A is for Advertising

While it is easy to get started in pay per click advertising, it’s even easier to make very costly mistakes. Building a pay per click campaign the correct way means paying attention to detail and continual oversight and management. I’ve compiled a list of 10 typical mistakes that are found in PPC advertising campaigns.

Too Many Keywords Per Ad Group

It’s important to target your ad to be as relevant as possible. Don’t group all your keywords into one or two ad groups. Break them out. Keep them tight. This gives you more control over ad variables so that you can be as relevant as possible.

Not Taking Advantage of Negative Keywords

With quality scores and click through rates playing a bigger role in your pay per click ad rank, it’s more important to weed out the keywords that push up your impressions and don’t result in desired clicks. If you sell “widget software” make sure you have negative keywords such a “-free” or “-serial.” Also, check your log files for your site to look for bad keywords that you are spending money on right now.

Not Enough Testing

An often neglected, but very important result-booster is the split testing of your ads. Even minor variations can increase your effectiveness. Obviously, you can rework such items like your unique value statement or your different calls to action, but there are many variables of each ad that can be optimized. Your display url, the ad title, each line of copy — all of that may be effectively tested. This can be time consuming, which is why a quality pay per click management company can be a great investment, especially if they offer daily split testing. Effort here pays off.

Not Precisely Tracking Results

It’s not enough to know that you spend $6,000 dollars a month and get back $12,000 in profit. Your bottom-line numbers need to be precise. The PPC engines will give your click through rates, but you need to know your ROI or costs per action in detail. Tracking results can help you to spend only $5,000 a month to get you that same $12,000 in profit.

Not Tracking Results to the Keyword Level

Setting up good analytics yourself or hiring a professional pay per click management company can do the job. Not only do you get more bang for your buck by getting rid of poor performers, but getting tracking to the keyword-level makes all of your testing and work even more precise. You need to know your earnings per click. If one keyword has a 56 cent Earnings Per Click (EPC) and another had a $1.22 EPC, this is important knowledge. Adjusting your bids to an appropriate level can keep you from over spending…or allow you to throttle up your overall traffic for even more success. Don’t let poor keywords leak your accounts.

Not Specific Enough Keywords

While some generic keywords can drive a lot of traffic and even be very profitable, they also can be filled with pitfalls. Negative keywords may not be enough to save you from going in the red on a generic keyword. Often, the users doing these searches are at a very early stage of the research and buying process. Again, this is another important reason to track results on a keyword basis.

Avoiding the Dirty Work of Building Long-Tail Keywords

This follows the above item on generic keywords. Building a list and individual ads for the long-tail keywords can be a major time-sucker. It can also be profitable if the task is performed correctly. Those earnings per click will likely vary widely from a generic keyword like “mp3 player,” “sony mp3 player” and “sony 2GB S610 walkman video mp3 player.” One consumer is doing research, the other knows what they want and is most likely looking to purchase.

Not Separating Content and Search Networks

You can get stung by poor quality traffic or click fraud if you do not separate your content network advertising from your search network advertising. If you don’t understand those above items, there is a good probability that you are not separating the two in your accounts right now … and you are very likely losing money. A better solution is to build separate campaigns for each and … track with precise analytics the results from each network. Again, not knowing is probably costing you now.

Not Geo-Targeting a Local Business

If you draw most of your business from a local area, the big three PPC engines allow you to geo-target your keywords to that area. This will bring the local market to your doorstep on non-local keyword phrases. This can be hugely profitable.

Not Continually Monitoring Your Campaigns

Not everyone has time to run split testing on a daily basis or frequently checking your EPCs (even though you should…because it’s costing you). That said, there are still a high amount of advertisers who seem to ignore their accounts for days … or even weeks … or (don’t tell me you’re doing this!) months. The big PPC search engines are increasingly cracking down on poor performing keywords, smacking advertisers with that “Inactive for Search” status for individual keywords. When this happens, you lose traffic, you lose profits. If you are investing heavily in PPC, you can’t just turn your back on your account for days at a time.

Making mistakes like the Terrible 10 of PPC Advertising are common, but correcting them can have a huge impact on your bottom line. If you can manage your pay per click ads at a high level or if you can hire them out to a professional pay per click management company…the results for your increased precision and effort will pay off.