Why Auditing PPC Campaigns is Crucial for Outdoor Brands
Outdoor brands face dynamic challenges when it comes to managing PPC campaigns. With shifting customer preferences, seasonal fluctuations, and the pressure to attract bookings and sales in real-time, it’s essential for these businesses to stay on top of campaign performance. Outdoor businesses—from tour operators to gear retailers—often find that even well-funded campaigns can underperform without regular checks.
This is where PPC audits become indispensable. An audit provides an opportunity to closely examine every aspect of your campaigns, from how budgets are allocated to whether your ads are reaching the right audiences. By taking a strategic approach to reviewing performance, outdoor brands can identify areas of inefficiency, adjust targeting, and ultimately improve return on ad spend.
Unique Challenges for Outdoor Brands
Outdoor brands are not like traditional retailers. Seasonal trends and spontaneous customer behaviors add an extra layer of complexity to managing PPC campaigns. For example, an adventure tour company may have a surge of demand during peak travel seasons, while an outdoor equipment retailer might experience seasonal spikes in sales for specific products like winter gear or summer camping supplies.
Additionally, many outdoor consumers make last-minute decisions, meaning your ads need to be hyper-relevant and timely. Failing to optimize campaigns for these critical moments can lead to missed opportunities and unnecessary ad spend. Regular PPC audits ensure your campaigns are always running at peak efficiency, fine-tuning every detail from keyword relevance to geographic targeting.
The Power of PPC Audits in a Competitive Landscape
The outdoor industry’s reliance on digital marketing has only increased in recent years, with PPC playing a pivotal role in driving both visibility and conversions. But competition for keywords like “hiking tours” or “outdoor gear” is fierce, especially during high-demand periods. As costs rise for premium ad placements, it’s crucial to make sure your campaigns are fully optimized to deliver results without overspending.
Auditing your PPC campaigns regularly helps brands maintain a competitive advantage by highlighting underperforming ad groups, detecting keyword cannibalization, and ensuring ad spend is being allocated wisely. It’s not just about fixing what’s broken—it’s about staying ahead in a fast-changing market.
Real-World Success: A Costa Rican Adventure Company Case Study
One brand that saw tangible benefits from a PPC audit was a Costa Rica-based adventure company offering activities like rafting and horseback riding. They were experiencing high PPC costs but weren’t seeing the corresponding growth in bookings. After a comprehensive audit, we uncovered several areas for improvement: their budget was spread thin across underperforming ads, and their conversion tracking wasn’t aligned with their actual revenue goals.
By restructuring their campaigns, realigning their goals, and shifting budget to higher-performing channels, the company saw a 60% reduction in PPC costs and a significant increase in bookings. This case highlights how effective a PPC audit can be in transforming the performance of outdoor brands.
For outdoor brands, conducting regular PPC audits is essential to maintaining a competitive edge and adapting to the ever-changing demands of their customers. By identifying inefficiencies and opportunities within your campaigns, audits provide a clear path to reducing costs, improving conversions, and maximizing the impact of your marketing budget.
Want to see how a PPC audit can transform your outdoor brand’s performance?
Step 1: Review Campaign Structure and Organization
An optimized campaign structure forms the backbone of any successful PPC effort, especially for outdoor brands that cater to diverse customer segments and seasonal demand. During a PPC audit, the first thing to evaluate is how your campaigns are organized. A well-structured PPC account will make it easier to control ad spend, target the right audiences, and track performance.
Why Campaign Structure Matters
Outdoor brands often promote multiple products or services—everything from adventure tours to outdoor gear. These offerings may target different audiences, operate in various locations, and peak at different times of the year. A poorly structured PPC campaign can result in wasted ad spend, missed opportunities, and difficulty in measuring success.
When auditing your PPC campaigns, the goal is to ensure that your campaigns are organized in a way that maximizes relevance and allows for tailored targeting. This means separating your campaigns by product, location, seasonality, and audience type.
Segmenting Campaigns by Product or Service
The first step in reviewing campaign structure is to ensure your campaigns are segmented based on the products or services you offer. Each segment should have its own dedicated campaign, allowing you to adjust bids, tailor ad copy, and refine targeting to meet the needs of each customer segment.
Best Practices:
- Create dedicated campaigns for each key product or service. For example, an outdoor gear retailer could create separate campaigns for “camping equipment” and “hiking gear,” ensuring that each campaign targets a specific audience with customized messaging.
- Match campaigns to customer intent. If you run an adventure tour company, you might have one campaign dedicated to “weekend adventure tours” and another for “multi-day expeditions.” This segmentation allows you to craft ads that resonate with each audience’s intent.
Questions to Ask in the Audit:
- Are my campaigns logically separated by product or service to allow for better targeting and performance tracking?
- Do my campaigns align with customer intent and seasonal demand?
Organizing Campaigns by Location
For outdoor brands, especially those that cater to tourists or local customers, geographic targeting is key. Ensuring your campaigns are organized by location allows you to tailor your ads to the specific needs and behaviors of customers in different regions. This is particularly important for adventure companies that may offer tours in multiple locations or for retailers targeting different geographic markets.
Best Practices:
- Use geo-targeted campaigns for each location you serve. An adventure company in Costa Rica, for example, could create separate campaigns targeting tourists in different regions, such as those staying in beach resorts vs. inland eco-lodges.
- Tailor ad copy and bids to reflect local demand. Ads targeting customers in specific locations can be customized to highlight unique offerings, such as local tours or region-specific gear.
Questions to Ask in the Audit:
- Are my campaigns properly geo-targeted to reach customers in specific areas?
- Is my ad copy customized for each location to improve relevance and engagement?
Addressing Seasonality in Campaign Structure
Seasonal demand is a major factor for outdoor brands, especially those offering products or services tied to specific times of the year. When conducting your PPC audit, evaluate how well your campaign structure accounts for seasonal peaks and dips in demand.
Best Practices:
- Create seasonal campaigns that align with key sales periods. For example, a retailer selling outdoor gear might create separate campaigns for summer camping gear and winter hiking equipment, adjusting bids and ad copy accordingly.
- Allocate budget according to seasonality. Seasonal campaigns allow you to focus your budget on high-demand times and scale back during off-peak periods, ensuring you’re not wasting money on ads when demand is low.
Questions to Ask in the Audit:
- Do my campaigns account for seasonal demand, with appropriate budget adjustments during high and low seasons?
- Are my ads updated to reflect the season, promoting relevant products or services?
Eliminating Redundant Ad Groups and Keywords
Redundancy is a common issue in PPC campaigns, particularly for outdoor brands offering multiple products or services. Overlapping ad groups or keywords can cause your ads to compete with each other, driving up costs and diluting performance. During your audit, it’s crucial to look for redundant ad groups and keywords that may be cannibalizing your budget.
Best Practices:
- Remove overlapping ad groups that target the same audience or keywords. For example, if both your “hiking tours” and “rafting tours” campaigns are targeting general terms like “outdoor adventures,” you may be competing with yourself.
- Consolidate or eliminate low-performing keywords that aren’t contributing to conversions. Focus on more specific, long-tail keywords that better match your audience’s intent.
Questions to Ask in the Audit:
- Are there overlapping ad groups or keywords that are competing against each other?
- Are there broad keywords that could be replaced with more specific, high-intent search terms?
Building a Solid Campaign Structure
Reviewing and optimizing your PPC campaign structure is a crucial first step in any audit. By organizing your campaigns by product, location, and seasonality, and eliminating redundancies, you can ensure that your budget is being spent efficiently and your ads are reaching the right audience. A well-structured campaign provides the foundation for further optimization in areas like ad copy, bidding strategies, and budget allocation.
Actionable Tip: After auditing your campaign structure, create a plan for reorganizing campaigns based on audience behavior, geographic location, and seasonal trends. Download our PPC Audit Checklist for a detailed guide to refining your campaign structure.
Discover the impact of a thorough PPC audit!
Step 2: Analyze Conversion Tracking and Goals
Conversion tracking is the backbone of any successful PPC campaign, especially for outdoor brands where the primary goal is often driving bookings, sales, or lead generation. Without proper conversion tracking, you won’t be able to measure which ads are leading to meaningful actions, and more importantly, you could be optimizing your campaigns for the wrong goals.
During a PPC audit, it’s crucial to ensure that your conversion tracking is not only accurate but also aligned with your business objectives. This step allows you to determine whether your campaigns are truly driving the outcomes that matter most to your business, such as adventure bookings, gear purchases, or lead submissions.
Why Conversion Alignment is Critical for Outdoor Brands
For outdoor brands, aligning conversions with business goals is essential because of the fast-moving nature of customer behavior. Many outdoor consumers make spur-of-the-moment decisions—booking a last-minute adventure or purchasing camping gear just days before a trip. If your conversion tracking isn’t set up to capture these key actions, you may be optimizing for less valuable goals like clicks or page views, which don’t necessarily drive revenue.
When analyzing conversion tracking, the first step is to ensure that the conversions you’re measuring directly reflect your primary business objectives. For example, if bookings are your most valuable action, your campaigns should be tracking how many users complete a booking, not just how many visit your booking page. Misaligned conversions can result in wasted ad spend, inflated costs, and missed opportunities to improve ROI.
Steps to Audit Conversion Tracking
1. Review Your Current Conversions
Start by auditing the conversions you’re currently tracking in your PPC campaigns. Are they aligned with your true business goals? For outdoor brands, the most common high-value conversions include bookings, product purchases, and lead submissions.
Best Practices:
- Ensure primary conversions are being tracked: Whether it’s a tour booking, a purchase of outdoor gear, or a lead form submission, your tracking setup should reflect the actions that drive revenue.
- Minimize secondary conversions: While tracking actions like newsletter sign-ups or page views can provide useful data, they shouldn’t be the main focus. These actions are often not as directly tied to business outcomes, and optimizing for them can skew performance data.
Questions to Ask in the Audit:
- Are the conversions I’m tracking directly tied to my business goals (e.g., bookings, purchases, or leads)?
- Am I prioritizing high-value conversions over secondary actions that don’t generate revenue?
2. Clean Up Obsolete or Misaligned Conversions
During your audit, it’s common to find obsolete or misaligned conversion actions that no longer reflect your current goals. For example, if you’re still tracking page views as a conversion, but your focus has shifted to driving bookings, this can throw off your campaign’s performance metrics. Cleaning up these outdated conversion actions ensures that your campaign data is clear and aligned with your goals.
Best Practices:
- Remove outdated or irrelevant conversions: Delete any old conversions that are no longer relevant to your current campaigns or business focus.
- Reassign value to conversions: Make sure each conversion has the appropriate value assigned based on its importance to your business.
Questions to Ask in the Audit:
- Are there outdated conversion actions that no longer reflect my current goals?
- Have I assigned the correct value to each conversion based on its impact on revenue?
3. Verify Conversion Tracking Setup with Google Tag Manager
If you’re not already using it, Google Tag Manager (GTM) can simplify conversion tracking across multiple platforms by allowing you to set up conversion tags without needing to modify your website’s code directly. GTM provides a central hub for tracking complex user actions, such as booking completions or lead form submissions, making it easier to ensure all conversions are properly tracked.
Best Practices:
- Use Google Tag Manager to manage conversion tags: This simplifies the process of tracking key actions across different platforms (Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.) and ensures consistency.
- Test conversion triggers: Ensure that conversions are firing correctly by testing actions like booking confirmations or product purchases. GTM makes it easy to verify that your tags are set up properly.
Questions to Ask in the Audit:
- Am I using Google Tag Manager or another tracking tool to ensure conversions are correctly recorded?
- Are there any gaps in my conversion tracking setup that need to be fixed?
Case Study Example: Costa Rica Adventure Company
The importance of conversion tracking alignment can’t be overstated. In the case of the Costa Rica-based adventure company, their PPC campaigns were initially optimized for actions like phone calls and page views, neither of which contributed directly to their goal of increasing tour bookings. During their PPC audit, we realigned their tracking to focus on completed bookings—the action that truly mattered for revenue generation.
This realignment allowed us to optimize their bids and budgets more effectively, resulting in a significant improvement in performance. By focusing on bookings as the primary conversion, we reduced their cost per conversion by 60% and increased bookings by the same margin. This highlights how critical it is to audit your conversion tracking to ensure you’re measuring the right outcomes.
Ensuring Accurate and Aligned Conversion Tracking
Accurate and aligned conversion tracking is a critical element of any PPC campaign audit. By reviewing your current conversions, cleaning up outdated actions, and ensuring your tracking setup is accurate, you can guarantee that your campaigns are driving the right outcomes. For outdoor brands, this can make the difference between optimizing for valuable bookings and wasting budget on less important metrics.
Actionable Tip: After auditing your conversion tracking, implement Google Tag Manager to manage and verify your conversions. Ensure your most important actions—like bookings and purchases—are tracked accurately. Download our Conversion Tracking Guide for detailed steps on setting up tracking for your outdoor brand.
See how we helped a Costa Rica-based outdoor adventure brand slash PPC costs by 60% with a detailed campaign audit
Step 3: Evaluate Budget Allocation and Spend
Proper budget allocation is a critical factor in the success of any PPC campaign. For outdoor brands, which often face seasonal fluctuations and a competitive marketplace, the way you distribute and manage your ad spend can have a major impact on campaign performance. During a PPC audit, evaluating how your budget is allocated across different campaigns, ad groups, and channels is essential to ensure that you’re getting the most out of every dollar.
Why Budget Allocation Matters
Outdoor brands typically operate with a mix of high and low seasons, meaning that your ad spend needs to be flexible and responsive to these shifts in demand. During peak seasons—whether it’s summer for camping gear or winter for skiing trips—your audience is more active, and competition for clicks is often fiercer. At the same time, it’s easy to overspend on underperforming campaigns or fail to allocate enough budget to your top performers.
A PPC audit allows you to pinpoint where your budget is being spent, identify wasted spend, and reallocate funds to the campaigns that are generating the highest return on investment (ROI).
Steps to Audit Your PPC Budget
1. Analyze Overall Spend
The first step in your audit is to take a high-level view of your PPC budget. Look at how much you’re spending overall and how that budget is distributed across different campaigns, channels (e.g., Search, Display, Performance Max), and time periods.
Best Practices:
- Identify your top-performing campaigns: Review your campaigns to see which are delivering the most valuable conversions (e.g., bookings, purchases, leads) and how much you’re spending on them. These campaigns should receive the lion’s share of your budget.
- Check for overspending: Determine if there are campaigns where you’re spending heavily but not seeing the desired results. If a campaign has a high cost per conversion and low performance, it might be time to adjust or pause it.
Questions to Ask in the Audit:
- Are my highest-converting campaigns receiving enough budget to maximize performance?
- Am I spending too much on campaigns that are not delivering the desired results?
- Is my spend in line with seasonal trends (e.g., spending more during peak season, scaling back in the off-season)?
2. Reallocate Budget to Top-Performing Campaigns
Once you’ve identified which campaigns are driving the best results, it’s time to adjust your budget allocation. In most cases, this means reallocating budget away from underperforming campaigns and focusing more spend on those that are delivering the highest return.
Best Practices:
- Scale high-performing campaigns: Increase the budget for campaigns that are driving valuable conversions at a lower cost. This could include campaigns targeting high-conversion keywords, location-based campaigns for popular outdoor destinations, or seasonal campaigns during peak demand.
- Pause or reduce spend on underperforming campaigns: If a campaign isn’t performing despite optimization efforts, it may be time to scale back or pause the campaign altogether.
Questions to Ask in the Audit:
- Which campaigns consistently drive the most valuable conversions, and can they scale further with additional budget?
- Are there campaigns that are underperforming and draining the budget without generating meaningful results?
Case Study Example: Reallocating Budget for Maximum ROI
A Costa Rica-based adventure company was spending heavily on Display ads targeting a broad audience but wasn’t seeing the conversions they expected. At the same time, their Search campaigns—targeting specific keywords related to their adventure tours—were delivering strong results but were underfunded.
During their PPC audit, we identified that shifting a portion of the Display ad budget into the top-performing Search campaigns would yield better results. By reallocating the budget toward high-converting keywords and scaling back underperforming ads, the company reduced their overall PPC costs by 60% while increasing conversions.
3. Factor in Seasonality
For outdoor brands, seasonality plays a major role in the effectiveness of PPC campaigns. Whether you’re selling outdoor gear or promoting adventure activities, your audience is more active during certain times of the year. During your audit, ensure that your budget allocation reflects these seasonal trends, with more ad spend allocated during high-demand periods and less during off-peak times.
Best Practices:
- Increase spend during high-demand seasons: For example, an outdoor gear retailer should increase budget allocation during the summer camping season, while a tour operator might want to scale up during the holiday or vacation season when tourist traffic is higher.
- Scale back during off-peak times: Use your audit to identify campaigns that can be scaled back during slow periods, ensuring you’re not wasting budget when demand is low.
Questions to Ask in the Audit:
- Have I adjusted my budget to account for high-demand and low-demand periods?
- Am I overspending on campaigns during the off-season when conversions are likely to be lower?
Example of Seasonal Budget Shifts
For example, if you run a skiing tour company, your ad spend should be heavily focused during the winter months when demand is at its highest. During the summer off-season, budgets can be reduced, or campaigns can be paused to avoid unnecessary spend. A flexible approach to budgeting based on seasonality ensures your campaigns are always optimized for the right time of year.
4. Evaluate Spend Across Channels
Outdoor brands often run a mix of Search, Display, Video, and Performance Max campaigns. Each channel serves a different purpose, and not all will perform equally for every brand. During your audit, review how your budget is distributed across these channels and identify opportunities to shift spend to the channels that are delivering the best results.
Best Practices:
- Focus on high-converting channels: If Search campaigns are consistently delivering better results than Display, consider shifting more budget toward Search. Conversely, if Display or Video campaigns are driving strong engagement, allocate more resources to those channels.
- Diversify when appropriate: If you’re seeing diminishing returns on a single channel, explore other formats like video ads on YouTube or Display ads on Google’s network to capture a wider audience.
Questions to Ask in the Audit:
- Which channels are driving the most conversions, and are they receiving enough budget?
- Are there any underperforming channels where spend should be reduced or shifted?
Optimizing Budget Allocation for Maximum ROI
Your PPC budget is one of your most valuable resources, and how you allocate it can make or break your campaign performance. By regularly auditing your budget, reallocating spend to high-performing campaigns, and adjusting for seasonality, you can ensure that every dollar is working hard to generate conversions and maximize ROI.
Actionable Tip: After auditing your budget allocation, adjust your ad spend based on performance data. Shift more budget to campaigns and channels that are driving the best results, and scale back or pause underperforming campaigns. Download our Budget Allocation Template to help manage and track your spend more effectively.
Curious about how a PPC audit can drive real results?
Step 4: Assess Ad Copy and Creative Quality
Even with the best budget allocation and targeting, your PPC campaigns won’t perform at their peak without compelling ad copy and high-quality creatives. For outdoor brands, where the experience is often at the heart of what you’re selling, your ads need to speak directly to your audience’s sense of adventure and urgency. During your PPC audit, it’s crucial to evaluate how well your ad copy and visuals are resonating with your audience and whether there are technical issues that might be hindering performance.
Why Ad Copy Matters for Outdoor Brands
Outdoor enthusiasts are often motivated by the thrill of adventure or the promise of exploring new experiences. Your ad copy and creative elements need to reflect this sense of excitement while also providing a clear and actionable message. Well-crafted ad copy can drive conversions by connecting emotionally with your audience and pushing them to take immediate action—whether it’s booking a tour or purchasing outdoor gear.
Ad copy isn’t just about getting clicks; it’s about driving the right kind of clicks. If your copy doesn’t align with your audience’s intent or the experience you’re offering, you may end up with low-quality traffic that fails to convert.
Steps to Audit Ad Copy and Creative Quality
1. Evaluate Relevance and Clarity of Ad Copy
The first step in assessing your ad copy is determining whether it’s relevant to the audience you’re targeting and clear enough to prompt immediate action. For outdoor brands, this means using language that resonates with adventure seekers and communicates the value of your offering in a concise way.
Best Practices:
- Speak to the experience: Use action-oriented language that conveys the adventure or benefit of your product or service. For example, instead of simply saying “Book a tour,” emphasize the excitement with something like “Experience the thrill of Costa Rica’s whitewater rapids.”
- Highlight urgency: Encourage quick action by emphasizing limited availability, seasonal offers, or time-sensitive deals. “Last-minute weekend adventures available—Book Now!” creates a sense of urgency.
- Clear CTAs (Call-to-Action): Make sure your CTAs are straightforward and drive the desired action. Whether it’s “Book Now,” “Shop Today,” or “Reserve Your Spot,” your CTA should leave no ambiguity about the next step.
Questions to Ask in the Audit:
- Does my ad copy align with my audience’s motivations and intent (e.g., adventure, exploration, savings)?
- Are my headlines and CTAs clear and compelling, prompting immediate action?
2. Review Ad Copy Performance Metrics
To ensure your ad copy is performing optimally, review the key performance metrics for each ad. Metrics such as click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate can give you valuable insights into how well your ad copy is engaging users and driving conversions.
Best Practices:
- A/B test different versions of your ad copy: Regularly test variations of headlines, CTAs, and descriptions to find the messaging that resonates best with your audience. For instance, test one ad emphasizing savings (e.g., “Save 20% on your next adventure”) against another that focuses on the experience (e.g., “Explore Costa Rica’s untamed beauty”).
- Refine underperforming ads: If certain ads have low CTRs or conversion rates, consider rewriting the headline or CTA to make it more engaging or aligning it better with audience intent.
Questions to Ask in the Audit:
- Which ad copy versions are driving the highest CTRs and conversions, and why?
- Are there any underperforming ads that need revision or testing?
3. Check for Ad Disapprovals and Compliance Issues
Technical issues, such as disapproved ads or broken URLs, can quietly undermine the performance of your PPC campaigns. Ads that aren’t running due to disapproval or misconfigured landing pages are essentially wasted opportunities.
During your audit, review your ads to ensure they are all approved and running smoothly. Common reasons for disapprovals include using trademarked terms, violating platform-specific guidelines, or outdated content. Fixing these issues is critical to keeping your campaigns running efficiently.
Best Practices:
- Fix disapproved ads immediately: Identify any ads that have been disapproved and address the issues causing the disapproval. This could include revising ad copy to avoid trademarked terms or ensuring that your content complies with platform policies.
- Ensure all landing pages are functional: Test all URLs to ensure that they lead to the correct landing pages without errors. Broken URLs or outdated landing pages can result in a high bounce rate and lost conversions.
Questions to Ask in the Audit:
- Are all my ads approved and running smoothly without compliance issues?
- Do all my landing pages load correctly and provide a seamless user experience?
Case Study Example: Improving Ad Copy for Increased Engagement
During the PPC audit for the Costa Rica adventure company, we found that their ad copy wasn’t fully capturing the excitement of their tours. The ads focused too much on generic descriptions like “Book a tour” without conveying the unique experience they were offering. Additionally, several ads were disapproved due to the use of trademarked terms, which were preventing them from running altogether.
By rewriting the ad copy to highlight the specific experiences—like “Feel the adrenaline rush of whitewater rafting in Costa Rica”—and fixing the disapproved ads, we saw a significant boost in both CTR and conversions. The company’s ads became more engaging, leading to a 60% increase in bookings.
4. Audit Visual Creatives
For outdoor brands, visuals play a key role in attracting attention and driving clicks. Whether you’re running Display ads on the Google network or image-rich campaigns on Facebook and Instagram, your creative assets should showcase the adventure and excitement of your brand.
Best Practices:
- Use high-quality, action-packed visuals: Outdoor consumers are drawn to visuals that highlight the experience—whether it’s breathtaking landscapes or high-energy adventure scenes. Make sure your images and videos capture the essence of your brand.
- Match creatives with ad copy: Ensure that your visuals align with the messaging of your ad. If your copy emphasizes thrill-seeking or last-minute adventures, your images should reflect that same energy.
Questions to Ask in the Audit:
- Are my visual creatives engaging enough to capture attention?
- Do my visuals align with the tone and message of my ad copy?
Optimizing Ad Copy and Creatives
Well-crafted ad copy and high-quality creatives are essential for the success of your PPC campaigns. During your audit, take the time to ensure your copy resonates with your audience’s motivations, reflects the excitement of your brand, and follows platform compliance. By testing and refining your ad copy and visuals, you can drive higher engagement and ultimately improve conversion rates.
Actionable Tip: Use A/B testing to refine your ad copy and creatives. Continuously test different messaging and visuals to see what resonates best with your audience. Download our Ad Copy Audit Checklist to guide your audit and improve the effectiveness of your ads.
Curious about how a PPC audit can drive real results?
Step 5: Review Bid Strategy and Optimization
Your bidding strategy is a critical part of how your PPC campaigns perform, determining how much you pay for each click and, ultimately, each conversion. For outdoor brands that face fluctuating seasonal demand and competitive keyword costs, choosing the right bidding strategy can mean the difference between maximizing ROI or overspending with minimal returns. As part of your PPC audit, reviewing and optimizing your bid strategy is essential for maintaining efficiency and ensuring your budget is being used effectively.
Why Bid Strategy Matters for Outdoor Brands
Outdoor brands often deal with high-competition keywords, particularly during peak seasons when demand for adventure tours, outdoor gear, or vacation rentals spikes. As a result, bidding strategies must be tailored to your specific goals, whether that’s driving bookings, increasing purchases, or generating leads.
A poorly optimized bid strategy can lead to wasted budget by either overspending on keywords that don’t convert or underbidding on keywords that could drive valuable traffic. During your audit, evaluating both manual and automated bidding strategies will help you determine the best approach for optimizing performance.
Steps to Audit Bid Strategy and Optimization
1. Evaluate Current Bidding Approach (Manual vs. Automated)
The first step in reviewing your bid strategy is understanding whether you’re using manual bidding or automated bidding, and whether that choice aligns with your campaign goals.
- Manual bidding gives you complete control over how much you’re willing to pay per click, which can be useful for specific keywords or highly competitive campaigns. However, it requires continuous monitoring and adjustment.
- Automated bidding, such as Maximize Conversions, Target CPA, or Target ROAS, leverages Google’s algorithms to automatically adjust bids based on performance data, saving time and optimizing for specific outcomes.
Best Practices:
- Use manual bidding for testing: Manual bidding is often best when you’re testing new keywords, ad groups, or campaigns, as it allows you to maintain tight control over your budget and make adjustments based on performance.
- Switch to automated bidding for scalability: Once you’ve collected enough conversion data (typically 30–50 conversions), switching to automated bidding can help you scale your campaigns more efficiently while optimizing for specific goals like maximizing conversions or meeting a target CPA.
Questions to Ask in the Audit:
- Is my current bidding strategy (manual or automated) the most effective choice for my campaign goals?
- Have I collected enough data to transition from manual bidding to automated bidding for scalability?
2. Analyze Bid Adjustments and Performance
Next, evaluate whether your current bid levels are appropriate for the keywords you’re targeting. This involves looking at how much you’re spending per click versus how much value those clicks are generating.
- Underbidding: If you’re bidding too low, your ads may not be shown often enough, limiting the potential reach and impact of your campaigns.
- Overbidding: If you’re bidding too high, you might be spending more than necessary to achieve the same results, eating into your overall ROI.
Review your campaign’s cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-acquisition (CPA), and return on ad spend (ROAS) to see if adjustments are needed. Look for keywords or ad groups where you’re overspending without seeing conversions and adjust your bids accordingly.
Best Practices:
- Increase bids for high-converting keywords: If certain keywords are driving conversions at a lower cost, consider increasing your bids to improve ad position and capture more valuable traffic.
- Lower bids for underperforming keywords: If certain keywords are eating up budget without producing conversions, reduce your bids or pause those keywords to prevent overspending.
Questions to Ask in the Audit:
- Are there high-performing keywords that could benefit from increased bids to capture more traffic?
- Am I overbidding on keywords or ad groups that aren’t delivering enough conversions?
3. Assess Smart Bidding Strategies
If you’re using automated bidding strategies, such as Target CPA, Maximize Conversions, or Target ROAS, it’s important to evaluate whether these strategies are aligned with your business goals. Each smart bidding strategy optimizes for different outcomes:
- Maximize Conversions: This strategy is ideal for outdoor brands that are focused on driving as many conversions as possible, such as bookings or purchases, within a set budget.
- Target CPA: This strategy aims to get as many conversions as possible at a specific cost per acquisition. It’s useful when you have a clear understanding of how much each conversion should cost based on your margins.
- Target ROAS: If your goal is to optimize for revenue rather than just conversions, this strategy helps ensure that every dollar spent on ads generates a desired return.
Best Practices:
- Choose the right smart bidding strategy: Select a smart bidding strategy that aligns with your business objectives, whether that’s increasing bookings, controlling cost per acquisition, or maximizing return on ad spend.
- Adjust based on performance: Monitor how well these strategies are performing and adjust target CPA or ROAS thresholds as needed to ensure you’re hitting your goals.
Questions to Ask in the Audit:
- Am I using the most appropriate automated bidding strategy based on my campaign goals?
- Are my target CPA or ROAS goals realistic, and am I meeting them?
Case Study Example: Transitioning from Manual to Automated Bidding
For the Costa Rica adventure company, their initial bid strategy was manual, which gave them control over how much they spent on each click. However, as their campaigns started performing better and they gathered more data on which keywords and ad groups drove conversions, they were ready to switch to automated bidding. By transitioning to a Maximize Conversions strategy, they were able to scale their campaigns without sacrificing efficiency, leading to a 60% increase in bookings and a significant reduction in PPC costs.
4. Adjust Bids for Seasonality and High-Value Keywords
Outdoor brands often experience fluctuations in demand based on the time of year. Whether it’s hiking gear in the summer or ski trips in the winter, your bidding strategy should reflect these seasonal trends. Increasing bids during peak seasons can help capture more traffic, while scaling back during off-seasons can help prevent overspending.
Best Practices:
- Increase bids during peak seasons: For example, if your brand sells hiking gear, you should consider increasing bids during the spring and summer when demand is higher.
- Lower bids during off-seasons: When demand drops, scaling back bids can help you preserve your budget for more profitable times.
Questions to Ask in the Audit:
- Have I adjusted my bids to reflect seasonal demand, increasing them during high-traffic periods?
- Are there high-value keywords related to specific times of the year where I could increase bids to capture more traffic?
Optimizing Bidding Strategies for Better Performance
Optimizing your bid strategy is one of the most impactful ways to improve the performance of your PPC campaigns. Whether you’re manually adjusting bids for high-converting keywords or leveraging automated bidding to scale efficiently, reviewing your approach during a PPC audit ensures that you’re making the most of your budget and driving meaningful results.
Actionable Tip: After reviewing your bid strategy, test transitioning from manual to automated bidding once you’ve gathered enough data. Download our Bidding Strategy Playbook for step-by-step instructions on optimizing bids for outdoor brands.
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Putting Your Audit Findings into Action
Conducting a thorough PPC audit is the first step toward optimizing your campaigns for maximum impact. For outdoor brands, where customer behavior shifts with the seasons and competition can be fierce, regularly auditing your PPC performance is essential to staying competitive and ensuring your marketing budget is spent effectively.
Key Takeaways from Your PPC Audit:
- Review Campaign Structure: Organize your campaigns by product, location, and seasonality to ensure you’re reaching the right audience with the right message.
- Analyze Conversion Tracking: Ensure that your conversions align with your business goals, focusing on high-value actions like bookings and purchases. Use tools like Google Tag Manager to streamline conversion tracking.
- Evaluate Budget Allocation: Reallocate your budget to focus on high-performing campaigns, and adjust spend according to seasonal trends to avoid wasting ad dollars on low-demand periods.
- Assess Ad Copy and Creatives: Review your ad copy and visuals to ensure they’re engaging your audience and prompting action. Fix disapproved ads and broken URLs to avoid missed opportunities.
- Review Bid Strategy: Optimize your bidding strategy by adjusting bids based on performance data and shifting between manual and automated bidding as needed.
Next Steps: Implementing Your Audit Findings
Now that you’ve completed your PPC audit, it’s time to put your findings into action. Start by addressing the most pressing issues identified during your audit—whether that’s restructuring your campaigns, improving conversion tracking, or adjusting your budget. The key is to make incremental changes and continuously monitor the impact of your optimizations.
1. Prioritize Your Optimizations
Not all issues uncovered in your audit will have the same level of urgency. Focus first on the areas where improvements will have the biggest impact, such as reallocating budget to top-performing campaigns or fixing misaligned conversion tracking. Once those areas are optimized, move on to fine-tuning your ad copy or adjusting bids for specific keywords.
2. Monitor Performance After Changes
After making adjustments based on your audit findings, closely monitor your campaign performance. Track key metrics such as cost per conversion (CPC), click-through rate (CTR), and return on ad spend (ROAS) to measure the success of your optimizations. Keep an eye on how these metrics evolve over time, especially after changes to bids or budget allocation.
3. Schedule Regular Audits
PPC audits aren’t a one-time task. To ensure long-term success, it’s important to schedule regular audits—whether that’s quarterly, semi-annually, or after major seasonal campaigns. Each audit gives you the chance to course-correct, refine your strategy, and keep your campaigns aligned with your business goals.
Case Study Recap: The Costa Rica Adventure Company
The PPC audit we performed for the Costa Rica-based adventure company led to significant improvements in their campaign performance. By realigning their conversion tracking, reallocating budget to high-performing campaigns, and switching to automated bidding, they were able to reduce their PPC costs by 60% and increase conversions by 60%. This real-world example highlights the importance of ongoing audits and how they can dramatically improve your PPC results.
Ready to take your PPC campaigns to the next level? Download our PPC Audit Toolkit to get started. This comprehensive toolkit includes a checklist for auditing your campaigns, a conversion tracking guide, and tools to help you optimize your budget and bidding strategies.
By implementing a regular PPC audit process, outdoor brands can ensure their campaigns are always optimized for performance, driving valuable conversions, and making the most of their marketing budget.
