PPC advertising is an awesome marketing tool that can deliver considerable results to those who implement it correctly.
However, when running a marketing campaign it’s easy to misstep and use a specific practice wrongly, without even realizing it sometimes.
Here is a list of the most common PPC advertising mistakes and what to do about them.
1. Not using keywords in your ads
This is a rather simple one, but with all the talks and conversations going about the seeming irrelevance of keywords nowadays, it’s worth a mention.
While it’s true that Google prioritizes valuable content over keywords and might even show up results for certain queries that don’t even have keywords, it doesn’t have anything to do with your ads.
When running a PPC campaign, the best way to reach your target audience is with the help of keywords, so make sure you keep utilizing them.
2. Failing to match the ad content with the landing page
Many marketers think that it’s okay to tweak the ad content and present something else on the landing page. It’s a common mistake since, logically, people might want to find out more about the product/service offered in the ad.
Well, the truth is that consistency is the most important aspect when it comes to PPC and online marketing in general.
Whatever you say on your ad, especially if it’s mostly promoting a sale, the exact same thing should be said on the landing page or you risk losing your potential buyer.
If a user clicks on your sales ad, it probably means that he is ready to buy, and when he doesn’t see the same content on the landing page, it’s a bad sign.
3. Bidding on short tail keywords
It’s important to think your keyword strategy through before proceeding with its implementation.
Every industry has its list of most searchable keywords, but it will be much wiser to figure out the long tail keywords for your campaigns. The less search queries your target keywords get, the less you will pay per click.
Additionally, your ads will be ranked higher in SERPs if the search query is closer matched to the keyword.
Choose your list of 100 best keywords and then use your website analytics to find the 200-250 most relevant, long tail versions.
4. Not tracking your ads
If you want to understand whether your PPC campaigns deliver any sorts of results at all, you need to be tracking your ads. Moreover, you need to track them separately from all other marketing activities that you might be doing.
An easy way to do this is simply integrate PPC campaigns with your website analytics. This way you can track every visit to your website from a specific (or a group of) keywords and understand the ROI of your PPC budget.
5. Not utilizing the negative keywords feature
Google and other major search engines offer a paid feature that companies can (and should) utilize in order to create a list of keywords for which their ads will not be shown. The most common example of a negative keyword is the word “free”.
You certainly don’t want to be paying for clicks from people who are looking to get your product with $0 budget. It might seem like an additional cost at first, but in reality it will save you from so much headache that you’ll be thankful you read this here.
PPC campaigns have lost their steam recently, but they are still a powerful tool for businesses that can use it correctly.
The difference is that if you could get away with just posting an ad or two on Google and still get sales from those in the past, it requires a much bigger effort to make ads work today.
