Guidelines for Evaluating Google Ads Performance

At Directive, we’ve audited over $145M in Google Ads for SaaS companies. Here’s how we can find any Google Ad problem (in under 15 minutes): 1. Offline Conversion Tracking Is Not Setup (or worse, setup incorrectly) Without offline conversion you’re trusting Google’s dashboards to tell you what’s working (they'll always tell you to spend more). Actual bookings are priority, but we need enough volume for the algorithm to properly optimize. Here’s a traditional setup we would follow (Lead > MQL > Demo > Closed Won) and the math behind it. Start with the value per deal (expected or actual) and multiply it by your close rate. So, 75k ACV * 25% close rate = $18,750 cost per demo. Then, $18,750* 50% MQL > Demo = $9,375 MQL And finally, $9,375 MQL * 5% Lead > MQL = $468 cost per form conversion. 2. Majority of Budget on Informational Intent Search Terms We often find accounts spending > 75% on search terms that have no commercial intent and massive differences when it comes to cost per demo. Go into the search terms report and filter non brand keywords. Then, filter to look at "keyword text contains" and input informational modifiers: - Software - Services - Provider - Companies - Vendor - Solution - System - Best - Tool - Platform - Reviews Now, compare these informational keywords to "keyword text does not contain". More than 75% in the informational group? Time to start cutting. Lastly, segment your campaigns so commercial and non commercial keywords aren't in the same campaign (e.g. don't have "employee recognition" in the same campaign as "employee recognition software"). Commercial intent keywords will fight lower intent keywords with more search volume that take the majority of budget. 3. Maximizing Search Impression Share vs. Top Campaigns Almost every Google Ad account has top performing campaigns limited by budget. Boiling the ocean with impression share will make your blended cost pers skyrocket. Quickly clean up wasted spend and re-allocate + focus funds into top performing campaigns (and immediately lift conversion volume and reduce CPAs). 4. Device and Demographic Optimizations If you haven't optimized the mobile buying experience you’ll be burning budget on mobile/tablet clicks. Seems obvious, but gets missed frequently by teams + agencies. Look at the demographics report for a mismatch in your buyer profile. Are you trying to sell to Directors, VPs, and C-Suite, but the vast majority of your budget is going to 18-24 year olds and 25-34 year olds? Keep cutting. TAKEAWAY: Don't get distracted by platform reports and ask yourself: Have I connected my CRM to my ad account to optimize for down funnel conversions? Is my budget going to search terms that have commercial intent? Am I maxing out my spend on my top performing campaigns? Our team does dozens of these audits per month, and we make sure you never have to worry about this again. Get in touch -> https://lnkd.in/epFi8gRb

Your Google Ads need to be held to close won revenue AND efficiency, not just MQLs/pipeline generated. Let me show you an example. 👇 Company X* spent 70% (in the millions $) of their budget on Google Ads in a quarter, hit pipeline creation goals - it was deemed a successful channel, and they kept pouring money into it. But, it had an Ad CAC payback period of multiple years to recoup (!!). → If you held the program against MQLs/pipeline creation goals: They were succeeding. → If you held it against closed won revenue: It was showing closed won results. → If you held it against closed won revenue AND efficiency: It was bleeding money. First, You have to hold capture demand programs (like paid search) to direct attribution. You should be able to hold each campaign, ad set, and keyword to closed won revenue. Due to the intent of this channel, it’s not a place to create demand. If you’re not currently tracking your paid search in your CRM down to this level, this is step 0. You also need to know when to dive into the data deeper. Based on the keywords, overall spend, campaign setup, and conversion volume, I knew there was something up with the platform. The high-intent conversions were getting bloated, diluting the intent due to how they were getting generated. I see so many instances where teams haven’t split their funnel to understand in a micro view what’s going on. Many companies don’t catch these efficiency holes if they’re looking at performance blended and have a strong organic performance, which happened here. It’s easy not to look at how efficiently the channel performs if your overall marketing efficiency is profitable. Note: As you scale and become bigger, your efficiency will decrease. But it shouldn’t prevent you from holding yourself accountable and being able to dig into the data. As budgets become slimmer, Google Ads is the first place I look to “do more with less” with the budget. Make sure it’s not just generating leads, pipeline, and revenue but also efficient in doing so. The scale at any cost isn’t the game anymore. 
(*real performance analysis, anonymous for obvious reasons. :))

The difference between profitable and failing Google Ads accounts often comes down to one thing: which metrics you're tracking. I've optimized accounts from $10K to $100K+ monthly spend, and the process always starts with setting up the right data columns. Most advertisers focus on vanity metrics while missing the numbers that actually determine profitability. For successful campaign management, you need to configure your Google Ads dashboard to show: conversions, cost per conversion, cost, impressions, clicks, and conversion rate. But there's a critical issue Google doesn't tell you about: conversion reporting lag. Your standard conversions column often shows incomplete data for recent periods (sometimes missing up to 30% of conversions!). This creates a dangerous situation where you might pause or reduce budget on campaigns that are actually hitting your targets. The fix is simple but powerful: create a custom column for "CPA by Conversion Time" using cost ÷ conversions by conversion time. This gives you accurate, real-time cost per conversion data rather than relying on delayed reporting. For e-commerce accounts, do the same with "ROAS by Conversion Time" to see your true return on ad spend as it happens. Also vital: monitor your Search Impression Share to identify scaling opportunities where you can capture more market share while maintaining profitability. If you're hitting your CPA targets with only 20-30% impression share, you're leaving significant growth potential on the table. Setting up these columns takes just minutes but transforms how you make decisions in your account. Comment "COLUMNS" below to get my complete Google Ads metrics setup guide with step-by-step instructions for both lead gen and e-commerce accounts. (Please send a connection request if we're not already connected so I can share it directly!) #GoogleAdsMetrics #PPCOptimization #DigitalAdvertising #PPC #SEA #SEM #googleadscolumns

Spending $5M on clicks that lead to low conversion rates and a long payback period is not sustainable. Last week I audited $5M in paid search spend for a client. On the surface, things looked solid: 350K clicks, steady traffic, and positive feedback from the C-suite. But when I took a deeper dive, the reality was a bit diff. 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟭: 𝗙𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘀, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰 High traffic numbers can be misleading. It’s critical to evaluate how that traffic translates into actual business results. Discovery: Despite the $5M spend, we only drove 800 platform conversions, resulting in $3.5M in pipeline and $1.2M in closed-won ARR. → $6.25K per MQL → $15K per qualified opportunity → $50K cost to acquire a single customer, with a 36-month CAC payback period. This wasn’t hitting their growth targets. 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟮: 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗯𝘂𝗱𝗴𝗲𝘁 Over $200K was spent without driving a single conversion, revealing inefficiencies that needed immediate attention. Discovery: 50% of the search budget ($2.5M) was allocated to non-branded campaigns, but these only accounted for 25% of total opportunities, with a cost-per-opportunity nearing $40K. → Non-brand CAC: $120K → Brand CAC: $35K Non-branded campaigns were clearly underperforming, costing far more to bring in leads. 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟯: 𝗔𝗱𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗯𝘂𝗱𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗯𝗶𝗱𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗲𝘀 To resolve this, I recommended reallocating spend and resetting the bid strategy to focus on high-intent keywords. Discovery: A one-size-fits-all budget approach hides inefficiencies. We needed to direct more spend toward keywords and campaigns that consistently generated qualified leads. → Pause keywords that haven’t generated high-intent conversions in the past 90 days. → Optimize the bid strategy for high-intent conversions instead of TOFU metrics. 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟰: 𝗥𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝗰𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 The search ads were largely attracting low-intent prospects due to education-based keywords. It’s important to shift messaging to target higher-value audiences. Discovery: “What is” and “how to” queries attract traffic, but they often don’t convert into paying customers. → Focus on intent-driven queries that are aligned with decision-making stages in the buyer’s journey. 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟱: 𝗦𝗲𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘀 Whenever you make major adjustments to budget allocation and bidding strategies, there’s a stabilization period before performance can be accurately assessed. → Allow a few weeks for algorithms and bid strategies to stabilize before reevaluating results. TL;DR Budget cuts shouldn’t be reactive—they should be strategic.

I don’t believe in gatekeeping, So here’s the Google Ads checklist I’ve built over the last seven years, managing over $100M in ad spend. This will be a complete MASTERCLASS of information that your business NEEDS. (You better bookmark…you’ll be coming back to this one) Let’s get started: General Review (72-Hour Check) Every 3 days, you’re going to check that your campaigns are on track and running smoothly: Double-check budget and spending for budget optimization. Look at your ad positions and share impressions to maximize visibility. If you notice any underperforming keywords, pause them to optimize your ad spend, then monitor your Quality Score, which affects your CPC and ad rank. Click-Through Rate (CTR) is another key metric to watch for. Check your conversions to check the effectiveness of your keywords and ads. Don’t forget about error checks for ad integrity and delivery. If you want to make improvements to your keywords: Conduct a search term audit to find new opportunities and weed out irrelevant keywords. Add extra long-tail search terms to improve conversion rates. Identify and pause poorly performing keywords to adjust your strategy. Include extra negative keywords to avoid unnecessary costs. Review match types to fine-tune keyword triggering. Detailed Review (Every 5-7 Days) Once a week, you’ll dive a bit deeper into your campaigns by: Running a search query report to discover new keywords and add negatives. Check landing page performance (especially if you see high bounce rates or low time on site). Analyze device performance and adjust bids based on metrics. Similarly, you’ll look at geographic performance and modify bids for various locations. Then, enhance your ads with extensions to raise CTR and make bid adjustments to focus on high-performing elements. You want to make sure your budget pacing aligns with your monthly budget. For quality score: Identify and improve low-quality scores so they don’t impact CPC and ad rank. To optimize bids: Search for possible bid optimizations to improve efficiency. Monthly Review(Every 30 Days) At the end of each month, you will THOROUGHLY examine your campaigns: Prepare a monthly report summarizing performance and make new goals. Do a trend analysis to identify long-term changes. Expand your keyword list to create opportunities and redo strategies for different seasons. This kind of competitive analysis helps you stay ahead by helping you understand what others are doing. Evaluate your campaigns against performance benchmarks to measure ROI. Conversion Action Checks: Check call extension reports and conversion actions for accuracy. Location Targeting: Exclude non-targeted locations to avoid spending waste. Campaign Goal Settings: Review your goals to keep them aligned with your current business objectives. If you're having trouble scaling or can't figure out that one missing piece, implementing this review system might be exactly what you need.

B2B companies dramatically overspend on paid search with very low ROI because the reports & metrics they use ALLOW IT to happen. All you need to measure is two core revenue metrics: 1. $ Closed Won Revenue : $ Ad Spend (Lagging) Example: For every $1 we spend on Google ads, we get $2.20 in revenue. You should be targeting an absolute minimum of 1:1. Very few B2B companies I interact with ever get this minimum baseline metric. 2. $ HIRO Pipeline : $ Ad Spend (Leading) Example: For every $1 we spend on Google Ads, we get $10 in HIRO pipeline. Our HIRO win rate is 25% historically, so we can project forward that we’ll get approx $2.50 in revenue for every $1 investment in Google Ads. ___ This will immediately tell you whether your investment in paid search is working (Paid Search is one of the Top 3 largest annual Marketing expenditures at most B2B companies). Then, break down these metrics by each core campaign group: 1. Branded 2. High Intent Non-Branded 3. Low Intent Non-Branded 4. Competitor With this view, you’ll probably see that the blended ROI you see on paid search is actually being propped up by Branded keyword conversions that would’ve happened anyway, while non-branded and competitor campaigns are bleeding big losses & negative ROI. __ If B2B companies evaluated their paid search investment through this simple, logical lens, they would spend 50-75% less on paid search every month. Because that investment is clearly not driving actual business outcomes or positive ROI when evaluated through this lens. Which would create a large additional budget that could be deployed to much more effective GTM programs. #b2b #marketing #google #gtm #sales p.s. Paid search is a 100% demand capture channel. By definition, if someone makes a search, it's a signal of intent. The only appropriate way to measure demand capture is how much of that intent you've captured into sales meetings, pipeline, and revenue. Don't overcomplicate it. p.p.s. You don't need any fancy technology to do this. Implement persistent UTMs and track it to opportunities in Salesforce against the converting contact.

One of the most underappreciated data points Google Ads gives is the "Quality Score." I’ve audited MULTIPLE enterprise B2B SaaS port-cos that neglected it, burning hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in wasted spend. >> What It Is Quality Score << Google's 1-10 rating of the quality and relevance of your keywords and PPC ads. It's made up of: — Expected clickthrough rate — Ad relevance — Landing page experience >> What’s a Good Quality Score << A score of 7-10 is considered good, 5-6 is average, and 1-4 sucks. Anything under a 7 is wasted money. >> Why It's Important << Quality Score directly affects your ad rank and cost per click (CPC). Higher scores = better ad positions and lower costs. Lower scores: crappy ad positions and higher costs. Think about it as Google's way of rewarding relevant, well-crafted ads. Per SEMRush, improving your Quality Score from 5 to 7 can reduce your CPC by up to 28%. And a 10 can decrease CPC compared to the average by 30-50%. >> Where to Check It << 1. Sign in to your Google Ads account. 2. Navigate to the "Keywords" section 3. Add the “Columns” Quality Score, Landing page exp., Ad relevance, Exp. CTR 4. Gasp when you see shitty scores and the words “Below average” >> Ignore It At Your Own Risk << I've seen companies waste millions because of low Quality Scores. One B2B SaaS company was spending $100K/week on ads with scores of 1-3. Google was charging them $42 per click for some keywords. They might as well have been throwing money around like confetti. >> How to Optimize Quality Scores << 1. Ensure your keyword, ad copy, and landing page all align on language & value prop/s. 2. Use your target keywords in your ad copy (seems obvious, but you'd be surprised). 3. Make sure your landing page is relevant to the keyword (make sure the keyword’s in there a few times). 4. Use exact instead of broad-match keywords. 5. Review and optimize underperforming keywords weekly if not more P.S. Fellow marketers, let's have at it. What are your thoughts on Quality Score: good, bad, ugly, and badass?

🔍 My Google Ads audit process (pt 2): Campaign structure & settings review. In my last post, I covered top-level insights like conversion tracking and performance drill-downs. However, performance data only tells one part of the story. The other part lies in the structure and how the campaigns are actually set up. For this part, I like to ask myself a bunch of questions rather than having a prescriptive list to follow. Campaign Distribution:  👉 Campaign types: What are the different campaign types active in the account? What is the distribution of spend and conversions? How many campaigns are active? Is there an opportunity to consolidate? Opportunity to build out more granular campaigns and see better results?  👉 Is branded search running? Is it responsible for the majority of conversions? What is the % of ad spend relative to the account? 👉 For non-branded search, are the keywords too general? Too specific? What landing pages are being used for non-branded? Does it align with the keyword and the ad copy?  👉 Are display campaigns active? Is retargeting running (assuming the account is eligible for retargeting)? Are there any ad groups or specific audiences that are responsible for the majority of traffic? Are ads mostly showing on apps? Campaign Settings:  👉 Are search campaigns on the display network as well? I recommend search network only. 👉 Is the ‘automatically create assets’ option selected? Recommend turning that off!  👉 What bidding strategies are being used? Are there enough conversions to warrant an automated bidding strategy? If campaigns are on manual CPC bidding, would an automated strategy make more sense given the volume of conversions?  👉 Check out location targeting. Is it relevant to your client’s business? I’ve seen some accounts where they serve very specific markets, but have either the entire state or the entire US (!) targeted. Campaign Structure:  👉 How many ad groups per campaign? Is it just one? Are there a ton?  👉 Do the keywords in each ad group have a similar theme? Does it make sense for these keywords to live together and be tied to the same ads and landing pages? 👉 If there are a bunch of disparate keywords in the same ad group, it’s time to make a plan to get them in a better-organized structure.  👉 Overall, the campaign and ad group structure should indicate there is a purpose being served by the campaign, and the ad group houses the more specific targeting for a given theme that supports the campaign's purpose. Phew! It’s looking like there will be a couple more parts to this series. Stay tuned! 📺 I feel like campaign and ad group structure is so subjective. Do you have a specific structure methodology you adhere to? 👋 I'm Emily - a PPC and marketing analytics expert specializing in helping businesses get more leads from paid ads.  🔔 Follow to stay up to date with my insights and findings.

I cut nearly $12k in ad wastage. And our campaigns at RevenueHero? They started performing better. Here’s our playbook: If you’ve spent even 12 seconds trying to understand which keywords drive conversion on Google ads, you know how frustrating it is. You dive into your search terms, looking for the magic words that bring in clicks and conversions. But instead, you’re left piecing together incomplete puzzle pieces, wondering what’s really driving performance. You know the feeling, right? Enter n-gram analysis. Instead of looking at the entire keyword, n-gram lets you break your performance down to even a specific word. If you take the keyword “wow this is cool”, it has: A) three 2-grams (“wow this”, “this is”, and “is cool”), B) two 3-grams (“wow this is” and “this is cool“), and C) four 1-grams (“wow”, “this”, “is”, “cool”). To get this data out of google ads, I used Nils Rooijmans’ script. Once I had the data, it was time for pattern matching: 1️⃣ High-cost, low conversion words: This is obvious. There are often words that you can immediately spot that spend a ton but never convert. We had some of these and we cut them immediately. 2️⃣ High conversion, low cost keywords: This isn’t that straightforward. Sure, you might be tempted to increase budgets immediately. But have you already maxed out your impression share and click share for these words and phrases? If you have, there’s nothing much you can do at this point. If not, you can consider increasing bids accordingly. But to which keywords do we increase bids? That’s where point 3 comes in. 3️⃣ Long-tail gold: We uncovered some words that drove conversions in the previous step. But I want to dig deeper. So we looked into 2-gram, 3-gram, and even 4-gram to see if there are specific patterns that drive majority of conversions. And we found some. To give you an example, you might see the word “care” have 11 conversions. But if you did a 2-gram, you’ll notice it was actually “dog care” that drove 8 of the 11 conversions. Pretty cool, right? 4️⃣ High impressions, low-clicks When we saw keywords relevant to our business get impressions but not enough clicks, we moved them to a separate ad group and optimized the copy. Instant increase in CTRs and some early signs of conversions. 5️⃣ New keyword opportunities Honestly, we didn’t find any because most of our keywords are running on exact matches. But if you run a lot of phrase matches and broad matches, I think you’ll find some gold in here. I’m hitting my character count here. So I’m gonna drop the playbook below for you to read the entire thing 😄

You can’t sell to an empty room. But you also can’t sell in a crowded room of people who have zero need for your offering. This is the case with so many deployed marketing budgets. Excited about the impressions and traffic volumes, but fail to properly evaluate results downstream. We were spending $20k/mo on Google Ads. It was generating insane campaign results — solid impressions, healthy CVR (site visits), boosted MAUs. Looked great in theory and user charts were on the rise MoM. (Really easy to tell the story that I was doing a great job as CMO.) But demo requests should’ve also been on rise. They weren’t. So I began evaluating downstream metrics, site visits: - Bounce rate climbing. - Site engagement falling. - CVR (demo requests) plateauing. (Really easy to blame the product team for poor UX.) I was obsessed to understand. Kept digging. Evaluated those same metrics by source. - Paid Google: 99% bounce rate - Paid Google: 0.5% site engagement - Paid Google: 0% CVR (demo requests) Then by referral site. - Paid Google Referrer: recipesrus. com - Paid Google Referrer: mymomsblog. co - Paid Google Referrer: bestplacesinitaly. net My Google campaigns were 100% at fault. Impressive metrics on Campaign Manager. Terrible metrics once users hit our site. And is it any wonder? Referral traffic coming from recipe travel and personal blog sites??? I was selling vertical B2B software. 1. Take accountability for your job as a marketer to deliver high quality demos. 2. Know what is happening upstream, but get obsessed with how they move downstream. 3. Pay attention to diminishing returns. Slow changes over time likely mean something valuable to adjusting strategy. For us? We learned that paid Google campaigns were just not the right play anymore. No matter how tight and sophisticated our segmentation, our ad placement was still ending up in large rooms of completely irrelevant buyers. We added $20K/mo back to our budget to use in a smarter way. Our user counts dipped, but our CAC improved alongside other important user engagement metrics. Don’t be afraid to make a change that sacrifices quantity/volume for quality/return. Get obsessed with each phase of your funnel and how it converts. Know your CVR from: - Campaign/Channel > TOFU - From TOFU > MOFU. - And MOFU > BOFU. - BOFU > Customer. Dig deep. Your future CAC (and BOD) will thank you.