Do you want to achieve the best possible results with your Google Ads campaigns? or are you struggling to get leads or conversion opportunities?
If you’re new to Google Ads or you’ve been setting up pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns for years, small mistakes can add up to big losses over time! As a result, your campaigns may not perform well. And it can cost your team by affecting both results and budget.
In order to avoid such mistakes, you need to learn about the most common Google Ads mistakes made by marketers.
So here’s the list of 5 mistakes that you’re probably doing:
#1 Include display network in the search language
While you set up a new Search campaign, you should change the default settings. Because the default settings for search network campaigns will display your ads on Google’s Display Network. Is that a problem? YES!
This is because Google’s recommended setting is ‘Search and Display Network’ as they claim that it provides the ‘best way to reach more customers. But Search and Display networks perform very differently and therefore, are best managed with separate campaigns.
Remember to not mix search and display network settings in your search campaigns. Because this will negatively affect your ability to optimize and measure the performance of these different networks later.
Moreover, Display Network ads have a lower click-through rate (the number of clicks on your ads divided by the number of times your ads are displayed with impressions).
And the new Google Smart Shopping campaigns use advanced machine learning to show your ads to the right audience. So your ads will be across Display and Search when they are looking to buy or enquire at the moment.
If you want complete information about where your ads have appeared, then you should create individual campaigns for each network.
#2 Not tracking conversions
When your Google Ads campaign running, it starts to generate a big number of clicks. But unless you install conversion tracking, you can’t see the number of clicks that result in leads.
Conversion tracking is an important tool in Google Ads that lets you know how well your ad campaign is generating downloads, leads, sales, email sign-ups, and other important data about your advertising. All the information shown by conversion tracking allows you to spot which areas of your campaign are active and which are inactive. This in turn can help you optimize your keywords, bids, and ad text, accordingly.
Google Ads makes it automatic to track conversions from your website, phone number, app, with Google Analytics. With this, you can always track conversions easily and accurately understand the impact of your Google Ads campaigns. So, always track conversions of your ad campaigns.
#3 Using automated bidding in new account
Google Ads recommends a smart bidding strategy automatically based on the campaign target you want to achieve. For instance, it may suggest ‘Maximize Clicks’ if your goal is to increase website traffic.
Usually, advertisers think it’s right to go with what the platform suggests. But if you don’t have enough experience, the default may seem to be the best option for you.
But if you don’t try to test out different options, it can be a BIG mistake. You may also fail to understand data and optimize your bidding strategy. Both can result in a great loss!
Once you start getting enough PPC data, you’ll know the price you should be paying for clicks and acquisitions. As a result, you can start optimizing results with a small cost per click (CPC) or target cost per action (CPA) bidding.
You can also use a target return on ad spend (ROAS) bidding strategy to ensure your ads perform the way your team expects.
#4 Using broad match keywords without prior experience in it
You may assume that as long as you optimize the right keywords with a high enough bid, your ads will show up in relevant searches. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case, especially if you use broad keyword matches.
If you loosely match keywords to search terms, your ad may appear in irrelevant searches. Moreover, if you pair them in very specific words, your ad will fail to match with a lot of many searches.
If you want to optimize your search ads, you need to do some deep keyword research and a good understanding of what your audience may probably search. You should also learn the difference between these keyword match types:
Broad match: Search targets related to your keyword.
Exact match: Shows ads on searches that mean the exact thing as your keyword.
Phrase match: Displays ads on searches that just express the meaning of your keyword.
#5 All keywords into 1 ad group
If you’re adding all the keywords into a single ad group then you must STOP doing this! And if you’re doing this by default, any keywords added into your Google Ads account will default to the ‘broad match’ match type.
As mentioned before, don’t go with default suggestions. Here’s why – a ‘broad match keyword’ will encourage far more terms than you want to show. As a result, you will collect clicks and impressions for unrelated queries to your advertising campaign. This will burn a hole in your pocket if you don’t manage it in time.
To avoid adding all the keywords together, use a combination of broad match modified keywords; (eg) +wood +book +shelf), phrase, and exact match keywords within your account rather than adding all keywords into one ad group.
Suppose you are not sure what keywords to add, click on the columns option when you are in the keyword tab and then go to the customize heading and pick some attributes and select ‘match type’. You can do this in your Google account’s settings and let it do the work for you. See PPC Process.
Final Word
We hope that the above suggestions will help you to avoid some of the common Google Ads mistakes. It’s okay to make mistakes but what’s important is to learn from any mistakes you make and improve your strategies for identifying loopholes before it’s too late.
Couldn’t really invest your precious time when it comes to Google Ads? At XtremeAds, we’re here to help you achieve the best possible results. We give our best in optimizing Google Ads with the help of experts in our team. Contact us to get started with Google Ads today.
