Google is a beast. There’s no way around it. The technology giant has arguably achieved the closest thing to world domination that we have ever seen.
Google has over 88% of the total
search engine market share.
While this is a terrifying fact for the average internet user, a skilled marketer can use the unfathomable amount of consumer data to their advantage.
To be competitive online, the Google ads platform is a necessity. Businesses that aren’t utilizing Google AdWords miss an opportunity to drive targeted traffic to their website while their competitors are cashing in.
Buying Google ads is a necessity for modern businesses, but the room for error is shrinking. As more marketers shift from traditional advertising to digital, the space becomes more competitive.
We’ve put together eight common mistakes we’ve seen over the years. Learning from our mistakes and avoiding these inexcusable practices will save your business or client ad dollars and increase your ROI.
1. Not Excluding Words
Most marketers spend a ton of time researching to find the perfect keywords. This is necessary to run a successful campaign, but many forget to use negative words as well.
For example, if you have an e-commerce website that resells sneakers, but you don’t carry certain brands. Traffic from people searching for these brands are less likely to convert. Excluding these words from your keywords list may be an easy way to get a bump in your ROI.
2. Neglecting your Landing Pages
We see a few common mistakes by inexperienced marketers regarding landing pages.
To create a successful Google ads campaign, you need to think of the entire customer experience. You can have an excellent ad copy that gets clicks, but if the landing page isn’t optimized for mobile or takes forever to load, you will struggle to get a return on the ad spend.
Having one landing page usually isn’t enough. We suggest having multiple landing pages that are visually pleasing, optimized, fast, and have a clear call-to-action.
Failing to craft multiple engaging landing pages will result in fewer conversions. Only using one doesn’t allow the marketer to test its effectiveness. Experimenting with various landing pages will eliminate the guesswork and tell the marketer what works and what doesn’t.
3. Keyword Matches
There are three categories of keywords. Failure to understand and implement each type of keyword match is common with new advertisers using Google ads accounts.
- Broad Match – Your ads will display as long as the keywords appear in the search. The order words appear doesn’t matter. If your ad is for cheap Jordan’s online, your ad will appear in searches for online Jordan’s cheap, cheap online Jordan’s, Jordan’s Cheap Online, etc.
- Phrase Match – Ads will only display to users who search for your keywords in the order you choose. Cheap Jordan’s online will only appear in that order. However, your ads will also appear in searches with additional words added to the keyword phrase – where to buy cheap Jordan’s online.
- Exact Match – Your ads will only display when the exact keyword is typed into Google.
Using exact and phrase match will result in more targeted traffic. A broad match usually delivers more impressions. Which will return a higher ROI on an ad spend is up to the advertiser; we suggest testing all three.
4. Directing to Homepage
We see this all the time from beginning marketers. If you don’t want to use landing pages (we highly recommend you do), at least send potential customers to a product page. Having them navigate to the product or service they were interested in from a homepage is a bad user experience.
5. Leaving Out Extensions
Google ads allow marketers to add clickable extensions like phone numbers, locations, site links, reviews, and products. Not including these will almost always affect your ad spend. The copy improves, and the ad looks better visually. Adding an extension gives users more reasons to click.
6. Targeting Too Broad
Most of us willingly give the overlords at Google our personal information for free. Why not use this data to our get the right people to click on your ad?
Google AdWords is an extremely powerful tool because you can narrow your audience using location, demographics, device type, life events, and more to increase efficiency. Use the data Google collects to your advantage to create a successful campaign.
7. Failure to Test
The beauty of digital advertising is that we don’t have to guess. Keywords, ad copy, extensions, landing pages, display ads are all testable.
You may think your copy is perfect, but if it isn’t converting, then you need to adjust. Trying different copies can eliminate the guesswork and direct you to the best Google ad possible.
Many aspects of Google AdWords and other digital marketing platforms are testable. Incorporating vigorous testing into your ad strategy will not only increase the performance of your ads, but it will also make you a better marketer.
8. Not Implementing a Bidding Strategy
A common mistake done by inexperienced advertisers is not putting thought into bidding on the ad. We don’t recommend spending all your time manually bidding, but you should put some thought into what strategy is right for your campaign.
Your bid strategy should reflect the overall goal of the campaign. For example, selecting the bidding option ‘maximize conversions’ tells Google to get as many conversions as possible within your daily budget.
Avoid These Common Mistakes for Success Using Google Ads
No one likes to waste money. Doing one or multiple of these common mistakes is a sure-fire way to blow through an ad budget.
More businesses are relying on online advertising to generate income. This creates more competition on platforms like Facebook Ads Manager and Google AdWords. The data collected by the technology giants can be beneficial to the savvy marketer, but bad practices can be detrimental to a campaign.
Advertising on Google offers marketers and business owners a powerful way to target potential customers. Avoid these common mistakes to generate a successful campaign and with a high ROI.
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