Pay per click (PPC) advertising is one of the smoothest and fastest ways to send traceable web traffic to your website. Using powerful marketing tools like; Google AdWords and Bing Ads/Yahoo.
PPC Ads
For a bidding fee, Entrepreneurs can display ads on search engines marked "Sponsored" which is usually at the top and bottom sections of search results. When someone clicks on the Ad to your website, you will be charged for that click on a bidding rate.
Keyword bidding
To get the results, you will have to implement a PPC strategy as to make sure you don't burn through your funds without results. If you make little mistakes and can't fix them, you might end up spending a huge amount of your PPC budget without any conversions.
Don't start PPC advertising on your own, unless you have studied and experimented with different strategies. To help you take the weight off, here are 5 mistakes most businesses make when setting up a PPC campaign without an expert.
1. Making your Homepage a Landing page
Why this is a problem! You are running a PPC campaign for keyword "time tracking software" a product you sell on your site.
You proceed to setup an ad to run whenever this keyword is queried on search engines and your click through link is to your home page, this will cause the potential buyer to search around for this product, thus losing interested and wasted acquisition funds.
In this case, you made a potential, targeted visitor and made them work for the information you promised to deliver. A better approach would have been a link to the camera's product page, avoiding any frustration and bringing your visitors one step closer to completing their purchase without going through a multiple pages.
Unless your homepage has the exact item, always make sure to create different landing pages to gain PPC visitors who will be engaged.
2. Not doing PPC A/B Testing
Getting the most effective results with PPC ads without A/B testing can be a mistake. You can A/B test your ads with different versions of the same ad's text for each PPC ad group. This can help you understand the wording that will work best for potential visitors and bring in conversions.
Most PPC platforms will give you an option to A/B test your ads, just ensure that your ad variations will be shown at random so they generate meaningful data.
3. PPC Visitors to your Contact Page
We all know the goal is to get leads but why force the same people you want to connect with and build value. Sending a PPC visitor to your contact page can be frustrating as they will not be able to see what they were looking for in the first place.
NOTE: If you're advertising through Google AdWords, for example, be aware that requiring visitors to fill out contact forms in exchange for something free goes against Google's ad policy guidelines.
4. Focus your Keyword More and avoid 'broad match' keyword ads
Focus your keywords more with "Exact match" and "Phrase match" and avoid broad match keywords.
Broad match keyword ads are displayed whenever all or part of your target keyword phrase is searched for, offering the greatest traffic potential. But you may be sacrificing relevance for reach which in turn means wasting your budget for irrelevant traffic.
For example, suppose you're a construction firm targeting the phrase "vinyl windows" with a broad match ad.
Your ad should appear on the results page for the search query "vinyl windows," but it could also show up for the phrases "Bad windows," "shutter windows" or "expensive windows for new homes." This makes a clear argument on how you will be wasting money on irrelevant searches.
While setting your ppc campaign keywords to "phrase" or "exact" match might decrease your potential traffic, but help ensure that your ads appear for search queries that are most relevant to your business and will convert because they are more targeted.
5. Not taking advantage of negative keywords
Negative keywords are necessary in every campaign after 30 days. The reason - you can use negative keywords to to prevent your ads from showing for keywords that not match your business or products but this can also prevent your ad from showing up for your targeted audience if you add the wrong negative keywords.
For example; Adding "iPhone" as a negative keyword will prevent your ads for showing "iphone case" ads in your ad group.
Adding negative keywords to your PPC campaigns is one way to control relevancy without eliminating the potential traffic of broad match ads. But you'll need to devote time to finding the many possible negative keywords that could influence your campaign.
If you need help setting up a formidable ROI campaign, then you are in luck! See what we can do for your business with PPC campaigns
Learn MoreDivine Tumenta is an entrepreneur and professional digital marketing expert based in Los Angeles. He has worked in digital marketing for more than 8 years. He is currently founder and CEO of backlinkfy.com and a go to consultant for startups and small businesses in the USA.
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