Pay Per Click Advertising: Ten Terrible Mistakes
Vigilance, micromanaging and attention to detail can help you avoid some common and costly mistakes of PPC advertising
. What are those mistakes? Here are the terrible 10 that are typical to most pay per click campaigns.
Too Many Keywords Per Ad Group
It's important to target your ad to be as relevant as possible. Don't group all your keywords into one or two ad groups. Break them out. Keep them tight. This gives you more control over ad variables so that you can be as relevant as possible.
Ignoring Negative Keywords
Pay per click advertising has placed more importance than ever on click through rates and quality scores. It is vital to fine tune your impressions by getting rid of the non-relevant phrases that are lowering those CTRs. If you are selling an item such as "software for widgets" then be certain you also have those negative keywords like "-free" if you don't have a free trial version. One way to find irrelevant keywords that are costing you is to check your log files of your site.
Not Enough Testing
Running split tests on your ads is essential. And, no item is too small to test. Of course, you will want to work on your various call to action statements, as well as your unique value statement, but keep in mind that there are other variables. There are small, but effective tweaks that can boost results by just testing titles, each line of copy and your display url. If running continual tests is time consuming, hook up with an experience pay per click management company. A good firm can offer you daily split testing and optimize your results very effectively.
Not Tracking Results
If you do get into testing ads and fine-tuning your keyword lists, it's only as effective as your tracking. Any PPC search engine will give you your ad spends and click through rates, but what about the bottom-line success? Knowing that you made $14,000 off of a $7,000 ad spend is fine, but if you dig deeper with your tracking you might be able to make that same $14,000 with only $6,000 a month in spend. That savings ads up.
Not Tracking Results to the Keyword Level
Good analytics or a good pay per click management company will get your data down to the keyword level. Why pay for keywords that are not performing? That money could be better spent on keywords that are doing well or on other marketing expenses. If one keyword has an earning per click of 45 cents and another keyword has an earning per click of $1.45, you need to know. You can lower the bid on one and raise the bid on the other to drive more profits. If you aren't doing this, you likely have under-performing keywords that are leaking your account daily.
Not Specific Enough Keywords
Some broad and generic keywords can certainly push a ton of traffic to your site. They may even be very successful. Often, however, they can also do just the opposite -- drain your funds with poor results. A user searching on one of these generic phrases is often doing research in an early part of the buying process. Knowing your keyword-level results and filtering out bad variations with negative keywords can help you get a true read on these generic keywords.
Ignoring the Many Long-Tail Keywords
This follows the above item on generic keywords. Building a list and individual ads for the long-tail keywords can be a major time-sucker. It can also be profitable if the task is performed correctly. Those earnings per click will likely vary widely from a generic keyword like "mp3 player," "sony mp3 player" and "sony 2GB S610 walkman video mp3 player." One consumer is doing research, the other knows what they want and is most likely looking to purchase.
Not Separately Tracking Content and Search Networks
You can get stung by poor quality traffic or click fraud if you do not separate your content network advertising from your search network advertising and look at the results. If you don't understand those above items, there is a good probability that you are very likely losing money. A better solution is to build separate campaigns for each and ... track with precise analytics the results from each network. Again, not knowing is probably costing you now.
Not Attracting Local Clients Through Geo Targeting
Each of the major pay per click engines offer a way to tightly set up your campaigns. If you are working from a local pool of potential clients in your area, you need to take advantage of some of the area-specific targeting that the PPC engines offer. Fine tuning your campaigns to get the right people in your region to respond can be well worth the effort to your bottom line.
Not Continually Monitoring Your Campaigns
Okay, so you don't do daily split testing even though you should. Maybe you don't continually monitor your earnings per click at the keyword level, even though you should. Still, a lot of PPC advertisers don't even frequently check into their accounts. Google, Yahoo and MSN are increasingly slapping keywords with the "Inactive for Search" status to get you to improve your quality. They may be slowly picking off your keywords -- and your profits -- one by one and you aren't even aware of it.
Healthy, efficient and vibrant PPC campaigns require work. The Terrible 10 of PPC Advertising that we listed above form a strong foundation for you consider when revamping or starting up your PPC advertising. Whether you hire out to a pay per click management company or can actively manage your PPC accounts at this level of detail...precision, effort and attention to detail can greatly impact your results.
by: Josh Prizer
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