Starting a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign for your business this year? PPC advertising can be a great way to reach new customers and boost website traffic. To ensure your paid search advertising efforts run smoothly, you’ll want to avoid these ten pay-per-click campaign mistakes!
Not Having a Plan
To launch a successful online advertising campaign, you need to develop a strong PPC strategy around advertising goals, such as brand awareness, lead generation, or increased sales. Not only can this help you identify your audience and strategize effective ways to reach them, but your strategy also determines how you utilize relevant keywords and ad placements.
Budgeting Incorrectly
Your PPC campaign budget is an important part of your advertising plan. Budget too little, and you’ll miss opportunities. Budget too much, and you’ll waste money. Because keywords help with targeting potential customers, it’s essential to plan which ones you’ll use and what price comes with each. Using tools like Google Ads Keywords Planner can help you bid on the correct placements and spend your budget in a more conducive way. Additionally, you should monitor conversion rates, positions, and past ad spending to adjust your paid search campaign budget as you go.
Failing to Invest in Automation
PPC automation tools allow you to maximize and optimize the budget for your campaign in an effort to increase traffic and conversions. Automation tools like Google Ads use data and advanced technology like AI and machine learning to maximize time and resources and drive better results in pay-per-click marketing. Rather than relying on time-consuming bid management, PPC automation uses algorithms to find the best bids for your campaigns to help you target the right audience. You can even set parameters to your automation or upload data to improve the bidding process. Automation platforms also manage A/B testing so you can test multiple advertisements and identify the best content and PPC strategy for your campaign.
Targeting the Wrong Market
It can be difficult to identify the perfect target audience for your PPC campaign. You don’t want it to be too big or too small, and you don’t want targeted advertising served to people who don’t fit the demographics you want to hit. So how do you find the right audience for your PPC campaign? Your target audience should be based on research—identify who your current customers are and where you have room to grow when selling any products or services. Try retargeting previous customers or website visitors. If you see that your customers live in a certain area, use location targeting for your campaign. Other analytics—whether from your website, social media, or CRM system—are another great way to find this information.
Relying Only on Google Ads
There are more ad networks than just Google Ads for your PPC campaigns, and it’s worthwhile to identify the right platform for your business goals! You can run PPC ads on Facebook and Instagram through Facebook Ads. On top of that, LinkedIn and Twitter both have ad management systems where you can run PPC campaigns. If you’re thinking of running display ads, BuySellAds is one of the largest domains for display advertising. Or you can run sponsored product campaigns on Amazon if you’re an Amazon seller!
Using Incorrect Keywords
The PPC keywords you use in your paid search campaign are make-or-break. You don’t want to use too many keywords or ones that are too broad, so be sure to identify the right keywords for each campaign you run. Doing simple keyword research is one of the easiest ways to identify long-tail keywords that have led customers to your website in the past. You should include negative keywords in your campaign as well. Google Ads and other platforms allow you to list keywords that may be associated with your products or services, but that aren’t actually related. Including negative keywords in your PPC campaign can improve ad targeting and increase your return on investment.
Not Optimizing for Voice Search
Did you know that mobile users are three times more likely to use voice search, and that voice shopping is expected to become a $40+ billion industry by 2022? With such a significant rise in the use of voice search, there’s almost no reason you shouldn’t be optimizing your PPC campaign for voice search. If you’ve run PPC campaigns in the past, check your search queries on the platforms you used to see if any of your ads were triggered by voice searches like “Hey Google…” or “Hey Siri…” One of the best ways to optimize your campaign for voice search is to optimize your content by keeping copy short, utilizing user intent phrases, and including filler words to match phrases.
Having Boring Ad Copy
When it comes to creating PPC campaigns, many marketers spend a fair amount of time crafting a great landing page, budgeting correctly, and finding the right keywords to focus on—but then they’ll forget to create engaging ad copy. Even though you’re working in a limited space, you can tailor ad copy to answer customers’ questions and ultimately make people want to click your ad. Use statistics in your headlines that will catch people’s attention or find ways to appeal to emotions. Your copywriting should show that you understand your customer’s goals and can help them achieve them.
Neglecting Video Campaigns
Video campaigns can increase sales, drive website traffic, and create brand awareness. Google Ads supports cost-per-view video campaigns for YouTube, as well as for websites and apps that run on Google video partners. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter also have video ad options. If you’re still not sold on adding video ads into your PPC strategy, consider this. Since 2017, spending on digital video advertising has risen by nearly $9 billion and, on top of that, 84% of consumers say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service because of a video they’ve seen.
Forgetting the Landing Page
When you run a pay-per-click campaign, you get to choose the first page your ad audience interacts with once they’re redirected to your website. Be sure to design a landing page that aligns with the content of your ad and create a solid call-to-action. Without a PPC landing page, potential customers will be directed to your homepage, which can negatively impact your ad placement. Don’t forget to test the load speed of your landing page either. The last thing you want is to lose customers because a page loads too slowly.
Need help launching and managing PPC campaigns? Hurrdat Marketing provides paid advertising services that can help you target online customers more effectively and drive quality leads to your website. Contact us today to learn more!
