Knowing you’re making mistakes with your paid search advertising gives you a special kind of heartburn. And it can be expensive. But the fact is, you will make paid search mistakes, no matter how smart and tech-savvy you may be.
It’s especially easy to make mistakes if you’re new to PPC or, as if often the case, you’re not quite able to give it the detailed attention it requires. You can recover from virtually any slip-up, but you definitely don’t want to create problems with mistakes that are easily avoided.
You may be making any – or all – of these basic mistakes:
- Making assumptions such as broader matches will draw more people, or you “know” all the right keywords to use, or you can set-and-forget campaigns.
- Taking shortcuts, trying to save time by skipping steps.
- Shotgun targeting.
- Not testing, or testing sloppily.
- Not tracking, or not heeding the results.
- Not taking the time to understand how paid search works and how to craft a profitable strategy.
- Not understanding the relationship between bidding and your budget.
Creating and managing paid search advertising can be tedious, time-consuming, confusing and frustrating. But you can’t cut corners, because with PPC “good enough” isn’t, in fact, good enough.
Follow these steps to get your paid search on the road to recovery:
- First make sure your goals are clearly defined, so you can create worthwhile ads and measure results. Do you want leads or direct sales? What do you consider an acceptable ROI?
- The value of PPC lies in your ability to design ads and choose placements with laser-sharp targeting. So apply all the demographic variables you can, including location, based on your type of business and your PPC advertising goals.
- Review your keyword management strategy. You need lots of keywords and a variety of match types. Remember, you’re shooting for quality, not quantity, and you won’t be found at all unless you’re using the same words your searchers are using.
- Inspect your landing pages to be sure each one offers a natural next step for the visitor to take that’s unambiguous – download this, buy now, take this survey, register now to get your free trial. A landing page with no clear (and compelling) call to action is a dead end.
- Test every little thing, one element at a time, to accurately pinpoint what’s working or not, and weed out non-performers right away.
- Continuously monitor and analyze results. How else will you know if your paid search is paying off? Use what you learn to refine your ads and campaigns, but note that if you’re really paying attention you can also learn about your customers and how you can improve your products or services.
- Review your budget and bidding strategy frequently to minimize cost-per-click. Regardless of how you define conversion, ultimately you have to generate enough revenue to at least cover the cost of your advertising. If you operate on a very slim margin, paid search may not be your best choice.
Paid search requires constant, consistent attention. Perhaps the best way to recover from mis-steps – or avoid them altogether — is to get professional assistance. A team of experts understands the intricacies of this rapidly-changing environment. They can help you turn on a dime if necessary to keep your paid search advertising entirely on point, generating customers and revenue.
If you could confidently hand off your paid search management responsibilities, what would you do with the time you save?
One mistake that I found I’d been making was not using ACTUAL Revenue for ROAS calculations. I wasn’t figuring tax and shipping costs out of my revenue. You can do it by making a custom report in Analytics. If you’re interested, I wrote a blog post about how to make one: http://www.ppchero.com/how-to-use-analytics-custom-reports-to-optimize-e-commerce-accounts-increase-roas/