Google Adwords can be a great investment for businesses. After all, businesses make 2 dollars in revenue for every dollar they’ve spent on Adwords.
That comes as no surprise considering 85% of consumers use the internet to find local businesses. While 70% of searches conducted on mobile results in action taken within an hour.
Still, if you’re not careful you can easily lose a lot of money quickly. There are horror stories of businesses that have poured thousands of dollars into Adwords. Only to come up with a few impressions and not one single conversion.
Even search engine marketers can make costly mistakes from managing multiple accounts every day. Fortunately, in this article, you’ll learn the multiple ways there are to avoid common mistakes made in Adwords. Also, how to get the most out of your investment in Adwords.
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1. Not Choosing Keywords Based On The Buyer’s Journey
2. Picking The Wrong Match Types
3. Not Using Negatives Keywords
4. Not Getting Rid of Underperforming Keywords
5. Not Organizing Adword Campaigns Properly
6. Using Too Many Keywords
7. Not Using Ad Extensions
8. Ignoring The Search Term Report
9. Not Evenly Rotating Ads
10. Not Testing Ad Copy For Best Results
11. Not Optimizing Landing Pages For Mobile Users
12. Having Unrealistic Expectations Of Adwords
Why should you use the Mack Media Group for Google Adwords?
What makes Adwords so effective in marketing is the ability to show up for products and services people are looking for when they are actively searching.
Keywords make it possible for specific services and products to be served to the right potential customer at the right time.
This is why it’s vital to understand what stage of the buyer’s journey a customer is at. The buyer’s journey as Hubspot explains, “is the process buyers go through to become aware of, evaluate, and purchase a new product or service.” There are three steps to this process:
Awareness Stage – Buyer realizes they have an issue
Consideration Stage – Buyer researches solutions to their issue
Decision Stage – Buyer chooses their solution.
For example, suppose there’s a company called “Quantify Towels” that manufactures and sources towels from Turkey. They are running an Adwords campaign to increase their sales. When picking keywords, they should steer clear of keywords that contain, “Turkish towels vs Egyptian towels” or “how to” as those are keywords indicating a non-buyer intent.
Instead, keywords with “where to buy luxury Turkish towels” or “best Turkish towels” indicate a buying intention. So build Adword campaigns around keywords that factor in which buying stage a customer is at.
2. Picking The Wrong Match Types
Another mistake people make when using Adwords is not picking the correct keyword match type. Keyword match types control how keywords trigger ads. There are four types of Keyword match type:
Broad – When Keywords are added into Ad Groups Google sets them by default to broad. As the name suggests keywords will trigger searches that broadly match.
That means when picking, “Men’s Running Shoes”, ads will show up for the search terms of “Basketball Shoes For Men”, “Best Looking Shoes For Men ”, or “Gym Shoes For Men”.
A lot of clicks and traffic will be gained but PPC budget will be wasted on irrelevant traffic. The next best option to capture a lot of potential good searches without having too much reach that broad match has is broad match modifier.
We’ll cover that next. If you still choose to use broad match keywords if you’re goal is to get maximum traffic or as many keyword ideas as possible. Use the Search Terms Report to make sure budget isn’t wasted on irrelevant keywords.
Broad Match Modifier – If you want a wide reach without showing up for many irrelevant searches. Broad Match Modifier is the go-to option. It’s a middle ground between the far-reaching broad match and the more restrictive phrase match and exact match.
All that’s needed is putting a “+” before the word or words you want to trigger your ad. That means if you were to use “+men’s +running+shoes” your ads will show up for the search terms of, “best running shoes for men”, “cheap running shoes for men”, or “men’s black running shoes”.
There’s still the issue of getting some irrelevant traffic since broad match modifier is a form of broad match. So, continue to make use of your Search Terms Report to avoid any irrelevant keywords.
Phrase – If you want a more targeted option without having the risk of irrelevant traffic. Phrase match is the way to go. It is especially useful when you have a keyword that needs to be in a specific order for your product or service.
To use this match type, you’ll need to put quotation marks around your keyword. So, if your keyword was “men’s running shoes” your ad would only appear for the search terms of, “where to buy men’s running shoes”, “best 2017 men’s running shoes”, or “top rated men’s running shoes”.
Exact – The most targeted option you’ll have in Adwords is Exact match. It’s very useful if you’re aiming to have very targeted ads for sales while not having a lot of time or budget. To use this match type you will want to use brackets around your keyword.
So if you were to use [men’s running shoes] your ads will show up for the search terms of, [men’s running shoes], [running shoes for men], [ prices of men’s running shoes]. You won’t get that much traffic from using this match type.
However, exact match converts the highest out of all match types, and you can have an increased quality score on your Google Ads.
Now that you know what different keyword match types there are, and some of their benefits and disadvantages. You can strategically use different match types to what would work best for your business, and avoid wasting your budget.
3. Not Using Negatives Keywords
Imagine if you ran an E-Commerce website for high-end men’s running shoes. You have set an Adwords campaign to attract new customers.
A week passes by and you notice from checking on your Search Terms Report some of the search terms you’re paying for are “cheap men’s running shoes”, “gym shoes for men”, and “men running shoe reviews”.
This is where using negative keyword comes into play. Negative keywords work by stopping irrelevant keywords that your ads show up for by adding those irrelevant keywords to an excluded list. For example, adding “-gym shoes”, “-reviews”, and “-cheap” as negatives will have your ads for high-end men’s running shoes not show up.
Instead, you’ll be able to increase your targeting and lower your costs for not paying for irrelevant keywords.
4. Not Getting Rid of Underperforming Keywords
Once your Ad campaign has run for some time you will want to make sure you’re not bidding on low-performing keywords.
To make certain you’re not wasting your budget take a look at your keywords. See which keywords have impressions but no conversions and are sending traffic with high bounce rates.
Before you pause these keywords do some research on the possible reasons for their underperformance.
You may find your keywords are too long-tailed where they have low search volume, the keyword match types are too broad or narrow in scope, or your bid is not high enough for the keyword.
5. Not Organizing Your Adwords Campaign Properly
Organizing campaigns properly is another mistake made at times. This will make it harder to have a good quality score which affects your click-through rates (CTR) and increases your cost per click (CPC).
Changes you’ll find will be harder to implement to improve your campaign as well since you won’t be able to clearly see what’s working within your campaign.
To avoid such pitfalls you will want to separate your ad groups by products, services, or locations where you offer a service. If you’re running ads in different states then have your campaigns as well separated by state.
6. Using Too Many Keywords
Often times people will add too many keywords into an Adgroup. This should be avoided like the plague. Not only will this increase chances of a lower quality score, click through rate (CTR), and conversions. Ad relevancy will suffer greatly. Having good ad relevancy is what enables ads to perform well.
For example, if I were searching for a high-end shoe store on Google and I saw two ads. One ad says, “Eric’s High End Shoe Store”, another says, ”Brandon’s Valued Shoe Store.” Even though both are shoe stores that contain high-end shoes. Eric’s Top End Shoe Store matches my search query the closet with the keywords I used.
If you’re aiming to achieve the highest ad message to keywords used. Single keyword ad groups is a solution. That might be too granular of an approach for you though. In which case you’ll want to focus on using 5 to 30 relevant keywords to your service or product.
Keep in mind you will use less broad match keywords as opposed to exact match since you will capture more keywords the broader your keyword match type is.
Once you limit your keywords to a few per ad group you’ll increase click-through rates, quality score, and conversions. Most of all, with a highly relevant ad, you’ll be able to make an offer they can’t refuse.
Achieving Ad Relevancy Will Make Your Ads An Offer People Can’t Refuse
7. Not Using Ad Extensions
Surprisingly there are big budgets accounts that don’t use ad extensions. Ad extensions provide expanded information and functionality.
For example, site links provide links or sublinks to various sections of a site on an ad, call links give mobile users the option to call a business from an ad, and location extensions show the location of a business from Google Maps on an app.
Using ad extensions can increase click-through rates by 10 to 20%. Even 20 to 50% for branded searches!. Not only will click-through rates increase, which in turn increases the chances of conversions, but ads will have greater visibility.
That may not seem like a big deal on a desktop but on mobile devices, your ad will be more prominent and draw away attention from your competitors that have few lines used in their ad.
Look at a real-world example of why you must use ad extensions.
Notice how the first ad uses a review extension, location extension, call extension, and site links while the second ad only uses the review extension. What a missed opportunity!
8. Ignoring The Search Term Report
Search Term Report is a feature in Adwords where you can see what keywords people are using to find your ads. This is especially helpful to avoid irrelevant traffic when running a campaign that uses broad match keywords.
Besides seeing some unrelated terms you can add as negatives, you can see which keywords are triggering which search terms people are using to find your ads. To use the Search Term Report:
1. Click on one of your campaigns
2. Click on keyword tab
3. Click on search term tab
To see what search terms your keywords are triggering:
1. Click on one of your campaigns
2. Click on keyword tab
3. Click on Columns and select modify columns
4. Click on attributes. Then click the arrow on Keyword to add to columns.
5. Drag Keywords to the top of columns
6. Apply Changes
9. Not Evenly Rotating Ads
If Ad delivery is left unchecked Google by default will choose “Optimize for clicks: Show ads expected to provide more clicks”.
This option should be avoided when running a recommended A/B split test on Ad variation. It may seems like a good option for getting ROI, but Google will optimize your ad too early without the necessary data.
Instead, it’s better to evenly rotate your ads to have enough data to make changes, and not shelve an ad that underperformed one day. The recommended option to choose for is “rotate indefinitely”.
10. Not Testing Ad Copy For Best Results
There’s always room to improve an ad. This is especially true at the beginning of a campaign. You never will know for certain what ad copy is the most effective until you start to get numbers coming in for a campaign.
Changing ad text to feature a benefit of a service or product that your competitors don’t mention may increase your click-through rate and conversions.
Maybe changing your headline or call to action will give you results you can be happy with. You just want to make sure you’re testing and getting the best results that make sense for your business.
Remember, do not get attached to a version of an ad. It’s nothing personal, it’s just business.
11. Not Optimizing Landing Pages For Mobile Users
Landing page optimization for mobile users is another forgotten best practice. Over 80 percent of internet users are mobile users.
To ensure you meet the expectations of mobile users you’ll want to make sure your landing page is highly responsive, have a clear call to action, and a mobile-friendly layout.
Not only will you need to these changes, but consider modifying your bids accordingly by the device since mobile users will not interact with your ads the same as desktop users.
12. Having Unrealistic Expectations Of Adwords
At times people expect too much from Adwords. It’s true it can be a great investment for a company. As mentioned before 2 dollars on average is made for every dollar a business puts into their Adwords campaign, no surprise as to why 72% of advertisers plan to increase their advertising budget.
These statistics are only true if Adwords is properly used. Some businesses think a budget of 300$/month is enough to get them in front of a large audience.
Before even thinking about using Adwords first consider if your business would realistically benefit from Adwords. If your business is very niche or has customers that don’t use the internet to find your service or product.
You will need to consider other options besides Adwords. The truth is Adwords is successful for businesses with the right budget and customers.
So, be realistic with your expectations of Adwords and remember the proper budget, time, and customers will enable you to achieve Adwords success.
Why should you use the Mack Media Group for Google Adwords?
At this point, you understand how to make the most of an investment in Adwords. Still, you might have further questions or run into problems not covered here. This is where getting in touch with professionals is beneficial.
Our professionals at the Mack Media Group aim to deliver your business a great return on investment (ROI) by taking the time to understand the different aspects of your business and industry.
We’re able to address any digital marketing need your business has by not only offering PPC services but also Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing and Web Design and Development.
Give us a call at 203-778-1120 to get started today.
