The 5 Deadly Google AdWords Errors that Kill Campaigns

 In General

Businesses nowadays would be foolish not to allocate at least a small portion of their marketing budget to Google AdWords. The pay-per-click system allows your business to gain more website traffic via highly targeted advertisements. However, using AdWords is not exactly a walk in the park. Here are some common, yet fatal mistakes businesses make when using it.

Is Your Business Making These Google AdWords Mistakes?

1. Directing Traffic to the Wrong Place

Far too often, businesses use digital advertisements to direct traffic only to the homepages of their websites. This error could be the bane of an otherwise solid campaign.

For example, if we created an ad campaign intended to promote our website design services, it’s safe to say the majority of people who click it are interested specifically in web design. If the ad they click directs them to our homepage, and not our web design service page or a custom landing page, we’re making them work to find the information they’re seeking.

This causes missed conversion opportunities and, as a result, wasteful spending of advertising budget.

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2. Ignoring ROI

For nearly every marketing campaign, some trial and error is necessary to determine what works and what doesn’t. And, without measuring return on investment (ROI), it’s virtually impossible to figure it out.

Using Google Analytics with your AdWords campaign provides you with extraordinarily deep insights into the success (or failure) of your ads. That wide range of data makes it easy to see where you’re falling short, and how you can fine-tune your campaigns for better results.

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3. Targeting Extremely Broad Keywords

The sad truth is that big corporations control many of the top ad spots on Google, simply because their budgets are large enough to bid for them.

Unless you’ve got a huge amount of money to spend, you’re probably not going to get the top spot for broad keywords like “t-shirts” or “insurance.”

As a smaller business, you’re better off targeting relatively precise, long-tail keywords that reflect specific products or services you sell. For example, “custom t-shirts on Long Island” or “health insurance for millennials” would be more suitable for your budget, since you’re more likely to actually rank for them.

4. Neglecting Negative Keywords

The negative keywords feature allows you to exclude keywords that are irrelevant to your business.

Let’s continue with the insurance example from earlier. If your business specifically sells health insurance, it would be wise to add “car” and “life” to the negative keywords list.

Since people looking for those services will not patronize your business, it’s counterproductive to spend your valuable budget advertising to them.

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5. Not Bidding on Your Brand

If your business operates in a highly competitive market, you should bid on branded keywords to prevent other businesses from stealing your customers. Even if you already rank organically for your own brand, competitors can bid on keywords that include your brand name in order to steal the top spot on search engine results pages—not a good look.

With these common pitfalls in mind, go out there and optimize your Google AdWords campaigns for maximum results!

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