Successful PPC ad campaigns don’t just happen. They need a lot of work shaping, positioning, monitoring, and executing. When you have so many tasks to handle with just a single campaign, it is easy to make a mistake. You can prepare yourself to avoid them from happening and derailing your efforts if you are aware of the most common PPC ad mistakes. This article will cover several of these mistakes so that you don’t have to learn the hard way.
Mistake #1 – Choosing Not to Use the Negative Keywords Tool
Google sometimes works against you. It will display ads that contain words that are not effective for what you are trying to achieve. Google will display ads that contain words like cheap and free by default if you have selected the phrase match keyword type option as part of your campaign. To avoid this from taking away from your ad, use the negative keywords list to stop this from happening.
Mistake #2 – Being Unaware of the Customer Lifetime Value Stats
PPC campaigns produce a lot of data. This information helps design future ad programs. Knowing what your average customer is worth over their lifetime allows you to budget accordingly. Without considering this factor, running campaigns that lose you money becomes too easy. Ultimately, you want to see a profit, and customer lifetime value stats assist with making effective decisions that produce a financial gain.
Mistake #3 – Deciding Not to Use Ad Schedules
Digital Authority Partners says there are different times during the day when your PPC campaign delivers the best results. This information should be available to you as part of the data produced during your campaign. With this information, you can easily schedule your ads to appear when there is more online traffic, and you will likely get a more significant response. The best way to do this is with an ad scheduler. Not doing so adds work, and you may miss windows of opportunity.
Mistake #4 – Thinking You Don’t Need Location Targeting
Part of putting together a successful PPC campaign is selecting the audience you intend to target with your message. It should include a location target as well. If your business is located in Houston, targeting that city and the surrounding area makes sense. Having your ad visible to users who live well out of your geographic region may sound like a good idea; the reality is that for most advertising campaigns, local is better.
Mistake #5 – Choosing Not to Optimize Landing Pages
A landing page is a critical component of your PPC campaign. It adds relevancy and improves the quality score of a campaign. But the landing page has one primary purpose; to create conversions, and A/B testing is a great way to optimize landing pages for that purpose.
To conduct an A/B test, you run two different versions of the same landing page and monitor which one outperforms the other. The results give you data to decide which one most optimizes this part of your PPC campaign.
Mistake #6 – Being Someone Who Sets and Forgets Campaigns
Successful PPC campaigns do not happen overnight. They often require weeks and months of tweaking. If you are a beginner, it is essential to know that your marketing job is not complete once your campaign starts. It runs through the entire ad run and after the campaign ends. You can’t just set and forget the ad, thinking you have everything perfect the first time. PPC management includes reviewing daily key performance indicators (KPIs).
Mistake #7 – Deciding to Not Have Dedicated Landing Pages
We have already discussed the importance landing pages play in the conversion rates during a PPC campaign. Not using dedicated ones relevant to the ads you are running will go against you. Sending traffic to your home page may work, but in comparison, a dedicated landing page will produce greater conversion rates. Plus, your quality score will be negatively impacted without a landing page that aligns with your PPC campaign.
Mistake #8 – Thinking You Need to Be Number One
Something about showing up at the top of search results makes all the hard work worthwhile. However, hitting the top of the list takes considerable work, time, and money. All of these can be effective if channeled elsewhere. Instead of targeting the Number One position, you should be looking more at your ROI. Besides, sitting at Number Two or Three will still draw many clicks for your campaign.
Mistake #9 – Choosing to Keep a Slow Running Website
You should already know how important it is to have fast-loading pages. It does not make sense to spend time researching keywords, creating ad copy, and executing your PPC campaign to see data that tells you that you have an incredibly high bounce rate. Google verifies that pages taking 5-seconds or longer to load result in a bounce rate of 90 percent. That leaves just 10 percent of visitors sticking around, which is not nearly enough.
Mistake #10 – Being Someone Who Does Not Protect Their Brand Name
When marketers research keywords, they typically do not include their brands. When this happens, you open the doors for a competitor to latch onto your brand name and use it within their PPC campaign to steal away some of your customers. Ensure that your brand name is included as part of your selected keywords to prevent poaching. You have to expect that not all players will play fairly.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, there are a lot of errors that can develop with a PPC campaign if you let them. Taking the proper precautions can prevent any from damaging your ad program. You want to succeed and receive a good ROI for your efforts. The list above is just a sample of some of the things that can develop and destroy the work you put into your marketing efforts. You will see positive results by not allowing any of these to get in the way.