Online marketers know that Google Adwords is an excellent way to drive targeted traffic to a website in a couple of days (sometimes even in a couple of hours). But at the same time, we are also aware that Google Adwords could prove to be an expensive affair to maintain. The key is to handle Adwords campaigns (also known as PPC campaigns) correctly in order to get the highest return on investment from them.
Do you run a Google Adwords campaign & looking for some tips to make your campaign successful?
Great! In this post, we are going to discuss 4 mistakes to avoid while running PPC campaigns that can really help you to save your advertising dollars significantly.
#1 Not Using the Right Keyword Matches
This is, according to me, one of the major reasons why many PPC advertisers fail to get the desired outcome from their campaigns.
Broadly speaking, Google Adwords provides advertisers with 3 ways to add keywords to any campaign. It could be a broad match, phrase match, or exact match. Maybe, most of you already know about this however I will still talk about different types of keyword matches in brief.
Broad Match: According to Google here, “Broad match lets a keyword trigger your ad to show whenever someone searches for that phrase, similar phrases, singular or plural forms, misspellings, synonyms, stemming (such as floor and flooring), related searches, and other relevant variations.”
Now, as you can see that if you use broad match keywords, it’s likely that you may get a lot of impressions but at the same time, the quality of traffic could be less relevant & imprecise since it will show up for terms that aren’t a tight fit for your products or the ad.
Phrase Match: According to Google here, “Phrase match lets a keyword trigger your ad to show only when someone searches for your exact keyword phrase, or close variations of your exact keyword phrase, with potentially other words before or after that phrase.”
In other words, you may like to use phrase-match keywords when you want the filtered traffic to come to your website. Or maybe, you don’t want your ads to show up when a synonym or similar phrase of your keywords is being searched.
For e.g. if I define a phrase that matches “online advertiser”, my ads may get triggered on the search queries like online advertiser in Singapore, Singapore online advertiser best online advertiser, etc.
Exact Match: According to Google here, “With exact match, you can show your ad to customers who are searching for your exact keyword, or close variants of your exact keyword, exclusively. Of the four keyword matching options, exact match gives you the most control over who sees your ad, and can result in a higher clickthrough rate (CTR).”
As the name suggests, exact-match keywords will trigger your ads only when the users search for the exact keywords defined by you in your Adwords campaign. In my above example, if I convert my phrase match keyword to exact match, I will not get any traffic who are searching for online advertiser Singapore or Singapore online advertiser because I have restricted my ads to show up on keywords other than [online advertiser].
Both phrase match and exact match keywords can result in receiving fewer impressions but highly relevant traffic.
What is the best solution then?
The best way of PPC keyword management is to start with exact match keywords to control your advertising budget and gradually open up to phrase match and broad match keywords. It would also be advisable to use broad-match keywords with an appropriate list of negative keywords so that you can minimize the risk of getting irrelevant query searches.
#2 Not Using Negative Keywords
Defining negative keywords in your campaign or advert set is a way to let Google Adwords know that your ads shouldn’t be triggered if those words are included in the user’s search query. PPC advertisers can save a lot of money by using negative keywords for their campaigns/adverts appropriately.
Below is a great example of how negative keywords can result in showing up ads for relevant search queries.
An advertiser who is a software development company wants to sell their anti-virus software through Google Adwords however they don’t provide any free trial version for their users. Therefore, adding the words like ‘free’ & ‘trial’ will restrict users to see this advertiser’s ad for search queries like save this advertiser to spend money on irrelevant keywords like ‘free anti-virus software or ‘free trial anti-virus products’.
The best way for PPC advertisers to determine a list of negative keywords is to look over the search query report from Google Adwords or Google Analytics and add them to the negative keywords list.
#3 Not Knowing the Best Ad Position
Most of the PPC advertisers keep struggling to be in the top position by always paying more than what their competitors are paying for the same keywords.
Not always, staying in the top position is beneficial in PPC advertising. Why? Because for some keywords, the users may be looking out just for information about any product or service. In other words, they are searching for some knowledge, rather than making a purchase.
How can you identify your best ad position?
Simply, pull out your report for any specific duration and analyze your conversions. Identify the average ad position that got the maximum conversions in your campaign. Try to achieve the same positions and observe your ad spending for the next 15 days. Most likely, you will notice more conversions at a comparatively lower budget.
#4 Not Sending Users to Landing Page
Now, this is one of the biggest mistakes that many PPC advertisers do. By sending the users to the homepage or any other irrelevant page, you really minimize the profitability of your Google Adwords campaign. The best practice to get more out of your PPC campaigns is to design & use a dedicated landing page for your campaigns.
What is a landing page?
A landing page, sometimes known as a “lead capture page” a “lander”, or a “destination page”, is a distinct page on your website that’s built for one single conversion objective. A landing page should be designed, written, and developed with one business goal in mind.
If you have more than one campaign or advert group, then go ahead and create multiple landing pages but do not gamble on a single landing page or homepage. If required, you can also consider hiring a professional website designer to create a landing page.
Final Words
If you are looking to get instant traffic on your website, Google Adwords is the best option. Being expensive, you can easily end up paying more than what you get from it. Therefore, the safe and best way to get high returns on your investment is to learn it first and then put your money at stake.