Pay-per-click campaigns, Google Ads (ex – AdWords) in particular, are the best way to get visitors…now.
Here’s Why:
The budgets are FLEXIBLE.
The targeting is more ROBUST than any other advertising platform, ever.
You DON’T pay unless you get a website visitor.
There are NO long-term contracts.
On average, we find 5.4 surface errors in PPC campaigns we audit that were set up by novices (no offense).
Here are FIVE of the most common PPC errors we find in campaigns:
1. No conversions (goals) are being tracked.
If you’re not tracking the business objectives of your site with software like Google Analytics, you’re missing out on important information about how your PPC campaign is performing such as:
- Ecommerce Sales
- Contact Form Submissions
- Account Sign Ups
- Downloads
- Phone Calls
2. The campaign type is set to Search Network with Display Select.
This is Google’s recommended/default setting. And it will get you a lot of visitors, sure, but they will be junky visitors. We’ve never seen a display network that is anywhere close to as effective as a search network. But even if they were as effective, you want to set up separate campaigns for Search and Display networks to help with reporting, budgeting, negative settings and optimization tweaks.
3. Extensions not enabled on the ads.
Extensions are fun to use and useful! You can add location extensions to display your business address, call extensions for users to immediately call your business from the ads and several more.
4. The majority of the budget is being spent on branded keywords.
A branded keyword is one with your company, brand or product in it – a keyword that you’re likely to rank very high for organically. People searching for a branded keyword are likely already looking for your company, so if they click on your ad rather than your organic listing, you get charged for a click you probably would’ve gotten anyway. It’s a good idea to bid on branded keywords in some cases, but it’s not a good idea to spend a large portion of your budget on them.
5. Poor ad copy, no ad variations and no dynamic text.
Google is good at picking out your best ads. If it sees one ad that is getting a lot more clicks than another one, it will more heavily favor the more often clicked ad. But if you only have one ad, it’s not likely to be the best ad it can possibly be. Especially if it’s bad.
Check out the Before + After of this PPC Search Network ad we rewrote for a quick example:
Ad Copy – Before Ad Copy – After
Why our Ad is Better:
- “Machining” is more appropriately used compared to “Manufacturing.”
- We helped identify this company’s competitive advantage: speed and cutting down lead times. That advantage becomes our leading statement in the 1st line.
- Capitalization, periods and other symbol usage makes the additional description lines easier to read.
Keep in mind, these are the most common errors and not the most serious ones!
How we bill clients for PPC Management
Typically, our monthly management fee is based on a sliding-scale percentage of your overall ad budget once the budget exceeds $600 per month.
Our digital marketing clients receive a discount on these fees as organic search marketing works hand-in-hand with pay-per-click.