Learning how to avoid and look out for some of the common Google Adwords PPC mistakes can be all the difference between success and failure in your Google Pay-per-Click campaign.
There is no substitute for in-depth advice from a suitable professional but this post is designed to give the layperson an overview of some of the common mistakes that can be made in a Pay-Per-Click campaign and it should form the basis of some questions to pose to your current PPC consultant / provider and if you get any blank and surprised looks from your PPC provider, its time to walk away before you waste any more money…
Poor targeting strategy
An important part of a successful PPC strategy is the right targeting of your Google ads.
Make no assumptions. You may have a wealth of knowledge from your previously successful ppc campaigns but as with all adword campaigns, just like investments, past performance doesn’t guarantee future success so you need to do your research for each campaign and its nuances.
Targeting the wrong audience for a particular campaign or objective obviously cannot bring the desired results and will just see you waste your budget so the targeting your ads is an essential part of a successful advertising campaign. You may have the perfect ad but you’ll need to show it to the right audience at the right time to reach your goals with a suitable return on your investment.
Tips on Audience targeting
- Demographics: You need to target your ads based on how well your products and/or services are on trend with users in certain locations, ages, genders and device types. One of the most common mistakes for a local business is to not restrict the catchment area of the adverts and put an ad location radius in place. Not doing this will see your adverts being displayed for the entire UK otherwise. The key is being selective to the right audience to make your budget last longer.
- In-market targeting: whilst not the end of the world if you dont set this up straight away you are missing a trick by not showing your Google PPC ads to users who have already been searching for products and services like yours and have those searches in their browser history. These users may have done their research on your competitors websites and are now looking to make a purchase, making conversions from such a targeted audience more likely.
- Custom intent targeting: choosing words or phrases used at the time when people are most likely to engage with your site and make purchases by using ‘custom intent audiences’ is also another great tool to increases conversions.
- Remarketing: this great tool increases your campaign effectiveness by targeting the users that have already interacted with your ads so that they’ll see your ads more often so as to increase the likelihood they will return to your site and convert.
Google Ads offers different ways of targeting your ads so it is best to use a suitable Google Adwords PPC consultant who is not just adept at Google Adwords but marketing principles and consumer behaviour, to get the most out of your ppc campaign.
Poor keyword strategy
Keywords are words or phrases that are used to match your ads with the terms that people are searching for so obviously using the highest quality, most relevant keywords for your ppc advertising campaign will help you reach the audience and customers that you want.
Most PPC consultants focus on keywords to discover new opportunities for success but how often you evaluate your keyword strategy can be all the difference between success and failure of your ppc campaign.
Tips on keyword strategy
- Negative keywords: this is one of the most overlooked Google Adwords PPC mistakes and will see your pour your pay-per-click budget down the drain. If you sell a product or service you are obviously hoping that through your Google adverts you are getting clicks from customers but if you dont specify the negative keyword ‘jobs’ for example, your adverts are being displayed to job seekers whom have no intent to buy your product. There will be many negative keywords for your chosen product, service, industry and target audience and only regular keyword analysis will uncover them and improve your campaign. However, if you don’t select any negative keywords to start with you are simply throwing money away.
- Keyword Research: as business owners we often don’t appreciate what the layperson may type into Google as a keyword to find our website so one crucial element of keyword research is to conduct a thorough analysis of what target keywords and related keywords and phrases are actually being used by your target audience, not what you think they use.
Want a better PPC Return on Investment?
If you are unhappy with your current Google Adwords PPC campaign, be it self-managed or by an PPC Adwords agency, simply get in touch for a no obligation discussion.
