Why It’s Easy to Waste Money on a Bad AdWords Campaign
PPC advertising is big business. Last year, £3 billion was spent on search advertising in the UK alone, and of that 90% was used on Google AdWords.
It may then seem like a no brainer that you should be doing some form of AdWords advertising if you are a business that wants to be competitive, and in many ways this is true – in light of recent changes to how Google lists local search results, for businesses with a physical location and local presence, AdWords is becoming a must have, and for online based businesses it is becoming clear that even great SEO that gets you into the top page doesn’t beat being in those coveted paid top spots for the right keywords.
Getting AdWords Wrong
The trouble is, AdWords has been designed so that it is extremely easy to set up a campaign. While this is great in that it means you don’t need to be a techie or a marketing expert to get your ads set up, it also means it is very easy to set up a bad campaign. An AdWords campaign can become quite expensive, and if your ads are not appearing to the right audiences or converting properly, you can end up out of pocket.
In reality, it is always best to work with an agency who knows what they are doing to design a good campaign and make sure it works as planned, for example Sheffield based AdWords agency Converted. However, if you are determined to do your own AdWords campaign, there are a couple of killer mistakes to avoid:
Not Using ‘Negative’ Matches
When people set up their campaigns, they tend to focus on the searches they do want their ads to appear for. However, this can lead to large amounts of impressions for irrelevant searches. If, for example, you sell expensive designer sunglasses as a high end retailer, and want your ads to appear to people searching for things like ‘sunglasses’, your ad will not be relevant to people searching for ‘cheap sunglasses’. If you sell expensive enterprise software, you don’t necessarily want to appear to people looking for free or open source tools.
You can prevent your ads displaying to people whose searches may seem relevant to Google, but actually are not at all, by putting in negative matches when setting up your ads. Almost every campaign should include words like ‘free’ in this, as well as searches for things that are irrelevant to your business but commonly searched for like torrents and pornography.
Not Creating Good Ad Extensions
Your ads can be made to extend to show all kinds of things, like reviews, ratings, and other important information. You can even have products display right there in the search results. However, a lot of people don’t take the time to use this, or use it badly. You are paying to get customers to see your link, so make sure when they do it is going to grab them!
There is a lot involved in using AdWords well, so before you take the plunge make sure you do your research or better yet, talk to a pro!