So you want to send paid traffic to your website? That’s
great! Given the amount of digital noise online today, expanding your digital
marketing campaigns by putting your message directly in front of your target
audience with paid ads is a powerful technique, and you’ll find that Google
AdWords makes it easy to get up and running with this approach.
Unfortunately, though, just because it’s easy to open up an
Adwords account doesn’t mean that it’s easy to generate a positive return on
investment using this service.
Many pay-per-click (PPC) advertisers start out with good
intentions, but limited experience. As a result, they run into common mistakes
that can hurt a campaign’s profitability. If your initial campaigns have
produced lackluster results, read through the following mistakes and their
solutions to improve your PPC ROI:
1. Targeting keywords
that are too broad
Here’s a newsflash: if you’re a new advertiser, you’re
probably never going to be able to bid your way to the top spot for broad
keywords such as “women’s shoes.” Even if you do, you’re going to be paying so
much for the privilege that, unless you’re Zappos, it’s unlikely your revenue
generated will justify your costs.
Instead, start your AdWords campaigns with groups of five to
10 long-tail keywords -- preferably those you’ve identified as good candidates
from the data found in your Google Analytics or Google Webmaster Tools
accounts. Expand your campaigns to broader keywords only as you’re able to
prove a positive ROI with these entry-level queries.
2. Putting too many
keywords in an ad group
In an ideal world, you’d create a unique landing page and
PPC ad for every keyword you target, so that your user’s experience is as
laser-targeted as possible. But since nobody has this much time, stick to ad
groups of just five to 10 keywords to start, as mentioned above. Doing so will
prevent you from forcing too many unrelated words and phrases to use the same
ads and landing pages.
3. Running ads on the
“search network with display select” campaign type
Google tries to push this combination campaign type, but the
reality is that AdWord’s search and display formats require different
advertising approaches. Stick to search, display or both, but be sure the ads
you create follow industry-accepted best practices for each individual campaign
style.
4. Sending traffic
directly to your homepage
Every visitor you secure via PPC ads should wind up on a
landing page that’s designed to be as appealing and engaging as possible to his
or her interests. If, instead, you simply drop visitors onto your homepage,
you’re making them work to find the information they want, leading to higher
bounce rates, missed conversion opportunities and unnecessary ad expenses.
Yes, it’s a little more work to craft custom landing pages
for your PPC campaigns, but the results are worth the effort. Tools such as
Unbounce and LeadPages make the process a snap.
Related: It's Easy to Spy on Your Competitors Conveniently
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5. Not measuring ROI
If you’re running AdWords campaigns without any mechanism to
determine which of your paid clicks are converting into customers, you’re
almost certainly wasting money on poor quality traffic. Tracking the
conversions that enter your sales funnel from an AdWords click and go on to
become paying customers will show you how to focus your ad spend in the future,
which campaigns should be ramped up and which ad groups or keywords should be
dropped entirely.
Tracking conversions on your site requires you to first
define your sales funnel and then either install an AdWords tracking pixel or
set up Google Analytics goals on your site. It’s a little more complicated than
simply running a campaign without conversion tracking, but taking these steps
is the only real way to know if your campaigns are paying off with a positive
ROI.
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