Avoid These Seven AdWords Killing Mistakes

As the title of this article suggests, we assume you use Google AdWords. If for some strange reason you do not, start doing so immediately as you are well behind the pack as far as targeting the right potential customers for your business.

Now, assuming you are using AdWords, let’s discuss some things to avoid to ensure you are getting the most out of your campaigns. We know that optimizing AdWords is a time-consuming task, but necessary to get the best results and most value for your money, so here are some mistakes that many businesses make which you should avoid.

1. Negative keywords

Negative keywords are selected by you; they are nominated words in your AdWords campaign that mean your ads will not be shown when people search for those particular words.

The idea here is to avoid clicks and traffic that won’t go anywhere. If you are a gardening company who provide a weeding service, you don’t want to be appearing under DIY weeding searches and pages which help people handle the task themselves. These people are looking for the cheaper option so will unlikely be the ones who pay for your service.

Negative keywords can help you craft the reputation of your business while increasing your click-through rate. To help with this AdWords will suggest useful negative keywords based on the content of your campaign. We recommend keeping your negative keywords (and campaign as a whole) updated regularly. None of this stuff is ever set and forget.

2. Keywords in the copy

The correct keywords are crucial to a successful campaign however many businesses forget to correctly customize their ads with keywords in the actual copy. Potential customers will give greater attention to the ads with copy that matches their exact search query.

So it may take a little longer, but creating custom ads for each keyword will bring in more quality leads. Another reason why the management of your AdWords is best handled by a marketing firm. You want to avoid targeting every related search query by honing in on intent-based keywords that are more specific to the products and services you are offering. Remember, it’s quality, not quantity.

The importance of hiring a professional copywriter to ensure that your text is compelling, succinct and utilizes a natural inclusion of your keywords is paramount. Google will punish keyword stuffing, and your text needs to make sense and get to the point quickly for the many people that will see it.

3. Testing

This whole AdWords creation process is time-consuming enough, let alone adding a test element into it, right? Classic mistake. Testing is vital and one of the only ways that your ad effectiveness can improve.

If you really want to know how your ads are performing, tests and comparisons of versions of your ads will reveal which ones perform better. You should be testing:

• Different keywords
• Headings and copy
• Placements
• Locations
• Landing pages

The two main elements of an effective test are:

1. Each test should only include one variation
2. Results should be studied over time before the results are concluded

If possible, try testing your searches in different locations with various devices. The frustrating thing being you will see different results, but try to think like your customers. What types of questions will they be asking? Are they likely to search on the go via mobile, via their desktops? Understanding your customer is a vital part of any successful mapping or targeting.

4. Locations

This point is somewhat dependent on the type of business you run, but too many people get stuck thinking locally. If you operate a business online, why not treat the world as your marketplace? This applies to people who may have a retail store and are targeting local areas, why can’t you sell overseas? If it’s possible, then you should be increasing your potential customer base with targeted advertising.

Location-specific ads are great but limiting. Slight tweaks can target much broader pools of people. Location targeting, on the other hand, accounts for different shopping trends by region (things like the weather may affect for example).

You can read a little more about geo-targeting to understand this further.

5. The power of the landing page

Many businesses think all traffic should be sent their homepage so people can see everything on offer and navigate themselves to the correct places from there. This thought grossly overestimates the attention spans of the modern audience. People want the exact solution they are looking for delivered in the easiest way possible. So if they don’t arrive at a landing page that directly relates to their search, they will likely leave, and your hard targeting work will have been for nothing.

The best way to keep the customer is by making sure your keywords, copy and landing page relate clearly to each other. This will also help with your overall quality score which directly affects placement and cost.

6. Significant changes

As we mentioned earlier, none of this is set and forget, and minor tweaks will likely only result in minor advances. All ad campaigns need to be approached with a willingness to completely reshuffle or redo them if necessary. It would be best if you were prepared to take risks with your imagery and content to keep the audience interested or grab their attention.

Extreme changes are great (within reason) as you can discover not only what works, but also what doesn’t. The concept of your ad should always be up for debate, and you should know what happens when you take the opposite approach. If you have been running serious ads, what happens when you switch to something humorous?

We understand how hard this can be, especially when so much thought and effort has gone into finding a theme or style that you like and hopefully works. However, a fear of going back to the drawing board means whatever the height you’ve hit is now, that’s likely where you will stay.

Sometimes defying conventional wisdom and breaking out of the box is the best way to advance. The rulebook is less and less relevant these days purely based on the amount of content and competition there is online. (That doesn’t apply to all rules of course, for example, you should definitely follow the ones listed in this article.)

Confused? Overwhelmed? Out of ideas? We don’t blame you, but all is not lost and there are plenty of marketing firms who can help.

7. The personal touch

The personal touch is effective and automated responses will make your warm lead cold in seconds.

Many companies put a lot of effort into their AdWords campaign, then ruin the relationship with actual conversions by having their first point of contact be a general, automated email. If your goal is just to build a mailing list, then fine, stick with standard automated responses. However, if you want to make sales and build relationships with customers who will actually give repeat business, you need to show them they are more than just a number.

Now we know this seems like it will be time-consuming, but it doesn’t have to be. Take for example this handy tool from GetResponse, which will still trigger emails, but they appear to be more customized and personal. You can tailor your customer journey to react in such a way that you find a balance between the time-saving benefits of automation and the relationship building necessities of the modern sale.

Engaging and interacting with your customers is the surefire way to keep them coming back for more while spreading positive word-of-mouth. It’s also the best way to get ROI on your initial AdWords campaign.

The recap

So, our seven things to avoid are:

1. The regular updates of negative keywords
2. The correct use of keywords in your ad copy for quality, not quantity
3. Testing, testing, and more testing
4. Expanding your location targeting
5. Landing pages so you don’t lose the sale
6. No fear when it comes to your approach
7. The personal touch in your customer’s journey

There are more rules than this (crazy, right?) and the platform is continually evolving, which is why you may need some help. The worst thing you can do, however, is ignore the power of AdWords. Doing this simply removes you from the game and hands bucket loads of business over to your competitors who are taking advantage of this useful tool.

Make the most out of your marketing budget with Perpetual

If you really want to boost your conversion rates and ensure that your marketing dollars aren’t wasted, talk to a specialist about managing your AdWords campaign.

Find a team will become an extension of yours, not only saving you the time of ensuring everything is optimized and refreshed, but also finding new ways of extending your audience.

Digital advertising is continually evolving, and your processes should be moving with it. However, you also need to be offering fantastic service and products, so you focus on that, and your marketing agency will make sure people know about them.

Author Bio:

Alana Berge is working for Perpetual- Best Website Design Company. She writes content on WordPress, Web Design, Development, Internet, Social Networks, SEO, etc. Apart from this, she has helped a number of startups to grow their business online!!!