Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) can be one of the most useful tools for marketing your business—if you know how to use it. There are thousands of advertisements all vying for a consumer’s attention any given day. In today’s saturated market, it’s important to create effective ads and even more important to make sure those ads are being seen by your target audience. The problem is that PPC is rapidly evolving, with more and more complex updates and features each year. It can be tough to ensure your dollars are being spent the right way. Take care to avoid these common PPC mistakes, and enjoy the return on investment you deserve.
Using the same ad copy
PPC is all about experimenting. You may have to keep trying something new to get better results, depending on target audience, product, location, etc. Using the same ad copy, again and again, will make your ads low-ranking, monotonous and drastically reduce the click-through rate. Spend time in crafting engaging & original ad copies. Include numbers, geographic content, company info, special sales, and other copy that encourages interaction and engagement.
Neglecting your daily spend
Recently, Google has allowed the advertisers to go over their daily spend budget. You can almost double the spending now. They say they will evenly spread the budget over a 30 day period to make for any overspending, but it’s not recommended. Keep a close eye on the conversion level and spending to avoid exceeding the daily limit and accruing additional charges.
Retargeting Carelessly
One of the most common PPC mistakes is careless retargeting. Retargeting is considered one of the most profitable marketing practices, but overdoing it can do more harm then good because people are already bombarded with ads on a daily basis. If you’re not carefully crafting your remarketing campaign, then you’re probably annoying people instead of convincing them. Make sure your retargeted ads provide plenty of value for your audience, and make sure you choose people who stand a good chance of buying your product or service.
Not knowing how to reach your audience
You want to make sure you select the proper audience and know how to reach them. Don’t go too broad when selecting your audience and keywords. Use specific geographic information, product descriptions and categories to market effectively. Run PPC campaigns based on your product category keywords to drive traffic right to your category pages. Essentially, what you’re doing here is giving people the quickest way to get exactly what they’re looking for. For example, if the only products you sell are Gibson Les Paul guitars, it’s a good idea to use ‘Les Paul guitars’ because ‘guitars’ as a keyword might be too broad. At the least, you should run two separate campaigns with different keywords and see which one generates more conversions. As I said previously, PPC involves a lot of experimentation, so it might take a few different campaigns to determine which keywords and targeting strategy works for your business.
Landing pages not reflecting your offers
Matching query intent to content is an absolute must. If you notice that your bounce rate is way too high, it’s probably because your landing page is not in sync with the ad copy. Suppose you are offering a 40% discount on some products and that product is nowhere to be found on your landing page or it displays conflicting information, then the visitor will be frustrated and likely leave the site immediately.
For nearly 20 years we have helped hundreds of clients who needed the assistance of an online marketing agency in Jacksonville and St. Augustine. We know marketing today can be difficult and time-consuming. Our goal is to ease the stress, and allow you to focus on running your business. Get in touch with us at Business Builders for any marketing, web design or branding needs you may have!
