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
Creating relevant, targeted ads are important. Avoid placing all your keywords into a couple massive ad groups. Build them tighter. With tight ad groups you can control more of your ad customization to increase relevancy.
Not Taking Advantage of Negative Keywords
With quality scores and click through rates playing a bigger role in your pay per click ad rank, it’s more important to weed out the keywords that push up your impressions and don′t result in desired clicks. If you sell “widget software” make sure you have negative keywords such a “-free” or “-serial.” Also, check your log files for your site to look for bad keywords that you are spending money on right now.
Not Doing 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 Precisely Tracking Results
It’s not enough to know that you spend $6,000 dollars a month and get back $12,000 in profit. Your bottom-line numbers need to be precise. The PPC engines will give your click through rates, but you need to know your ROI or costs per action in detail. Tracking results can help you to spend only $5,000 a month to get you that same $12,000 in profit.
Not Getting Keyword-Level Tracking
Proper and exact analytics or using an experienced pay per click management company is essential to get the data you need. If you have keywords that are not performing and leaking your account on a daily basis, you are throwing money away. Getting results to the keyword level allows you to adjust bids for maximum effect. If you have one keyword with a $1.34 earnings per click and another at 37 cents, this is key information that allows you to maximize profits. Lower one bid if you are above your “EPC” and raise another to eek out more profits from that sweet-spot keyword. Don′t waste money on a daily basis.
Not Specific Enough Keywords
While some generic keywords can drive a lot of traffic and even be very profitable, they also can be filled with pitfalls. Negative keywords may not be enough to save you from going in the red on a generic keyword. Often, the users doing these searches are at a very early stage of the research and buying process. Again, this is another important reason to track results on a keyword basis.
Avoiding the Dirty Work of Building Long-Tail Keywords
To follow up on the generic keyword topic, creating your long-tail keyword lists and the relevant accompanying ads may be a major time-consuming process. Do it right and you can also find it to be very profitable. The nature of keywords is that they vary from phrase to phrase. A keyword like “cell phone” can differ in results from a keyword such as “motorola cell phone”, which in turn can vastly differ from a more long-tail keyword like “motorola w375 unlocked cell phone.” One user is likely still doing research, while the user in the last example knows what they want … and may be ready to make that purchase.
Not Monitoring Both Content and Search Campaigns
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 Geo-Targeting a Local Business
If you draw most of your business from a local area, the big three PPC engines allow you to geo-target your keywords to that area. This will bring the local market to your doorstep on non-local keyword phrases. This can be hugely profitable.
Not Monitoring Your Campaigns With Frequency
Alright, so maybe you do not frequently monitor your EPCs at the keyword level (you should). And, you don′t conduct split tests every day your ads are up (you should). It is still surprising that there are a high number of pay per click advertisers who don′t continually monitor their accounts. The big three PPC engines are cracking down on poor performing ads more than ever. Many advertisers are getting stung with the “Inactive for Search” label on their keywords. If you don′t monitor your accounts, Google, Yahoo and MSN may have plucked some of your keywords off their networks. And, with that, some of your profits.
The Terrible 10 of Pay Per Click Advertising is a lot to consider, but it’s vital for healthy pay per click campaigns. Whether you can actively manage your PPC accounts at this level or you need to hire a pay per click management company to do it, vigilance and precision can make a huge impact on your bottom line.
Josh Prizer is a Senior Account Executive and search engine marketing consultant for Zero Company Performance Marketing, one of the top 40 pay per click companies worldwide. Check out their site to discover more about how to increase your PPC ad results and effectiveness.