So you’re managing Google campaigns, eh?
Google AdWords provides an awesome platform for launching online ads in various formats. While it gives you lots of shiny, new toys to create ads, ad groups, targets and a multitude of other strategic practices, beyond the tools ends Google’s magic. Your brain does the rest.
Creating a mosaic of keywords, graphics and bids, and then just leaving it there amounts to a waste of time. Even people who actually look at the campaigns every day remain oblivious to unchecked elements that are slowly killing their work.
Don’t squander your money by failing to observe what’s really going on. Review the top seven ways you can sneakily destroy a Google AdWords campaign to see if you’re one of the many culprits of analytical unconsciousness.
Mistake #1: Using incorrect keyword matches.
Why You’re Messing Up: To keep it simple, you can make the keywords in your ad campaign broad match, phrase match or exact match. Broad match keywords appear when the search includes them in any order. Phrase match keywords appear when the search includes them only in the order they’re in in your campaign.
Exact match keywords appear when the search includes the keywords exactly. The match type is important because it affects how many times your ad shows up, how many people see it and how many conversions you get when people find what they’re looking for.
How to Fix It: Start off with exact match. Broad keywords may waste your budget if people see your ads with a product or service that doesn’t match exactly what they’re looking for.
Mistake #2: Avoiding bidding brands—including your own.
Why You’re Messing Up: When people search for your brand, you want your ads to come up. Your competitors want the same for their brands. Ceteris paribus, you guys are at a stalemate.
How to Fix It: What’s one more way to one-up them? Include keywords for their brand and any other terms regarding their companies in your campaigns. Catch someone’s eye when they’re casually searching for your competitor, then grab them with a compelling ad to finish off the job.
Mistake #3: Ignoring your competitors.
Why You’re Messing Up: You check out your competitors’ products and prices. By failing to look at the online ads, you’re missing a chance to look at how much better their ads and landing pages are.
How to Fix It: Notice your competitors’ ad copy and landing page function and design. Try creating your new ads and landing pages with your research in mind to test them against your current ads.
Mistake #4: Directing all ads to the homepage.
Why You’re Messing Up: You got them to click on your ad, but if you stop short before they’ve actually handed over their money, you just wasted an opportunity you’ll never get again.
How to Fix It: If you’re going for conversions, drive traffic to a specific landing page instead of the homepage. Landing on an arbitrary page causes a burnout rather than building on a mission to purchase. Once you figure out your goal for each campaign, make a designated landing page for each campaign that will boost conversions.
Boost your click-through rate by using negative keywords and correct keyword matches.
Mistake #5: Launching the campaign and ignoring it.
Why You’re Messing Up: Are you starting to think your campaigns aren’t really working for you? If you’re not tending to your campaigns at all or very little, there’s your answer.
How to Fix It: Keep up your accounts regularly. Carve out some time in your day to check on your campaigns. The more maintenance you perform, the more quickly you’ll be able to simply tweak them. You’ll get to continually test different elements and switch out what doesn’t work.
Mistake #6: Refusing to use negative keywords.
Why You’re Messing Up: In Google campaign world, sometimes negative is a good thing. Say you’re selling a line of jackets. But they’re not just any jackets—your customers can brave extreme temperatures without piling on extra layers.
Yet when someone uses the keyword “jacket,” they could be looking for any kind. When yours pops up for people looking for suit jackets or denim jackets, for example, your ad will be wasted space, disadvantaging you and the searcher.
How to Fix It: Get the most out of your campaign by adding negative keywords. It’s cheaper, and it will boost your conversions. Because your ads have more relevance, your click-through rate gets higher, which gives you a better score and puts your ads in better positions.
Mistake #7: Neglecting customer lifetime values.
Why You’re Messing Up: CLVs can reveal a customer’s worth over one’s lifetime or at least for the length of time of brand engagement. They can tell you how much you have to spend to get a customer to convert and allow you to pinpoint how you can nab each customer.
How to Fix It: Mathematics. But don’t be scared. Just simply figure out that whatever you spend to get one customer, you need to earn that much or more from the customer’s purchases in a year’s time.
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If you’re talking ad spend, we’re listening. BlueArx Google gurus don’t play when it comes to getting clicks and conversions for your business. Politely dismiss your clueless campaignsman and allow us to do it right.
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