could be worth having a conversation with the client to better understand their needs/business goals. What bidding strategy are you using?
In terms of the data issue – are you able to work with the client to find a way to have more accurate conversion data within Google Analytics? I’d personally prioritize that.
You could try to improve your CTR’s and quality scores, and I’d also take a look at the landing page(s). Are there any pages that stand out as top performers? If so and if applicable test out sending more traffic there.
These are just a few ideas off the top of my head – hope this helps!
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