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Save Time and Money on Google Ads: Avoid These First-Time Mistakes

Many inexperienced Google advertisers overspend on low-value ads. Optimize your budget with this easy-to-follow guide for first-timers.

 

Every new endeavor comes with a learning curve. Google Ads is no different.

 

But when it comes to advertising your business, the stakes are higher than they are when learning to ride a bicycle or trying out a new dinner recipe. Learning from your mistakes may sound noble, but it’s an expensive decision to make.

 

Newcomers to the world of PPC advertising can make expensive mistakes. As with any business process, learning from the mistakes of others helps to improve outcomes across the board.

 

6 Google Ad Campaign Mistakes That Newcomers Tend to Make

Google Ads is a complex system, and it’s easy to make mistakes. First-time users who pay attention to some of the most common ones are sure to reap the benefits of better results.

 

1. Making Big Bets Too Fast

Sometimes, inexperienced marketers think that in order to succeed, they have to go big or go home. While increasing the budget of a successful campaign does sound like a sure-fire win, it’s important to qualify that campaign before going all-in.

 

This is because Google Ads can be unpredictable. There are a multitude of factors that impact whether any particular campaign will be successful, and whether that success will amplify in response to a bigger budget.

 

Nobody gets everything right the first time. Successful PPC marketers are the ones who take the time to run careful split tests, confirm bold experiments, and spend time optimizing their campaigns.

 

2. Not Comparing Their Campaigns to Competitor Campaigns

Products do not sell in a vacuum. Monopolies on any product, service, or marketing segment do not always last long. The value proposition that makes your brand a success is something that exists because of the way users compare it to other available alternatives.

 

This is explicit in the Google Ads environment, where competing ads are rated according to an auction system. The entire playing field has a direct impact on the performance of your ad campaigns.

 

This means that researching your competitors forms a major part of establishing a winning Google Ads strategy. You need to find out what the bid ranges are ideal for your campaigns and how they compare to some of the major performers in your industry or sector.

 

3. Not Using Negative Keywords

Just as there are keywords, there are negative keywords.

 

What do negative keywords do?

 

You guessed it. They allow you to filter who sees your ad based on their search queries. In other words, not only can you designate terms you want to bid on, but also ones that you do not want to bid on.

 

You can weed out specific searchers before you ever even pay for them. Marketers must stay on top of their search terms report and add negative keywords to their campaigns as needed.

 

4. Taking Too Broad an Approach

Picking the right keyword can be challenging. Most new marketers will try to bid on every keyword they find to be relevant, and end up losing a great deal of money in the process.

 

Marketers who take a broad, throw-spaghetti-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach may come out of the experience with a few successes. However, the profits those successes generate will be paid for by the losses generated by the more numerous failures.

 

Instead, marketers need to research niche keyword groups that have just the right combination of value, traffic, and competition. They need to narrow down their approach to fit a particular type of user’s needs perfectly – and then focus entirely on meeting that user group’s needs. In other words, they must pay close attention to keyword intent.

 

Keyword match type also plays a massive role in the success of your Google Ads performance. When starting, stick to phrase and exact match keywords. This will allow for you to have the most control as the marketer.

 

5. Forgetting the Rest of the Funnel

It’s easy to get stuck in a Google Ads bubble. The thinking is that if a campaign performs well, gets clicks, and positions the brand well, then it must be a success. But if thousands of users are clicking through to the landing page, exploring the website, and then abandoning their shopping cart, something is wrong. Get your funnel working properly. 

 

Don’t ignore the fact that you must first get your attribution in order. You can quite literally track every single penny spent on ads. 

 

Your Google Ads campaign is just one part of a larger system – your sales funnel. Every part of the ad campaign has to align with the overall value represented by each step in the funnel. Otherwise, customers will let themselves get drawn along until a disconnect pushes them away.

 

There are many ways that Google Ads can tie into the awareness, consideration, and decision steps of the sales funnel. Most industries have a unique set of standards that are contingent on the way the industry works – some do well with email autoresponders, others capitalize on Facebook remarketing or content marketing. The key is to find that alignment and deploy it.

 

6. Neglecting to Prioritize Actual Purchase Value

Everybody knows high-value leads are worth more than low-value leads. Yet many beginning marketers will research and plan their first campaigns assuming that every campaign (and every potential lead) represents the same value.

 

This can only be true for a business that sells one product to a single type of customer.

 

Every other commercial organization will earn more by structuring their offerings to meet the needs of varying customer categories. Spending more on people who are prepared to make high-value purchases makes sense, especially if margins are also higher.

 

This is usually evident with qualifying keyword search terms like “cheapest” or “best”. Someone looking for the “best” product is probably willing to spend more than someone looking for the “cheapest” version of the same product.

 

If your brand offers premium products or services, you will probably be able to afford to dedicate more resources to marketing them towards high-value customers at a niche level. If your brand focuses on inexpensive goods, then you will probably want to prioritize messaging that will help your business scale upwards and grow.

 

Every Google Ad Dollar Counts

The most important thing that brands and marketers need to realize is that every dollar spent on advertising counts. Optimizing the way those ad dollars increase leads and conversions is key to making the most of your marketing budget.

 

Marketers that fail to take this approach may enjoy modest short-term success, but building a business empire that will stand the test of time demands a more strategic approach.

 

As always, if you want help getting customers with PPC then feel free to contact us here.

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