AdWords on Google : Web promotion

AdWords Mistake #1

“Focusing on the wrong Keywords”.

Founder of KISSmetrics, Crazy Egg, Quicksprout & Hellobar

"Everyone thinks that the keywords that have high search volume are the best ones. When building out a campaign, you should first start off with very targeted keywords. This really important if you have a limited budget as the broad keywords can eat up your budget fast and provide little to no conversions."

Wishpond Tip: Use the AdWords Keyword Planner to help get ideas and search volumes for targeted long tail keywords.

AdWords Mistake #2

“Just sitting on accounts”.

Founder of WordStream

"Usually the biggest mistake I find is people not doing work and just sitting on accounts. Less than 1% of accounts get worked on even once per week. It’s not just the confused small business owners that aren’t doing much. Even expert PPC account managers often struggle to make the time to do account work if they’re managing multiple clients, etc. So, I think the solution is to adopt a workflow wherein you can quickly figure out what needs to be tweaked every week in a way that doesn’t take too much time."

Adwords Mistake #3

“Setting it and forgetting it”.

CEO of Single Grain

"Running ads is a constant game of optimization. There's always new opportunities to pursue for growth so don't let it just sit there."

Key Takeaway: A/B testing isn’t only for experts. If you want to get the most out of your AdWords campaigns remember to test things like ad copy, bid price, and landing pages. Check out the article The Practical Science of A/B Testing your AdWords Beginners Guide for a step-by-step guide on how to get started with A/B testing.

Adwords Mistake #4

“Not having a dedicated landing page”.

COO at Wishpond & Resident AdWords Expert

One of the biggest mistakes that AdWords beginners make is driving paid traffic to their homepage. Your homepage is great for explaining what your business is about, but it’s never going to be as effective as a dedicated landing page at getting conversions.

Each of your campaigns needs to have a specific campaign objective in mind before you set it up. Having a landing page dedicated to that objective is a huge part of maximizing the return you'll see from your ad investment.

Key Takeaway: Customizing your landing pages to match your campaign objectives in one of the best ways to maximize conversion rates. One strategy that can be used to do this is to match your ad keywords with your landing page headline.

This can be done by creating multiple landing pages pages for each ad group and keyword. Using a platform like Wishpond it’s easy to duplicate a landing page in order to create custom landing pages for specific keywords without having to recreate the entire design of the page.

Adwords Mistake #5

“Loosely bunched keywords”.

SEM Online Advertising Consultant

"Most businesses just starting out with AdWords create one campaign and one ad group with lots of loosely related keywords. This type of structure does not allow for ads that are specific enough to your keywords, resulting in low quality scores. When you have low quality keywords, AdWords penalizes you and you have to pay more for each click, wasting your marketing dollars. Creating separate campaigns is key to managing your budget; budgets are set at the campaign level and you should use different budgets for your most important keywords and lower priority, test campaigns."

Key Takeaway: Create separate campaigns for your different keyword sets as well as to run test campaigns. It will keep your quality score up and reduce your total cost per click amount.

Adwords Mistake #6

“Not bidding on your brand”.

Digital Marketing Consultant at Hallam Internet Ltd

“To help drive conversions you should be bidding on your brand. When you're bidding on your brand you are promoting your business and you are preventing competitors from bidding on it and poaching your customers. While there are valid reasons for not bidding on your brand, for example you may be ranking #1 organically, you're limited by budget and or the search volume for your brand is low. However, suggested bids for brands are generally low and depending how many searches are made on your brand each month, you could be missing out on potential conversions and sales. In addition, bidding on your brand will help you to dominate page one of the Google SERPs which is great for building brand awareness and reputation.”

Key Takeaway: Don’t make it easy for your competitors to poach your customers. Not bidding on your brand keywords is the easiest way to lose high value return customers to another business. Bidding on brand keywords is also one of the only times you’ll be able to achieve a quality score of 9 or 10 which can help raise the overall ad score of your AdWords account.

Adwords Mistake #7

“Not paying attention to your landing page experience”.

Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land

"It's taken as a given that paid search traffic will convert and the on-site experience is not given full consideration. Paid search won't fix a bad landing page or a high-friction shopping cart experience."

Wishpond Tip: Don’t try and reinvent the wheel. Start with a high converting landing page template and add your content from there. Beginning from a base of landing page best practices goes a long way to help optimize your landing page experience.