3 Common PPC Mistakes & How To Avoid Them

Not only beginners make mistakes, here I am sharing a general idea of the most common fails that experienced PPC professionals make and how to avoid them from now on.

Whether you’ve just started with PPC or work in the online ad industry for years, you feel embarrassed about a mistake that you’ve never thought you could make. After all, making mistakes is part of our human nature. But repeating mistakes is not.

Every PPC professional (beginner or expert) is guilt-ridden of making at least one mistake at some point in the ad campaign. Whether it was important or not, it’s good to identify it to make sure you’re not repeating it.

I’ve decided to focus on the most common mistakes you can make when it comes to PPC (as I personally experienced them). So here’s a checklist of the mistakes you need to avoid.

1. Wrong targeting and bidding

An important part of a successful PPC campaign is the right targeting. Just because you have the ideal demography and/or target audience in mind from previous campaigns doesn’t mean that you can guarantee future success.

The wrong audience selection for a particular campaign cannot bring the desired results, that’s why you need to be watchful when setting up your targeting options based on whatever your campaign objective is.

For example, you can limit your audience by selecting to use the option of ‘target and bid’. This option allows you to target the people who are on your retargeting list without wasting your budget on users who wouldn’t meet your criteria. However, it’s common to overlook this approach to use the ‘bid only’ option that can lead to confusing results, from lower traffic to expensive ads to lesser ROI.

Another way to make a targeting error can occur if you’re not excluding the people you don’t want to reach. If you are remarketing to a particular audience and you don’t restrict your options, you risk paying more without seeing the desired outcome. Similarly, if you choose to create multiple audience lists for your remarketing, you may risk reaching the same audience several times, which will increase the overall cost of your campaign.

Solution: Create a plan for your targeting and double-check all the options to ensure that you’re optimizing your audience as planned as possible. Keep an eye on your campaign once it starts to observe the initial results.

2. Wrong use of keywords

Most PPC professionals focus on keywords to find out new opportunities for better ROI. How often do you assess your keyword strategy though?

Commonly, some campaigns perform better than others, but it’s still useful to assess the results.

For example, you may be focusing on keywords that are too broad. This can be a good idea, but it can also a more expensive choice. You can test long-tail keywords as a more economical alternative that can lead to improved results in competitive industries.

Another common mistake is to pay no attention to the use of negative keywords. It’s easy to overlook them, but this can also affect your campaign results. Use them as part of your strategy to filter out the keywords you don’t need to avoid paying for unwanted clicks on your ads.

Last but not least, many businesses forget to bid on their own branded keywords. It may sound puzzling or unnecessary, but if your competitors bid on your brand’s keywords, then you may miss on prospects who were searching your business by using branded keywords.

Solution: Pay close attention to your keyword selections and find the ones that work better for your plans.

3. Inconsistent messaging

A profitable PPC campaign requires a great landing page. However, it’s common to design a landing page independently from the PPC ads, which leads to several possible inconsistencies:

• Design
• Copy
• Focusing on different goals
• Different personas

Your landing page should be an extension of your PPC ads. There needs to be a connection that starts with design and UX and moves to the brand, the messaging, and the KPIs.

For example, you cannot have a successful PPC campaign that focuses on increasing sales without having a landing page that doesn’t facilitate a “buy now” option.

Similarly, you cannot target a millennial without testing your landing page across all devices, especially smartphones.

These mistakes can also adversely affect your Quality Score from Google that has to do with the relevance of your ads and landing pages concerning the selected keywords. This could risk paying more to reach your target audience and it’s a mistake that you don’t want to repeat in the future.

When it comes to messaging, your PPC ads should not trick your target audience to click on something irrelevant to them. You need to create a path that is simply understandable and helps to take the next steps seem logical. It’s about applying psychographic analysis of the user to blend UX and advertising for generating the optimum results.

Solution: The next time you’re about to design a landing page, match it with your crafted PPC ads and ensure that the copy and the design are consistent and relevant to the keywords that you are competing for. Use the landing pages to guide your visitors on a journey that will bring them closer to your campaign objective.

Summing-up

The best way to avoid making common PPC mistakes is to optimize your strategy depending on your requirements. Pay close attention to your goals and adjust the targeting, the bidding, the budget, and your copy accordingly.

What’s key is to understand all the important factors that can damage your PPC campaign’s performance to ensure that you minimize the risks of any possible mistakes.