With increased competition, you need to refocus on the marketing spend and existing campaigns. If you are caught in a situation where you have to handle a Adwords account and cut the costs as well, it becomes a different ball game altogether.
Adwords management is all about continuous analysis and involvement. The focus should be on get low wasteful clicks and increase conversions. You need to first start by downloading the required reports for a certain time period which will serve as a base for reference and analysis. You can download the campaign report, adgroup report and the keyword report. You can analyze the data using the desired success metrics. Some steps to optimize an existing Adwords campaign are outlined here
1 Reviewing the current keywords and Keyword expansion
The keyword searches constantly change each month and you will need to keep on analyzing them using software like wordtracker or keyword discovery. You will need to add new keywords and delete underperforming ones. This will help in purging the keyword list and combining into better adgroups.
2. Improve keyword performance by Using Keyword matching options
You need to find out if the keywords are using Broad Match and need to implement keyword matching options. This will improve targeting and overall account performance. You can use phrase, exact, and negative matching options.
3. Writing new ad copy for the campaigns
If you are using an old copy, multiple ads and landing pages, it is suggested to create at least one new ad per adgroup and then split test it. You then need to analyze the results with the metric being used. If an underperforming ad needs to be deleted, then you need to analyze the data fully and then make the decision.
This should be done on a monthly basis. The Display urls should also be customized based on the keyword and adgroup being targeted.
4. Daily campaign management to maintain relevancy
You need to manage the bids on a daily basis so that you can increase the chances of finding the ads. You may need to pause underperforming keywords and reduce bids for high cost keywords. The target is to reduce the keywords that are not converting. But keep in mind that data should be constantly analyzed for backing the decisions being made.
5. Account Organization
If you have multiple campaigns, then you might need to restructure and see if they are required. Sometimes only one or two campaigns are sufficient.
6. Create Your New Campaign
You may need to create new campaigns as well. You can use the Google Build out Spreadsheet and then upload using Adwords Editor. You can create new or replace old campaigns as required.
