Inside Google Ads podcast: Episode 61- Let's get technical
Can I be real for a second, for just a millisecond?
Don't worry, I'm not gonna sing for you today.
Actually, what I want to be real with you about is, you may hear this in my voice, maybe you don't listen to my voice that closely. I've been losing my voice over and over for the last month or so. Occupational hazard of having a weekly podcast, having three to four coaching calls a day, doing three hour long training sessions for SMX, and speaking at international conferences.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. I have created my dream job and my dream career and I love it! But it's hard on my body.
I'm fortunate that in Canada we have free healthcare, but it does mean I’ve got to wait a little bit. So in a few weeks, I'm going to see my doctor, who will then refer me to an ear, nose and throat specialist... but anyway, you don't care about that. You're here to hear about Google Ads!
And so today, I picked three technical questions you've asked me that I don't think will fit cleanly into any of my usual episodes, but have really great information I want to share with you. And for two of these three questions, I can share with you clips of stuff I already recorded when I actually had a voice to answer those questions for you.
So in Special Episode 61, you're getting an inside look at my account audit template, we're demystifying UTMs and I'm answering your questions about Inside Google Ads versus Google Ads for Beginners once and for all.
I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales. I spent six years working for big brands at Google, and now I work for you.
This is Inside Google Ads, Episode 61, Let’s Get Technical.
Our first question comes from Abdurrahmanrohan3809 on YouTube, and they say, could you please share your audit template? This is in response to some videos I shared in December 2024 of me live auditing four Google Ads accounts. I'll drop that link in the episode description in case you want to watch those.
Now, I do share my account audit template with my Inside Google Ads course members. But because you asked so nicely, Abdura, I'm going to give you a special sneak peek at that template right here, right now.
And don't worry if you are listening and not watching right now, I am planning this demonstration to be just as valuable whether you're using your ears, your eyes, or both.
Part of my Inside Google Ads course means members get access to my account audit template where they can get this Google Doc, make a copy, and then have at it.
When I'm doing a Google Ads account audit, my audit is split into five sections.
First is the data foundation, because a house with no foundation will crumble. And so in that section, I'm focusing on conversion tracking, attribution, and remarketing setup, spending a lot of time in audience manager, and then also looking at attribution settings, a really hidden place that not many people check to see, for example, if we have a conversion lag, or multiple interactions are generally required for conversion. So that sets my foundation.
Then from there, I like to look at bids and budgets next because looking at the targeting and looking at the creative often leads to rabbit holes. So before I let myself go into a rabbit hole, I like to look at bids and budgets. I am looking for Smart Bidding usage. And then just because we're using Smart Bidding, are we using it effectively? So I look at the Smart Bidding targets that have been set, if applicable, or should targets be set.
I also look at budget allocation, which isn't just about is it limited by budget or not, but looking at Search Impression Share, Search Impression Share lost due to rank and budget, and triangulating that all to determine whether I think bidding and budgets are being used effectively.
From there, it depends on my mood. Sometimes I skip ahead to the creative section. Sometimes I go straight into targeting. It also depends on what formats are being used in the account.
If there are Search campaigns in the account, I generally do like to start there. So I'll dive into the keywords. I'm looking at keyword usage, match type usage, quality score, keywords versus search terms, percentage of other search terms, negative keyword usage. If it's a Dynamic ad group, that's not a required thing, but something I'll look at, check the targets, see how that's working.
If we're looking at a non-search campaign, Shopping, many of the similar steps, checking the search terms, things like that. For Demand Gen, Display or Video, I'm going to be checking the audience and content targeting, seeing if Optimized targeting is turned off, how effective that may or may not be. I'll get to PMax in a second.
And then on the creative side, if it is Search, I'm checking if they are using Responsive Search ads, which I'm happy to say pretty much everyone at this point is, but I still see some ETAs floating around. And then I look at the quality of those ads, which doesn't just mean ad strength but using my human brain, do I think this is high quality ad copy? Do I think it's engaging? I also let things like CTR show me if the audience is responding to that.
I like to see at least six assets being used, because there are six that everyone can use and then six to seven that are optional. So the Jyll required assets, not Google required, are business name, business logo, callouts, sitelinks, structured snippets and images. So I want to see everyone using that as long as they're eligible. Then I'll see what other assets might be relevant: call assets, promotion assets, et cetera.
If I'm looking at a Demand Gen, Display or Video, then for the creative, I'm looking at the different ads that are being tested, the different variations for video. I'm using that tool you can go to under Assets > Video to see where the drop-off might happen and I'm looking at percentage played to 25%, 50%, 75%, 100% in view rates. So really depending on the campaign type I'm looking at, I'm looking for different benchmarks in the data to help me understand how the creative might be resonating.
Performance Max is a whole different beast as we know. So when I get to the Performance Max part of an audit, if that's in an account, I will generally make it its own Performance Max section.
I start by looking at the campaign settings, lots of potential pitfalls there. Then I go into the asset groups. I use the table view and add all the columns so I can actually see asset group level reporting. I'll look at the audience signal and search themes but those aren't very important. The assets themselves are much more important. I'll spend a lot of time digging into the insights, which will show us our search term categories and our audience insights. And that will tell me a lot of what I need to know about how it's performing.
As you might imagine, I go into way more detail than this in my Inside Google Ads course showing you how to optimize Search, Display, Demand Gen, Video, Shopping, and Performance Max. So way more detail there. But I hope this has given you a good overview of how you might approach auditing Google Ads accounts.
And if you would like to see my account audits that I've done before, I've linked a playlist of my Google Ads account audits on YouTube in the episode description.
Our next question today comes from TheTopazbrand1 on YouTube and she says, how has nobody said that this is probably the best video out there to explain UTM tracking to anyone?
Thank you so much.
It's an oldie, but a goodie. I'm really proud of this UTM tracking video. I recorded this about two or three years ago, first posted it to TikTok, and actually got my first ever sponsored content deal based on this video, true story. So it's about two minutes. Take a look, UTM tracking Made Simple.
Have you ever heard someone talk about UTM parameters and you want to know what that is? A UTM parameter is an extra little bit of information that you put into a URL on your website or in social media so that when you go to look at your Google Analytics later, you know exactly where people came from.
Your UTM parameter can have three parts: source, medium, and campaign.
Source is where the traffic came from, like TikTok, Instagram, Google.
Medium is what kind of traffic it is, like organic, paid, email, referral.
And then Campaign is something you can specifically set so you can differentiate different campaigns you're running, different places you're putting your link, et cetera.
Here's an example from my actual Google Analytics. Google Analytics doesn't always recognize when people come from my TikTok link in bio, they’re often showing up as direct traffic. So I put custom parameters into my link in bio so that TikTok shows up as TikTok / social, whereas Instagram shows up as Instagram / social. You can see I also have activecampaign / email. I also set that with custom parameters.
These are especially helpful if you're running ads with a platform outside of Google. Google Ads and Google Analytics will talk to each other so you don't really need to have UTM parameters there. But if you're running Facebook ads and you don't put in custom UTM parameters, then all the people who come to your website from ads will look the exact same in Google Analytics as people who came organically. We don't want that. So in Facebook ads, you would want to put a custom medium of CPC, cost per click, to distinguish your Facebook source traffic from your regular Facebook referral traffic.
If you want to build your own UTM parameters, it's really easy. I just Google “UTM parameters builder,” because I can never remember the link. And if you Google that, the first result will be from Google Analytics. It shows you exactly how to build your own custom URLs to use them wherever you're driving people to your website.
Our final question today came in my Instagram DMs and it was someone asking about my two Google Ads courses. I have a question about the option for courses. For the monthly one, is that something you access for a month and then lose access if you don't redo it for the next month?
The answer is yes. Inside Google Ads is a membership course. I do that to make it affordable and accessible. You can join, binge the whole thing and cancel if you like. Some people do that, but most people stay a member month to month since I constantly update it. We have the Monthly Meet and more great resources like that.
Then there's a second question. With the beginner course, do I have access to all the material for a lifetime?
Yes, you do. I mean, I can't guarantee a lifetime, who knows how long we'll live? But yes, when you buy Google Ads for Beginners, you get instant access to all the material right away and you keep that access.
Then they say, I want to sign up, but I'm trying to figure out which is a better option. I've got the basics of running Google Ads, but I have a client that's currently running YouTube and I want to make sure I'm filling in any gaps in my knowledge.
As you might expect, this is one of the most common questions I get. What's the difference between Inside Google Ads and Google Ads for Beginners?
So I recently recorded a four and a half minute video answering just that for you. I'm going to roll that for you now.
And if you're not interested in courses, just skip ahead about four minutes because I've still got a new Insider Challenge for you to solve before this episode is up.
Which of my Google Ads courses should you join? Inside Google Ads or Google Ads for Beginners?
It's one of the most common questions I get, so let me break it down so you can make the best decision for you.
Inside Google Ads is a membership course. You pay monthly or annually for membership. Why? Because I add new lessons every month, you get access to an exclusive one-hour meeting with course members and me every month and often guest experts as well. And you can ask me questions in the course and I'll respond. So for most people, beginner, intermediate, advanced, Inside Google Ads is the right choice for you. And in a moment, I'll show you what it looks like.
Google Ads for Beginners is specifically designed for, you guessed it, beginners. If you've never run Google Ads before, if you don't know what the difference is between a query and a search term, or what does Performance Max mean, or what is a Responsive Search ad, then in Google Ads for Beginners, it’s about three and a half hours, where I explain all the core concepts you need to know. And then at the end of the course, I'll walk you through setting up your first Google Ads account and your very first Google Search campaign.
So if you have no Google Ads experience at all, Google Ads for Beginners can be a great place to start. But if you do have some ads experience, then Inside Google Ads is probably better for you.
Now, let me show you what each course actually looks like if you're still not quite sure.
This is Inside Google Ads. We are inside, Inside Google Ads. So as you'll see after a link to that monthly meet, we have lots of different categories of lessons here. So let's say you want to look up something about keywords. Okay, you can come straight to this section. We have a lesson about match types, a lesson about negative keywords, a lesson about quality score, a lesson about standard versus dynamic ad groups, and on and on and on.
And then if we actually click into a lesson, you can watch the lesson. Many of the lessons have closed captions available in English, and you can also watch it at a faster speed if you want to get through a little quicker.
With each lesson, you'll find a quick summary of what that lesson is about so you can determine if you want to watch it or not. And then you'll find the full transcript if you want to see what's talked about in the lesson. Last but not least, at the bottom, you can ask a question to me. When you drop a comment, I immediately get an email notification. I will respond within a couple of business days, and you'll get an email notification back. So that's one of the key reasons this is a really helpful course for people, because you actually get to ask me your questions here and during the one hour Monthly Meet.
Now for long-time members who just want to come and know what's new, we have a “What's New” section because I add new lessons and update lessons all the time. So these are all the lessons and things that have been added to the course within the last two to three months. You can see it goes on to page two.
The course is also searchable. So let's say that you want to do something with YouTube. You can just search “YouTube” and then the course will bring up all the times YouTube is mentioned. That's another reason to have those transcripts there.
These are some Monthly Meets where we talked about YouTube, a lesson about YouTube ad formats, creating a Video campaign, there's even more and on and on and on. You can decide which lessons for you.
So that's Inside Google Ads, meant to be your ongoing resource. Kind of think of it like a buffet rather than a set menu.
Now, Google Ads for Beginners, a little different.
Here is what Google Ads for Beginners looks like. We walk through how Google works and at the end of most sections, there's a quiz, so you can get a certificate when you complete this course because you can complete this course.
Whereas Inside Google Ads, new stuff is added all the time. I dare you to try to complete the whole thing!
Are you ready for Google Ads? All about keywords, beyond keywords, beyond search, all the different types there, creating great ads, bids and budgets, and then finally setting up your first search campaign and tips for achieving success with Google Ads.
Okay, so that is Google Ads for Beginners and you get a certificate when you complete the course and it gets you ready to start running Google Ads campaigns.
Whereas Inside Google Ads is comprehensively going to be your right hand partner in managing, optimizing, setting up your campaigns, making sure you're staying up to date with the latest and greatest, and getting access to me.
Last thing I'll mention is if you purchase an annual subscription to Inside Google Ads, then Google Ads for Beginners is included for free.
And similarly, if you take Google Ads for Beginners, like it and want to move on to Inside Google Ads next, you can take what you paid for Google Ads for Beginners and apply it to an annual Inside Google Ads membership so that it ends up being free.
If you have any further questions at all, please feel free to contact me using the contact form on my website. The links to learn more about both of these courses and join are just below this video.
I hope you've enjoyed this technical episode getting a deeper look at account audits, UTM tracking, and which Google Ads training may be right for you.
Today's Insider Challenge is this, and it's based on something I've actually been seeing in a lot of Google Ads account audits I do.
Let's say you're auditing an account, you're looking at the Performance Max campaign, you check the insights for the search term categories, and you see that this is essentially a brand campaign, like pretty much all the search term categories are of the company's brand. And they also have a Brand Search campaign going, so they're both getting traffic. How do you decide which one to use? Do you add exclusions to your PMax campaign so all the brand goes to Search? Do you shut off the Search so that PMax can cover it? How do you evaluate and make that decision?
I'll be sharing my thoughts in our next episode, but the beauty of the Insider Challenge is there's no right or wrong answer, just an opportunity to stretch your brain on real life Google Ads problem solving.
Last Episode's Challenge presented by my daughter, Nora, was this. What would you do if you were running a Performance Max campaign and the search terms looked great and the audience insights seemed good, but you weren't getting any conversions?
First thing I would do in this scenario is see: would I have expected to get conversions with this amount of traffic? So search terms look relevant, audience insights seem relevant. That suggests we're reaching the right people. So are we reaching the right people, but they're just not clicking through? Something in our asset group creative isn't getting them? Or are they coming to our website and then just not converting compared to people from other traffic sources? Or does our website in general just not have a strong conversion rate?
Let's start with that first piece. We're reaching the right people and is our creative enticing to them? I'm going to look at my click-through rate for Performance Max as a whole. I usually look for like a 1% click-through rate, but I might want to use a script like the Mike Rhodes PMax script. I've got an affiliate link for that in the episode description, which I highly recommend if you're analyzing PMax campaigns.
And I'll see for the search inventory, if it's performing well, that means I'd probably expect like a 5% to 8% click-through rate. Am I getting that? Am I not getting that? So that'll help me understand maybe the issue is my creative itself. And of course, if I'm not getting good clicks, then I'm not going to get good conversions.
Okay, let's assume that's not the issue. We're driving a lot of traffic. It's just not converting. Is this a uniquely a Performance Max issue? If there are other campaigns in the account, I will see, are they getting conversions? And assuming my Performance Max campaign is at least 200 to 300 clicks in this time period with no conversions, enough traffic that we should probably expect a conversion, how do other Google Ads campaigns perform?
I'll also go into Google Analytics to see how traffic from other sources performs, like Organic Search, non branded searches, or maybe branded searches too. What does that conversion rate look like? Direct traffic, what does that conversion rate look like? Social media traffic, what does that conversion rate look like? That will help me understand if it's a uniquely Performance Max issue or if just website wide our conversion rate is not looking really good.
If I do all of that analysis and I still can't pinpoint the problem, next thing I would do is probably double check my conversion tracking, double check the settings on the PMax campaign, because yes, this has happened to me before, not in an account I managed but with a coaching client, it turned out that the campaign had been set up in a way that it was only using a different conversion action for optimization and that it had actually been driving conversions, it just wasn't being tracked. Although that probably should be the first thing I check. In reality, that would come later as something I check, making sure the settings and everything like that are correct.
Then if we still don't know why it's not converting, that is when I would recommend making some kind of change. Perhaps changing the bid strategy or changing the creative would be two of the surefire ways to try to shake things up.
What about you? Do you agree or disagree with my strategy?
I'm Jyll Saskin Gales and I'll see you next time, hopefully with more of a voice, Inside Google Ads.