Pay Per Click Advertising: Ten Terrible Mistakes
by: JoshPrizer |
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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 Using 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
Split-testing your ads is critical. Even the smallest of changes can boost results. In addition to testing your ad copy's "call to action" or value statements, every ad has multiple variables to test. The titles, the two lines of copy, and display url all can be optimized. If you don't have time for hands-on testing, a good professional pay per click management company can run daily split testing for you. You'd be surprised how well this can pay off.
Not Tracking Results
Of course, testing your ads and fine tuning your keyword lists only works well if you are tracking results. The search engines will tell you what your click-through rates are ... but you need bottom-line results. You need to know your return on investment or what your cost per action is. It's not enough to know that you spend $5,000 and get back $10,000. You might be able to spend only $3,000 and get that same $10,000.
Not Tracking Down 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.
Keywords That Are Too Generic
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.
Avoiding the Dirty Work of Building Long-Tail Keywords
This dovetails into the previous item. Building out lists and ads for long-tail keywords can be a time-consuming process, but worthwhile if done right. You are going to have different earnings per click for the keywords "dvd player," "sony dvd player" and "sony dvd player model DVP-NS57P/B." One consumer is doing research, while the other is likely pricing for the specific model they want and is ready to buy.
Not Pulling Apart Content and Search Campaigns
If you don't want to get burned by click fraud or poor traffic, you need to make sure your content network campaigns and your search network campaigns are separated. If you don't know what this means, chances are they aren't separated in your account and you are likely losing money. Ideally, you would have separate campaigns for each, along with precision analytics to know exactly what keyword from which source is converting for you in the content network.
Not Attracting Local Clients Through Geo Targeting
Local businesses that attract clients from their region must take advantage of the geo-targeting that each of the major PPC engines offer. Bringing that local clientele to your front door on non-local keywords can increase profits greatly.
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.
Making mistakes like the Terrible 10 of PPC Advertising are common, but correcting them can have a huge impact on your bottom line. If you can manage your pay per click ads at a high level or if you can hire them out to a professional pay per click management company...the results for your increased precision and effort will pay off.
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About the Author
Josh Prizer is a Senior Account Executive and PPC advertising expert for Zero Company Performance Marketing, a pay per click management company. Visit us today to learn more on how you can optimize your PPC ad accounts and performance.
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