Get your ppc strategy right by avoiding these three common mistakes

Paid ads are a powerful marketing technique, and can be a low-cost solution for generating valuable leads and website traffic.

Google AdWords has made it easier than ever to get started with PPC marketing, which might be why you’ve unknowingly succumbed to some common mistakes.

As you’re looking for a positive return on your investment, here are the top three mistakes you need to be aware of today.

You’re trying to maximise your chances of getting valuable leads to find and click on your ad.

The problem is, as a new advertiser you’re going to be competing against a lot of experienced professionals who have the budgets to use those general keywords such as ‘men’s suits’.

Do you really want to be paying £s per click that might not turn into a sale?

You need to be starting your AdWords campaign with five to ten long-tail keywords that you’ve selected based on performance data – your own website and Google’s information.

Google AdWords Planner, Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools are where you need to be looking for this valuable information.

Once you’ve started gaining a positive ROI and your ad tactics have been shown to work well, you can begin to introduce broader search terms.

You need to be directing your PPC ad visitors to a landing page – not having them land on your homepage.

A landing page has been specifically written for the target audience you’re trying to hit through your PPC ads. The copy is appealing, engaging and aligned with what they were specifically looking for on Google.

If you’re letting visitors land on a generic homepage after they were searching for a specific keyword, you can see how they might be a bit miffed at having to work for the information they were looking for.

Ultimately, this leads to missed conversion opportunities, lower ROI and higher bounce rates – the latter of which has a direct impact on your organic SEO rankings.

It takes time and patience to craft a high converting landing page, and it is essential that you run split testing to keep the page optimised for your audience.

Research has shown that just under 50% of PPC advertisers don’t add a negative keyword to their accounts. That means they’re losing out on maximizing the effectiveness of their PPC spend and potential return on investment.

Imagine you’re selling watches.

There are a lot of search terms that might include the word ‘watches’ – luxury watches, cheap watches, etc. If you sell sports watches designed for sporting professionals, you don’t want your ad to show up in search results for ‘cheap watches’.

So, you need to add that as a negative keyword.

Failure to do so will dilute your strategy and prove costly, rather than effective.

How many of these mistakes have you been making? Don’t worry too much, PPC marketing is very much a case of trial and error which is why we recommend using affiliates to minimise that risk whilst maximising your return on investment. To find out more, click here.