Google ads mistakes to avoid

10 Common Google Ads mistakes

When it comes to business, we always want to have it perfect so that money will just keep on pouring in. However, if you make mistakes, expect that downfalls can occur. Just like gaining customers, when you keep making mistakes, don’t expect your potential customers to flock to your business.

If you are using Google Ads as one of your means in reaching and targetting your potential customers but it is not succeeding, then you may be using the Google Ads mistakes that you should be avoiding.  

You will no doubt want to achieve maximum return on investment for the phrases or keywords that are most applicable and relevant to your business.

It is essential that you avoid certain mistakes that could result in poorly performing campaigns. These mistakes are discussed here:

1. A lack of keywords in your ad text

If you’re creating descriptive ad copy, it’s very important that you strive to inject your keywords or phrases into your description and title whilst maintaining a delicate balance between relevance and clarity. However, your ad copy must be tailored in such a way that as your visitors read it; they understand perfectly well what they can expect when they click on your ad.

2. Failing to identify unique aspects of your products or service

Before implementing your Google Ads campaign, it’s very important that you understand precisely what it is that makes your company or organisation stand out from the competition. You’ll see plainly how you can move forward and rise above your competitors and zone in on the phrases or keywords that are unique to your business by identifying your unique products, offerings, and services.

Have a look at what your competitors are doing, and which keywords or phrases they’re using. After you’re successful at conducting a competition analysis and you understand what makes your products and services unique, this will enable you to come up with a plan or strategy that will topple your competitors.

3. High expectations of Google Ads on a tight budget

If you have a low budget allocated to Google Ads, don’t expect that you will get the results that you want to receive. If you only have $100 to $200 to spend every month, you will not be able to test your ads and know if they are performing properly. The pay-per-click for keywords that you target may be higher than your daily budget! 

4. Directing users to your homepage only

The homepage is the place where you can introduce your business but it may not be the best place for you to have your campaign.

If you have taken your time to compile a list of relevant keywords or phrases that best describe the unique aspects of your service/product, then why would you send all visitors to your homepage and hope that they’ll navigate through your site to find what they’re looking for?

Instead, you should send them directly to the page (or create a landing page) that contains precisely what was described to them in the ad copy.  Refer to this article about landing pages and why they matter. 

5. Creating single ad groups

You will establish a higher level of control over your entire campaign only if you categorise ads that target related or associated keywords into a common ad group. Organising and structuring your ad group in this manner will give you the ability to create in-depth reports on each ad group, and also make real changes that would make significant impacts on those ads’ performance over time.

6. Using broad match keywords only

Chances are that you’re likely to be missing out on potential customers and creating a higher cost-per-click for yourself unless you take advantage of the phrase matching options that Google Ads makes available.

As the name implies, broad matches are typically less targeted than phrase and exact matches. The default option which shows your ads expanded matches such as relevant keyword variations or plurals is regarded as broad matching.  

Check out this article from Google Ads which defines which keyword match types you can use and how to use them.

7. Failing to track results

You must be able to identify which keywords or phrases work and which ones do not. Google Ads supplies several useful tracking tools in order to have an idea about the performance of your campaigns.

You need to be testing constantly to see what works and what doesn't, to achieve success.

8. Not using negative keywords

Negative keywords allow you to exclude keywords that are not a good match for your product or service, for example, if you only sell women's clothing you would want to exclude keywords such as "men's" or "children's" so if someone is searching for "men's clothing" your ad is not served to them; thus focussing your ad to a person that is more likely to purchase.

Google explains Negative Keywords and how to use different match types in this article.

9. Not bidding on your brand name

You may think, "I rank highly for my brand name organically, why should I pay to get traffic."  However, if your competitor bids on your brand name as part of their keyword list they will likely appear before you do. Remember ads are generally served before organic results.  

Branded campaigns are much cheaper to run as the quality score is higher in part due to keyword relevancy.

10. Not having ad extensions

Ad extensions are important because they help in improving and growing your ad copy. When you make your ads, space is limited and you are only given a certain number of characters to work with that will be used for descriptions and headlines. If you want to recompense for the limitations, then having ad extensions are ideal. There is no additional cost attributed to them. Some of the ad extensions that you can use are location, site links, call, structured snippets, and callout extensions.

Used correctly Google Ads can be extremely useful and profitable; used incorrectly Google Ads could cost you money. These are only some of the mistakes that you need to avoid so it's understandable if you're unsure whether you're equipped to tackle this next step in your marketing on your own. It might just be time to mix things up and outsource some work to a marketing agency.

Check out these 10 signs you're ready to partner with a marketing agency.

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