Marketers generally don’t audit their search campaigns. But when they do it’s mostly because their campaign results don’t meet expectations or performance isn’t going well as it used to. So what people usually tend to do is put their search marketing up for tender, hoping that a new agency will get them back on track. However procurement takes time and once a vendor has been chosen, they typically take 3 months to ramp up and precious time has been lost from initial RFP to seeing actual improvements in performance, if this even happens. I believe that instead of waiting for campaign performance to be effected, what people ought to do is ask a neutral party to audit their campaigns. However, it is said search is part art (subjective) and part science (objective). You need to find a company that has a data driven methodology (objective) that goes beyond basics and best practise (subjective)

An audit should scratch deep below the surface of your paid results and ensure that you are making informed decisions on the correct data. While CTR, CPC, CPA, ROAS and conversion rates are indicators, these aggregations at campaign, group and even keyword level can be very misleading. The devil really is in the detail when it comes to paid search.

Chris Neuner, Managing Director – US,  wrote about this issue recently for iMedia Connection: basically the crux of it is that an audit can really benefit your campaigns because it helps to reduce budget waste, improve overall relevancy which impacts ad rank and CPC and leads to better results without compromising conversion volume. It can help marketers and agencies strengthen their relationship, the results they deliver, and proactively check whether campaigns are working or not.

If marketers decide to undergo an audit, they need to do so with objectivity and fairness in mind; work with a trusted neutral audit company and ensure that they do not view it as a means to replace their existing agency, but as an opportunity to highlight possible inefficiencies and gain ROI opportunities.