Marketers know that PPC campaigns are one of the most effective ways to generate leads and customers for a business, but can also be financially risky when executed poorly. They are constantly looking for ways to increase the success of their PPC campaigns and resolve issues before they arise, but it’s hard to be proactive without knowing the mistakes to look out for.
We’ve created, managed, and analyzed a lot of PPC campaigns, and over time we’ve identified our share of game-changing strategies to employ as well as money-draining mistakes marketers should avoid. Below, we’ve listed four major PPC mistakes to watch out for in your own campaign that could be costing your business money.
1. Campaigns that aren’t mobile-friendly
We are living in the smartphone age, and as such, you should assume your audience is viewing your campaign content from the palms of their hands. You certainly won’t get clicks from mobile users if the landing pages you’re directing people to can’t be viewed properly from their phones, so ensure your PPC campaign content is optimized for the touch of human fingers and not mouse clicks. To further maximize your campaign’s clickability, reduce text as much as possible and keep what’s left concise.
2. Broken/dead links
Businesses use broken links in their PPC campaigns all the time. Can you think of a bigger waste of time and money than paying for link clicks that take viewers to missing pages and do nothing for your business? Stop what you’re doing and check the status of the links you’re using in your PPC campaigns immediately.
3. Keywords that are too broad
Just as you don’t want to waste money on broken link clicks, you also don’t want to pay a high bid costs for keywords that aren’t generating leads. Targeting highly competitive broad keywords could mean a lot of money for your PPC campaign, so we recommend sticking with long-tail keywords, which are longer and more specific keyword phrases. Long-tail keywords are less competitive and therefore more cost-effective for your business.
4. Not taking advantage of targeting
Are you spending money targeting a low quality audience? To drive more clicks and increase your campaign’s success, you should make sure that you’re targeting the people most likely to engage with your ad. Some of the targeting criteria you can use for your campaign include:
- Location : Is your campaign location-based? Target an audience down to their zip code.
- Placements : You can choose the exact websites you want your ads displayed on from Google’s millions of options.
- Topics : Don’t know the exact websites your audience prefers? Determine the theme of your ads and choose associated Topics so Google can find relevant websites for you.
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