Starting the year with the same old advertising strategies, without carefully looking into what worked and what didn’t, can be detrimental to your business. Some marketers, if not most, would skip the evaluation stage and immediately draft an online advertising strategy without considering the successes and failures their efforts had reached in the online arena.

We, in Third Team Media, understand the excitement you feel in drafting a new strategy. But we would also like to give you some friendly advice and measures on what to do before deciding to jump to the next page.
So basically this article will serve as a guide to marketers like you on how to evaluate the past year’s advertising strategies, or more specifically 2013’s pay per click (PPC) performance. Next, we’ll give you tips on how to optimize your PPC advertising for year 2014.
 

1. Review: Budget and Keywords

Check last year’s budget records by months and by year. In the last quarter of 2013 , you might notice, (if this is applicable to you) that you have increased your spending for advertising. It is natural to act this way as it is also expected that people are most likely to purchase things or avail your services during this time of the year. But now that the season is over, we recommend that you decrease your budget for the mean time, at least in the starting weeks of 2014. This serves as an adjustment period for you on determining how much or how little you will be spending in the coming months.
Next, never forget to run through the keywords or the adcopy you used for the past year. If the keyword or adcopy you have been using last year has generated more clicks than the other years, then it is advised to retain it. But for the sake of attracting more clicks, try to create a new and better one. Also, be cautious on duplicate keywords because they can wreak havoc on your advertising budget by reducing Quality Scores, which in turn may drive up your cost per click. One way to deal with duplicate keywords easier is by downloading Google’s free offline editing tool, AdWords Editor (www.adwords.google.com) which can help you identify and remove duplicate keywords without you having to manually sift through individual keyword lists.
Do not also forget to review your year over year data to check on your yearly performance and account growth. AdWords has a built-in  feature to assist with both year over year and month over month account data analysis. To get access to it, change the date range to focus on dates you’re interested in and activate the “Compare” function.  Then, use the information you see to evaluate individual campaign or account performance, discover new opportunities or establish performance trends.
 

2. Analyze: Holiday Ads and Mobile Device

In measuring the success of your holiday ads, look at the product performance and check if you can detect similarities between successful ad groups. Once you’ve identified some common characteristics of top performing ad copy, you can incorporate them into new ad text strategy for the next few months but always make sure to monitor its effectiveness. Remember, you have to mainly consider conversions, not just clicks.
Meanwhile, also consider that smartphones are now heavily penetrating the market and that the culture for search-on-the-go is increasing every day. This only means that people are more likely to search for your business from their mobile device.
On this matter, ask youself if your Adwords account produced any sales from mobile devices. Look at paid search settings by reviewing this year’s mobile CPCs and adjusting big percentage based on performance. You can decide upon yourself if you will increase your mobile bid adjustments and create mobile-friendly copy for your mobile ads.
 

3. Prepare: For Exciting Changes in PPC

Google just recently updated their Quality Score algorithm  to increase the importance of using Ad Extensions. This only implies that disinclined advertisers who don’t keep up-to-date with new account features and extensions will get left behind.
Why do you think Google made these changes? This is because the better we maintain the ad extensions, the more good looking the ads in Google will be. The better their ads look, the higher click-through rates they generate. The higher click-through rates they generate, the better of a user experience they are delivering.
Moreover, expect also that ads will now be more obvious. It will now be clearer for searchers on what an ad is and what is not. An FTC (Fair Trade Commission) ruling earlier in the year told the major search engines that they had to be more visible about what is an ad and what isn’t, Google on one hand has been quietly testing the impact of these changes. So expect that the not-so-noticeable highlights for Google ads now will then be highlighted in the near future.
So if you have not started making your 2014 PPC advertising strategy, remember to evaluate and analyze. But if you already have, you can always start the evaluation and analysis at your own pace, but please don’t make them too late.
We hope that these tips have helped you. Keep posted for more PPC advertising articles here in Third Team Media’s blog.