PPC and other online ad campaigns are essential for businesses to get the word out about themselves in a noisy online world. However, it is all too easy to make a mistake and spend more than you need to for a successful campaign. Here are five mistakes we see often when we help our clients with their PPC campaigns.
Lack of a clear message or offer
Any advertisement should be very clear about what you are offering, especially in a PPC ad. Most people will see your ad after a search. If your ad doesn’t relate to their search you won’t get clicks. The offer also needs to be memorable so that it catches the viewer’s attention. Finally, PPC ads work best in B2C situations. You’re going to get very few clicks if you’re advertising for debt collection services!
Poorly designed landing page
Once your ad is clicked and the user hits your landing page, they should be presented with an immediate call-to-action that is clear. People don’t want to read a lot of text after clicking your ad. Give them a clear message that presents the right offer to the right people. This is one reason why A/B testing is so important.
Using broad match keywords
If you choose very broad keywords, you’re forcing Google to guess for other related keywords that your customers are using. This may seem useful, but it’s not. You could be missing out on a specific keyword set that your customers use, and you could also be attracting clicks from customers who have no interest in your product. Do your keyword research.
Lack of tracking
You should strive to learn where your leads are coming from, how they change over time, and how often they convert. This is how you measure ROI on your PPC campaigns. Yes, this means you need to learn PPC analytics.
Poor dashboard
While we think it’s important that decision makers need to know analytics, that doesn’t mean that it should be hard for them to get the data. A poorly-designed dashboard makes analytics and reporting tedious. Consider hiring someone to make a custom dashboard if your current solution isn’t working.
Also, consider hiring an outside PPC specialist to analyze your campaigns. Many companies will offer to check your campaigns for these and other errors that could be robbing you of ROI. Because PPC is so flexible and broad, it is easy to find yourself spending money faster than you expect. Take these tips and analyze your campaigns to see if you’re on the right track.
written by Nick Jakubowski, SEO Manager of Adficient. see more.
