If you’re using AdWords chances are your account isn’t performing as efficiently as it could be!

Bold statement, but this observation is coming from a search marketing agency with experience of 50+ accounts with monthly budgets ranging from £500 – £50,000.

Ok, so the million pound question – why? Why isn’t AdWords being used efficiently? Because AdWords is not simple, there is a plethora of techniques and skills that AdWords demands from its user, that most don’t even realise.

Google is trusted by many people (for better or worse), and that is the first fundamental error when using AdWords – Google is a business, it would not make business sense for them to spoon feed and make AdWords easy, they would ultimately end up making less (AdWords contributes to 97% of their revenue!). The AdWords model has changed countless times over the last 10+ years, take a look at the most recent change – match type modifier, this new AdWords addition is set to make a ton of money from the ‘ unwary marketer ’.

Managing an AdWords account can be a time consuming process, but there are tools out there designed to lighten the load and give you an idea of how your account is performing like the WordStream performance grader.  Tools like this can be  handy to give you a foundation; however, internally we’ve always use best methods and practice built from years of PPC management experience when managing AdWords on behalf of our clients, supported by pages and pages of strategy documents.

Last year we came across this nifty bit of software called Goalscape, not only did we find it to be extremely useful when planning PPC management projects for our clients but also presenting and tracking our work in a visual, tangible way.

We have many Goalscapes for many different uses, varying from Goalscapes on social media strategy review and PPC marketing to optimisation of AdWords accounts.

Today we are feeling in a generous mood and want to share with you our ‘AdWords tune up’ Goalscape. This is a Goalscape that we use to help benchmark how a client’s account is currently performing; it helps us communicate visually to client where we believe focus should initially be set.

In case you are new to Goalscape, it works simply like this.

• Project name goes in the middle
• The key project elements surround this
• Then the subfactors of those project elements
• Then the sub-elements of those subfactors etc

As you can see, the key project elements in the AdWords tune up is ‘Keyword analysis’ comprising of 3 elements; Match type, Keyword mining and generation and Quality score. ‘Adcopy analysis’ is next  then account structure. If you are looking to give your AdWords account a tune or are looking to embark on your very first AdWords experience this Goalscape will really help you on your way.

You can view the full interactive Goalscape by liking our Facebook page.

Once you have liked our page you will then be able to interact with the AdWords Goalscape, read the notes that we have made and view the other tiers not visible in the image.

Have you used Goalscape before?
What are your thoughts?
Please let us know.