If you didn’t manage to see the speech (gutted!), you can now read the first part below. Here, you can learn about the three red flags you’re using a flat-packed template with your PPC campaigns. You can also see (and download) the slides from the Paid Strategies Shouldn’t be Flat-Packed: Three Red Flags to Look Out For talk here.

I am Phoebe, and I have been in PPC for just shy of five years.

Working within an agency, I have worked with brands across Europe, the UK, and the US. Ultimately, I present to clients why their current strategy isn’t working and create a new one which gets them the results they need daily.

This means I am a whizz at auditing, troubleshooting, and re-developing a client's strategy to get them the best results, often removing flat or wasteful strategies.

So, here I am telling you what I look for and how I redesign a client's strategy.

Let's start with the basics: what the hell am I talking about? Flat-packed, according to Google, requires consumers to assemble the pieces themselves.

And we all know who the Swedish pros are at that.

However, what does that look like in PPC?

This can come in many forms, whether you are placing the cognitive load on the client themselves, the MD, or even the user.

Now, time for a full disclaimer.

It's important to mention that we have all been subject to flat-packed strategies and are all guilty of time or budget constraints, where this is the best we can offer as a short-term solution. And there is no shame in having a strategy like this if there is more to come.

However, it is important that you don’t only do this, especially if you offer a bespoke PPC package.

Layering your strategy correctly will benefit your client and your own progression as well as save you time!

By developing on a flat template, you will be expanding and growing areas of your strategy and not having the approach of ‘it’ll do’ that makes it easy for your competitors to steal your client.

So, let me walk you through the red flags that tell me you are using an IKEA template within your PPC campaigns

We know that clients are KPI-obsessed, but how do you expect them to be happy when you, the account manager, can’t explain why 45% of the pages aren't tagged?

Or why are there 58 conversion events and hundreds of audiences despite only two being used?

Diving into your analytics, conversions, and audience management shouldn’t make you break a sweat.

If you need all 58 of your conversion goals:

Don’t be afraid to use Tag Assistant and discover why something isn’t pulling correctly from your data layer.

Remember that the more goals you have, the more likely mistakes are.

Your conversion rate and CPA might be great if you track the same primary goal five times. Sadly, I am not joking when I say I have seen more than once or, even worse, tracking a goal which has no relevance at all.

This also extends to your audiences, which indicates quickly to me that your analytics and user journey aren't being prioritised.

We know that our target audiences vary from client priority to the industry and where they are in the funnel itself. But, as a rule of thumb, if you are an eCommerce client, ensure you have the basics:

If you're a service-based client, make sure you have all your relevant contact points covered and break your audiences into service groups.

And obviously, make sure you use them. We are in a time of exclusion-centric PPC, so save your money! Exclude your unengaged audiences or those who have purchased or enquired in the past seven days.

So, if you have all of this covered, well done!

This tells me that you care about how the account is set up, are confident in your priorities, know how to effectively test different approaches and are an expert in your clients' KPIs.

What's worse than going onto a SERP and seeing an ad without the brand's name or favicon? This is one way to tell everyone you don’t take your account seriously. And it indicates that the account needs some serious TLC, as you have neglected the bare minimum.

I doubt you have your business profile linked or your reviews optimised, and I will place money that you have account-wide sitelinks and callouts that haven't been touched for months.

Assets really are an asset to your account – hence why Meta has introduced sitelinks and promotions. Not only do they give you a lifeline, but they are also a great way to test potential landing pages, ad copy, and ideas.

No matter what business or industry you're in, we both know you need to dedicate time to review your strategy to include relevant and optimised assets.

Your campaign should be as layered as an onion, and if it lacks engaging assets, you need to enhance your setup to improve your conversion rate and boost engagement.

If we stop and consider why we have settled for account-wide assets, it often stems from a lack of time, attention or even just ‘it performs well, so why change it?’

The answer is that you are shifting the cognitive load from your ad onto the user. The less your user needs to work, the more likely they will remain engaged, remember your ad and learn what you are offering.

Cognitive load is a fundamental part of advertising, and we can see the direct impact it has on your performance. From social to search ads, you need to consider two main concepts of the cognitive load: the intrinsic and the extrinsic.

Intrinsic refers to the ad itself and the wording:

When looking at the extrinsic cognitive load, we are looking at unnecessary additions that deflect from your ad. For example:

All of this reduces and directly impacts how likely a consumer is to engage, purchase, or even remember your ad.

So – are you going to engage your user with your broad sitelinks and imagery? Or is it going to contribute to a low engagement rate?

We know that the average number of touchpoints before purchase is six, with over half of users having four or more touchpoints. Therefore, if your ad is being used to retarget, we need to:

We fix this with analytics and by considering a secret third type of mental load. The germane load refers to the benefit of assets and ad creatives by using different schemas to present clearly what you want the customer to look at.

To unlock successful ads, we need to use our data to find what the non-analytical user is most likely searching for and present it to them like the knight in shining armour.

To do this:

But follow it through:

And finally, ensure you are using converting pages as a landing page – I have gone into many accounts and seen ‘Automatically Created’ assets which bring the user to your blog, about us page, or even an unsubscribe page.

The ad spend on these assets can be reinvested.

This doesn't mean you can't have an about us page, but you should make sure it’s a PPC-focused landing page with condensed, tailored page copy to answer the users' concerns and a target-specific on-page journey that results in a conversion.

Red Flag Three has to do with your organisation. We can all tell when there is not a clear master plan. And it's a one-way road to chaos.

Centralise your plan.

Make it clear.

You should be able to articulate quickly and efficiently how each platform and campaign feeds into your strategy. However, if you have 40 different strategies running simultaneously without a clear structure, you cannot properly attribute a strategy's success or failure, especially when you have six different influencing factors interfering with your strategies.

So, there you have it! Now that you know what Phoebe’s three red flags are, it’s time to head on over to part two of the speech, where you will learn how to organise your strategy.

At Zelst, we can help guide your PPC strategy and ensure it is optimised for success. Whether you need assistance auditing your current campaigns, boosting conversion rates, or developing a more structured and streamlined strategy, our team is here to help.

Any questions so far? Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

For further insights, be sure to Why You Should Go To brightonSEO next year or read our CEO Peter’s talk on Tactics vs Strategy.