The errors of beginners to the world of PPC is so obvious, almost scary at times. What is worse is those that have touched on it before, and think that they are able to do it successfully, but failing. The reality is that those people aren’t alone, it’s rather common. In this post the common errors will be under the spotlight, by looking at the 5 most common mistakes beginner’s tends to make when it comes to PPC.
1 Having too many broad match
Newbies tend to bid too much on broad match keywords. It’s like they think – let’s just go wide and cover all the markets. But it could be factors for this could be laziness, lack of experience or just simple misunderstanding of the functions of different types of matches. It may be true that its easy to just pick broad keywords in your campaign and think that you are safe. Then again, if you lack experience of knowledge of how match types function, could lead that novices to just pick broad match by default. The implication is that your selection of picking broad match will lead to low click through rate and following that a waste of your investment.
What you should rather do is pick heavier use of phrase and exact match keywords, or at least modified broad match. Alternatively you can search for long tail keyword that relates directly to your landing page and ad copy. Following this method will raise your ad ranking and improve your quality score. In short, being more specific means that you will improve your targeting and thus also save you money.
2 The need to be at #1
Maybe its people’s competitive nature, but there’s an obsession to be #1. In PPC terms, however, being #1 is not the same. A bidding war for that #1 spot could lead to overspending on clicks. Also recall Google has an ad layout that has four ads on the top of each page. Therefore, why go for the first at a premium rate if you could go for the #2 or #3 spot at a much lower rate, where you can get clicks per layout.
Therefore, you should start with a high average position. Once the campaign standing becomes a problem if there is a budget issue, then lower your bids. However, if you drop too low, you may lose volume. Keep it going and also testing up until you discover a happy medium between ad position and traffic volume. The end outcome will be lower CPCs and extra clicks, while at the same time keeping your campaign budget the same.
3 By not tracking conversions
Firstly you should grasp that PPC is a special marketing strategy for many reasons. That is since PPC permits for a near complete transparency, that is if you set up conversion tracking. Simply put, you can track a single click to a sale. What this means for marketing is improvement, since if you know which keywords, ads, or clicks are driving your business sales, you can optimize to increase your ROI. Also, tracking allows you to see what is not working, what needs to be changed or even removed from the campaign. This actions can save you money as you aren’t spending money on things that aren’t working.
User-friendly tools that you can use, and what are free, are Google AdWords and Google Analytics. These tools, once set-up are a way to track your PPC success or mishaps.
4 Bring together the search and display networks
Maybe one shouldn’t blame the newbie here, since its Google’s fault in reality. The principal choice and default when building new campaigns in AdWords is ‘Search Network with Display.’ There is even a notice that reads: ‘Best opportunity to reach the most customers.’ But don’t. It is not the best route for anyone trying to place ads on Google or even other platforms. That is since it does not provides an accurate representation of the data and it releases your control of your campaigns. Also you will end up over paying for display clicks. Instead, rather grasp that the two are not the same. Therefore you should treat them differently.
5 Setting it and forgetting it
You need to monitor and evaluate your AdWords account once a week to make sure you are optimizing your account. What you should be doing is to check your bids. These include raising on strong performers, or lowering on poor performers, also to add negative keywords, adding new keywords to your keyword list, to experiment with match types, focusing on increasing quality score and to optimize and test ad copy. If that is too much, then at least you should check your budget and make modifications to your keyword bids centered on performance.
To cut a long story short
Lack of experience will show, and they will hurt your PPC success. Having a skilled management to conduct the work will outset the costs. It is thus better, and more cost effective to make use of skilled marketing agencies. One company that exactly this kind of work is the marketing agency Adriaanbrits.com. A company like them will be able to set your PPC campaign to the path of success.
