Search engine marketing (SEM) can provide ample value for your clients, but only if you’re running campaigns worth writing home about and presenting audit reports that communicate meaningful insights. Whether you’re presenting an audit report to a potential client to summarize their account status or providing one to an existing client to showcase your work and demonstrate return on investment (ROI), it’s important that it’s well-structured. A well-structured audit report is generally one that’s goal orientated, comprises the key elements and makes use of a logical outline.
In this article, we discuss how to establish clearly defined reporting goals, detail how to outline your Google Ads audit report, offer tips for creating an effective report and share the benefits of getting your client reporting right.
Establishing your reporting goals
Google Ads audit reporting is not something you can conduct effectively with a ‘one size fits all’ approach. So, before you get into the nitty-gritty of developing your report outline, it’s important to first clearly define your reporting goals. An important thing to consider when undertaking this process is what success actually looks like for the account at hand. When you know what you want to achieve, you can create a reporting outline that perfectly aligns.
Some examples of Google Ads audit reporting goals might be:
Providing a general overview of an account
Demonstrating ROI
Exhibiting your work
Tracking account progress
Highlighting performance trends
How to outline a Google Ads audit report for clients
There can be several effective ways to outline a Google Ads audit report for your clients, depending on your reporting goals and their account objectives. Below, you can find an example of one way to outline your document, including a breakdown of the various sections and the information you might cover in each:
Section 1: Overview
It’s a good idea that the first section in your Google Ads audit report summarizes the client’s primary Google Ads key performance indicators (KPIs) and the overall assessment of their account. This can make it easy for them to comprehend their account’s performance at a glance.
In this section you can include, for example, their target cost per in-app action (CPA) and return on ad spend (ROAS) and whether they’re achieving this target. The overview section of your audit report can also be a good place to include their quality score, spend allocations across their various campaign types and conversion rate.
Section 2: Tracking
The next section can cover how the client is currently tracking their performance and if it’s effective, or, if not, what’s required to make it effective. In this part of your audit report, you can outline the status of their conversion tracking, specifically, if it’s set up correctly and tracking the key objectives.
Depending on the client’s business and requirements, you might also use this section to refer to the status of their auto-tagging if they’re using Google Analytics tracking.
Section 3: Bid and budget management
Next, you can discuss bid management and budget management matters. For bid management, this might include outlining the current bidding strategies. For example, whether manual CPC bidding or smart bidding is in use and how it aligns with the client’s business goals.
When discussing the budget, it can be important to address whether it’s sufficient as well as how it’s allocated over the client’s campaigns and whether there’s a requirement for adjustments.
Section 4: Search
This section can be a good place to discuss everything search-related, for example, when their ads are seen, where their ads are seen and who their ads are seen by. After taking an in-depth look at the client’s campaign structures, you may report on, for example, the targeting of distinct user personas or the advertising of specific products or services.
It can be a good idea to discuss the effectiveness of the client’s ad copy and landing pages in this section, as well as delve into keyword selections, conversions and match types. You can include your recommendations for search optimization in this part of your audit report, too.
Section 5: Shopping Ads and feed
After analyzing the performance of your client’s Google Shopping campaigns, you can include your findings in this section, along with a summary of how their inventory types, descriptions and categories align with current Google policies. This section can include the structure and priority of their shopping campaigns, as well as the traffic and revenue the individual campaigns generate.
Depending on the nature of your audit, you may choose to also include the findings of your analysis of their product grouping and segmentation strategy.
Tips for creating a great report
Below, you can find a few tips to consider when creating a Google Ads audit report that highlights your expertise to your clients:
1. Focus on metrics that matter
Your initial thought might be to provide an audit report that’s bursting at the seams with insights. However, it’s important to realise which are actually of importance to the client’s overall goals and focus your report on those. A good approach to this can be to identify five or six primary metrics in relation to your client’s overall Google Ads account performance.
2. Transform data into information
Data can be of little relevance to your clients without context. It can also be easy for your North Star to get a little lost in your audit report amongst the number crunching. Your clients are likely less interested in the numbers themselves than what they mean, how they relate to their business growth and whether they align with their overall marketing strategies.
To create a highly effective Google Ads audit report, it’s essential that you transform data into comprehensive information. You can do this by providing visualisations and adding notes to various sections that provide reasoning for variances in metrics, for example.
3. Comparisons are key
Providing comparisons in your audit reports can be an effective way of illustrating Google Ads performance to your clients. Two beneficial comparisons worth including in your report are historical data and industry benchmarks.
For historical data, you can compare client account performance over time, for example, over weeks, months, quarters or years to indicate progress. For industry benchmarks, you might include insights that highlight how your client’s account metrics compare to those of other businesses in the industry.
4. Provide clear action items
Ultimately, conducting a Google Ads audit gives you an opportunity to identify areas of your client’s Google Ads account that require improvement. It’s essential that you relay this information back to the account holders through your audit report rather than providing them with a report that leaves them saying, “Ok, and?”.
Aim to create an action-orientated audit report that not only highlights areas that require enhancing but also provides a list of actions required to do so. You might include flash notes for recommendations for each section, or you may choose to include a specific recommendations section in your audit report outline.
5. Time it right
Like with most things, consistency is key to Google Ads audit reporting. A major factor behind the effectiveness of your reporting is your reporting schedule. It’s a good idea to pick a schedule, whether it be weekly, monthly or quarterly, and then maintain it.
The ideal timing for your audit reports can vary depending on many elements, each of which has its own unique benefits. For example, submitting monthly reports can help you communicate account goal progression to your clients, whereas submitting an audit report quarterly may be more beneficial for communicating your efforts surrounding a high-level strategy.
Benefits of an effective client audit report
While perfecting your Google Ads audit reports for your clients can take time, it can produce many benefits, including:
Facilitating efficient decision-making: An effective audit report provides a client with the important information they require about their Google Ads account. Equipping your clients with this comprehensive information can foster collaboration and practical decision-making.
Highlighting key points: A well-structured audit report typically summarizes the key metrics and account activity in an overview section and then elaborates on them throughout the rest of the report. This can assist you with directing your client’s attention to the insights that matter most.
Showcasing your expertise: As your clients aren’t usually present while you conduct the day-to-day activities on their Google Ads account, they might not understand exactly what you do, when you do it or why you do it. Your audit report gives you a great opportunity to highlight your efforts, the results of the actions you’ve taken on their account and your proactive approach to ensuring continual progress towards their goals.
Promoting enhanced planning: Creating an effective audit report can be an intricate process. While undergoing this detailed process, you can equip yourself with a beneficial overview and in-depth understanding of your clients’ ads accounts, putting you in a strong position to conduct their future Google Ads account planning and budgeting
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