PPC, or pay-per-click advertising, can be an excellent way to generate leads and increase traffic to your website. Although 75% of web users never scroll past the first page of search results, the prominent placement of Google Ads can allow your site to be seen more frequently. And since your ad will show up specifically when web users search for relevant, industry-specific topics, you’ll be more likely to get noticed by people who could easily become customers, rather than those who have no interest in your products or services. In other words, PPC campaign development is understandably an important part of a typical marketing budget. However, just like all other search engine marketing services, this type of campaign isn’t always simple to implement. Without the right experience and knowledge, it’s easy to spend money without seeing much return. You’ll need to understand more about how PPC marketing works (and what doesn’t work) if you want your strategy to be effective. To that end, here are three major mistakes you’ll want to avoid when creating and maintaining your pay-per-click ad campaigns.
Not Monitoring Campaigns
Ultimately, there’s no aspect of your digital marketing strategy that you can simply “set and forget.” Every aspect requires monitoring on a consistent basis, which is why so many companies choose to outsource these tasks to professionals who have both the time and expertise to ensure long-term success. That definitely applies to pay-per-click campaigns, which need to be checked daily for progress. You should also assess your campaigns on a weekly and on a monthly basis to determine what’s really working and what needs to be tweaked. These check-ups can allow you to spot any major or minor issues early on, which will keep you from wasting your budget on results that don’t deliver.
Focusing On the Wrong Metrics
There are a number of metrics you can track in order to analyze the success of your ad campaigns. However, not every metric should receive equal consideration. For example, you might be more focused on the cost-per-lead (CPL) than on optimizing your ads for clicks. While CPL can be helpful information to have, it doesn’t necessarily tell you whether or not the campaign itself is profitable. Even if the CPL, click-through rate, and other metrics are all on target and indicate a healthy campaign, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the ad campaign will make money for your business. You’ll also need to consider other metrics, such as cost-per-conversion (CPC) and return-on-ad-spend (ROAS). In addition, you’ll need to gain a deeper understanding of how your paid ads and your company’s bottom line are related. So although metrics provide convenient data to analyze, you’ll likely need to dig a little deeper to tell the complete story.
Phone Tracking Failures
One common problem experienced by many businesses is the inability to track phone calls that stem from PPC ads. Since phone calls are typically the most viable source of leads, not being able to accurately track which of those leads originate from your paid ad efforts will represent a huge problem. You can’t possibly know whether your campaign is producing viable leads (or how many can be attributed to those efforts) without tracking your phone calls correctly. Fortunately, there are a number of phone call tracking platforms available to business owners; they just need to be used properly. Although there are clearly a number of mistakes to avoid with pay-per-click ads, here’s one of the biggest: trying to run these campaigns yourself. By entrusting your campaign with an expert in pay-per-click advertising, you can ensure that the proper efforts will be made and that the progress is monitored correctly. For more information, please contact us today.
WRITTEN BY
Rick Hogan, CEO & Co-Founder – Bleevit Interactive Rick possesses over 20 years of digital marketing experience and started Bleevit Interactive with the primary mission of helping local businesses succeed online. When he is not working he can often be found hiking Great Falls, Virginia with his Labradoodle Lily, or sailing the Chesapeake Bay. If you have any comments or suggestions on how we can improve this post or otherwise want to give us a shout, send an email to hello@bleevit.com.
