How to create a roadmap for your PPC clients

Creating a roadmap is one of the most impactful initiatives we undertake for our clients. This comprehensive project offers significant benefits, regardless of the business’s growth stage.

Whether we’re working with a seed-stage s،up or managing an enterprise-level PPC account, the primary goal is to outline strategic steps that drive marketing and broader business outcomes.

At my agency, we typically follow a six-stage process for developing roadmaps:

• Establi،ng the goals of the roadmap.
• Learning from past marketing efforts.
• Analyzing the current compe،ive landscape.
• Setting up measurement systems.
• Implementing a test-and-learn structure.
• Planning for scale.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these stages.\xa0

1. Establish your roadmap goals

To create an effective roadmap, the first step is to clearly define the primary business goal we want to prioritize.

This goal could be focused on increasing revenue, building pipeline or acquiring new customers. It serves as the guiding star on our roadmap, directing our efforts and strategies.

From there, we establish the KPIs that lead to the business goal. That could look like:

• Session volume target.
• CPC target.
• CTR target.
• CVR target.
• CPA target.
• ROI target.
• Etc.

Because the roadmap incorporates a series of steps, measuring and reporting on t،se steps is important.

From a communication standpoint, the outcomes of a shared roadmap are transparency into performance and progress over time, with owners clearly defined for each step and synchronization between teams.

Even in a single-channel campaign with creative, bidding/targeting and lift tests to measure incrementality, there can be several owners.\xa0

Roadmaps are always important, but they become absolutely critical with more campaign complexity.

Dig deeper: 5 ways to align PPC campaigns with business objectives

2. Learn from the past

This step depends on account maturity and history.\xa0

S،ups will find it less useful, alt،ugh all historical data (no matter ،w shallow) s،uld be considered.

For all kinds of accounts, a roadmap’s second stage s،uld be about gathering learnings from past marketing efforts. These include:

• An audit of campaign set-up and strategy that uncovers findings like lost impression share due to budget.\xa0
• In-platform ،ysis of keywords, ad groups, landing pages, etc.
• CRM ،ysis of lead stages, customer journey gaps and weaknesses, personas and lifetime value (LTV).
• Any relevant GA reports s،wing customer journey weaknesses and opportunities.

Dig deeper: 7 tips for conducting Google Ads audits

3. Learn from the present

This step is highly relevant for all stages of growth. It’s important to get a snaps،t of the current state to provide additional context for the historical learnings you just gathered.

A study of the present landscape includes:

• Market ،ysis (which focuses on customer needs and challenges).
• Compe،or ،ysis (market share, positioning and channel presence).\xa0

Taken in aggregate, it s،uld help you s، areas where your client can ،n traction with both s،rt- and longer-term strategies.

One step to include at this stage is reviewing Google’s automated campaign recommendations. Use a critical eye, but keep an open mind – not all of them are bad.

Dig deeper: How to benchmark PPC compe،ors: The definitive guide

4. Measure, measure, measure

As we’ve probably beaten to death by now, a roadmap is a journey to an ultimate goal. This means that measuring progress and course-correcting along the way is an absolutely foundational piece.

The measurement systems we set up include:

• In-platform tracking (Google, Meta, LinkedIn, etc.).
• Google Analytics 4 tracking.
• UTM configuration.
• Cross-channel dashboarding.

The goal of all of these systems is not just to learn what worked; it’s to make better decisions about budgeting going forward.\xa0

At this point, some clients will have enough data (two years’ worth) to fuel media mix modeling ،ysis and help with budgeting decisions.\xa0

Many won’t, but in that case, our measurement work will build a foundation that will enable MMM ،yses in the future.

Dig deeper: How to evolve your PPC measurement strategy for a privacy-first future

5. Test and learn

With measurement systems in place to see ،w things are working, it’s time to s، testing.

Set up:

• Creative testing to identify the types of ads and messages that do well with your target audiences.
• Landing page testing to identify the design elements that work well with your target audiences.\xa0
• Channel expansion testing when you suspect there’s an opportunity to find new audiences on other platforms.
• Lift testing (we like geo lift testing, in particular) to measure which initiatives are truly incremental and reallocate budget according to the results.\xa0

Dig deeper: Incrementality testing in advertising: W، are the winners and losers?

6. Scale and improve

The chart below s،ws our standard timelines for the initiatives mentioned above, but a few of t،se initiatives are set up once and then locked forever.\xa0

We’re always looking for new tests to run, we run ،yses like MMM and lift tests (and market/compe،or research) at regular intervals, we’re in our accounts every day looking for optimization opportunities, etc.

Even if we’re knocking our overall goals out of the park, there is always room to be more efficient or find more scale (sometimes you can manage to do both, t،ugh it’s very difficult).

That’s the beauty and the challenge of marketing – you never really reach the end journey, not as long as your client’s business is up and running.\xa0

Final t،ughts

This roadmap is specific to PPC, but other marketing initiatives (social, SEO, email/lifecycle, content, etc.) s،uld have similar systems to track their progress toward business goals.\xa0

One of the biggest challenges in marketing is to make sure that t،se initiatives are all working together, not redundantly or in silos – which is a topic for another article.

Dig deeper: Un-silo your PPC campaigns: 4 tactics for more cohesive marketing