Google Ads, are one of the most effective methods of paid advertising available. When used correctly, they allow you to focus on people who are searching for what you have to offer. And have the potential to send large numbers of people to your offering, converting clicks to new paying customers.
I want to share with you common mistakes we see small businesses make that may actually end up costing you time, money, and sales- and how you can avoid them.
1. Letting Fear Rule Your Campaigns
For those new to Google Ads, it is not uncommon to get cold feet! If you have not used search engine ppc ads as your digital marketing channels and have been used to traditional marketing for your small business, ppc advertising may seem intimidating.
Fear may drive you to pause a campaign too early if the expected or anticipated results are not immediately seen. Although it is tempting to turn a digital campaign off if you don’t see the performance you were hoping for, there are many reasons why you shouldn’t do that.
Instead analyze the data from the campaign and figure out a strategy to turn it around. You can learn a lot from your mistakes and having the ability to tweak or pivot can earn a healthy return on investment (ROI) from your advertising. Take the time to understand the user flow and path-to-purchase. One of the easiest ways to do that is by understanding Google Analytics Behaviour Flow report.
It’s easy to pause campaigns. However, if all you do is pause low performing campaigns you’ll end up in the wrong trajectory.
End-to-end digital marketing replaces ambiguity with data-driven knowledge. It is the analysis and understanding of your consumer’s digital journey and path-to-purchase.
The journey always has a starting point. It may begin with the click of a Google Ad, taking them to your website. This could then prompt them to make a call, sign up for a newsletter or initiate a download. The next day they come into your store and buy something; that is end-to-end. It gives your campaign some time to garner its success while you figure out ways to turn around the underperforming parts.
2. Not Choosing Your Keywords Carefully
If your campaigns are set up properly, they have the potential to send extremely targeted leads to your business. Selecting high quality, relevant keywords for your advertising campaign can help you reach the customers you want, when you want.
But, not including specific keywords that directly relate to the specific theme of your ad group and landing page is a guarantee to gain irrelevant clicks and to end up wasting your money.
Writing Google Ads can be extremely frustrating because you need to fit all your ad copy into such a tiny space. Specific keywords in your text and more importantly, your headline, will ensure your ad is directly relevant to the customer’s search.
It is often even more effective to use keywords that are two or three words long instead of just single words. Which means you can continually refine your searches so that only those who want to buy your products or services are sent to your websites through this platform.
When using thought out keywords in your Google Ads, the people Google sends to you are more likely to become customers, opt-in to your email list, request information or take whatever action you want them to take.
3. Not Tracking Your Results
One of the perks of launching a Google Ads or PPC campaign is seeing what’s working, what’s converting and the return on ad spend. This leads you to the optimization phase so that you can change your approach for future marketing efforts.
Your focus should be to maximize each dollar spent. You can’t prove your marketing or advertising campaigns are successful without analyzing conversion metrics. The data helps you understand the responses to various techniques used in your ad campaigns.
Some of the most common conversion tracking events you should be tracking are:
- Online Purchase Tracking
- Form Submission/Registration
- Call Tracking
- Time Spent on Page
- App installs
Proper conversion tracking provides you the data needed to optimize your campaigns further.
You can use conversion tracking for testing of keywords, testing new landing pages, and new ad text. This further helps you to avoid dumping money into failing ad strategies and direct those funds to higher-performing efforts, tweaking, and improving them going forward.
4. Not Knowing When to Delegate
As a beginner, you may go through your account setup checklist and think it’s time to sit back and let the keywords, ads, and tracking events do their thing!
Wrong!
Beyond the initial set up process, analyzing the results and knowing what to do next can be a complicated and time-consuming process, but is necessary to see success. Managing Google Ads can be very tedious, which is why people often hire an agency to manage it for them.
It is important to recognize when it’s time to invest in some help. With the limited time and budget of a small business, there is only so long you can experiment with getting tangible results. Finding the right people to support your business and campaigns with the additional expertise and analysis they offer may just make the difference in creating an effective campaign while saving you time and ultimately, money.
Got a question about Google Ads?
If you’d like to explore some of our implementations, best practices, and ways our digital marketing team can impact your business with Google Ads, contact us today!
