Do you make these mistakes in AdWords or any other pay-per-click platform? I don't typically like to focus on the negative like some experts, that's why I am giving you a solution along with every common challenge/behavior I have seen over the years by those starting out in AdWords. Below are 21 AdWords mistakes that can murder a budget, lower ROI, and waste time. Any pay-per-click manger be it the CEO or owner of a small company (which are often the online marketing department) could make similar mistakes in business verticals large or small. This was also posted on SEOChat. 1. Ego Bidding - Bidding wars and trying to be #1 over your competitors on one specific keyword just to be #1 wastes time and money unless you know your keywords’ true value or at least cost-per-conversion. Solution: Generally positions 3 – 10 have higher conversion rates because they receive less impulsive and irrelevant clicks. Fortunately relevancy plays a huge factor (Quality Score), and being #1 is not solely dependent on maximum bid. Figure out how much a customer or lead is worth to you and don't spend more than that per lead (excluding the first month of testing or so). Swallow your pride, mind your ROI, and let your competitors waste their time and money in bidding wars. 2. Jumbling Unrelated Keywords – Adgroup organization and naming is a huge key to scaling your AdWord’s account success. You shouldn’t organize just for the sake of organization, but your account should be structured in a way that you are able to give you a quick "bird’s eye view" of any one of your adgroups or campaigns' relative success. Solution: Don’t put a long list of unrelated terms and phrases in the same adgroup. Organize and stratify your adgroups using what I call the “Two Word Relevancy Litmus Test†where all phrases in one particular adgroup have at least a two word base commonality. This will create adgroups that are close to WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) as possible that you can see instantly from the name of the adgoup. Add one or two word more keyword stems, but always have at least two consistent words within each phrase per ad group. Have 100s of keywords and don’t think it’s worth the time? Think again. Taking the time to stratify and make your adgroups more granular will skyrocket your click-through rate. Example: Adgroup Name: P > Keywords in the adgroup: money laundering attorney, money laundering law, money laundering jail time, money laundering statutes, types of money laundering, etc. By organizing your adgroups this way, your ads will write themselves & you will best 95% of your competition that wont’ take the time to do this correctly. Higher CTR, quality scores, and eventually lower cpc are the payoffs for doing this correctly. 3. Using non-specific Landing Pages- Only linking all ads to your homepage is not wise. Solution: Create specific ads to link to interior landing pages having content that specifically relates to the keyword phrase/ad. Giving the user what he/she was looking for quickly makes it less likely they will leave because you made them think too much. Categorizing and sectioning off your services into major categories (even minor categories depending on search demand) and having a specific ad land on exactly what the user was looking for combined with a convincing argument and a get more information call-to-action (CTA) will dramatically increase your conversion rate. By being everything to everyone, you're aren't anything to anyone. Your company may offer a lot of different services, but don't make your prospect hunt, that's what a search engine is for, not your website. 4. Blanket Ads – These are catch all, non-specific, ads that attempt to sell on generalities and features – superlatives and hyperbole combined with a cliché call to action. Taken from traditional media based on awareness, or branding. These ads under-utilize the direct response nature of the Internet combined with flexibility of matching keyword relevance to ad copy. Users searching are typically later in the buying cycle because he/she is looking verses mass marketing which advertises to a much less targeted audience. Solution: Write tight, keyword relevant ads in small adgroups for every area of your service or product categories. Get the user to take the next step closer, which might not always be a sale. Signing up for newsletter, Ezine, to receive a free whitepaper or ebook, all have huge long term value if a relationship is cultivated. 5. Mixing Search & Contextual Campaigns- Did you know more than half of Google ads are not served on Google or any of their Search Partners (ASK, Dogpile, AOL)? They are served on relevant sites surrounding articles, blog posts, news, and other content (aka "Ads by Google"). You have the choice to opt out of this non-search network of sites. Since these two arenas are very different and require different strategies you should address them one at a time. This is not as big a deal as it used to be, but it still helps from a birds-eye-view. Solution: When first starting out with your AdWords uncheck the Content Network by choosing to "Edit Settings" on the campaign level. Once you have achieved an acceptable cost/conversion for the Google + Search Network, then duplicate your campaigns using the AdWords Editor and have "Content Only" campaigns, in which you will most like want to test different ads on as well. 6. Not Differentiating Your Business in ads- Paying too much attention to your competitors and using the “me too!†way of marketing. Solution: What makes you different? What is your unique selling proposition that offer extreme value to your customers over your competitors? Are you less expensive? Put a price in your ad. Did someone famous endorse your product, quote him/her. 7. Not thinking like a client/customer- Using unclear industry jargon or non-words such as we “monetize virtual paradigms, streamline intuitive models, empower visionary infrastructures.†More examples on this BS generator . Solution: Use language based on what words your prospects are searching by doing keyword research using the AdWords Keyword Selection tool and other keyword tools. 8. Neglecting Conversion Codes- Google AdWords provides up to four codes which should be correlated with a value action a user takes on your website. This allows you to calculate a much more important number than traffic – your cost- per-conversion or even cost-per-acquisition. One click may cost you .25, but it may take 100 clicks before someone fills out a contact form, resulting in a cost per conversion of $25. This is a crucial number in which you should base your bid amount. Based on your closing ratio you can then calculate your cost per acquisition or cost per customer. Solution: Add the provided conversion codes before you even spend any money on AdWords. Label each action. Put one on the “Thank you†page after a contact form submission. If you have an ecommerce shopping cart, place a code on the receipt page after an online sale is made. 9. Trusting IP Geo-targeting- 20% of the time or more of the time a geo-graphically tagged IP address is either wrong or not set, this can lead to irrelevant or out of area traffic less likely to do business with your local services. Solution: Create two similar campaigns, one with generic keywords without the city name, the other with generic keywords plus the city name. Target the first campaign using Google AdWords’ geo-targeting map. Target the other to the entire country, but only buy keywords which have the phrase + the city name. This will cover all your bases. 10. Missing Bolding Opportunities- The words you use in a search query matching the keywords and phrases that appear on the search engine results become bold. Bolding attracts the eye. Solution: Instead of a company name, use the keywords which you are bidding in the ad headline and at least once in the copy. It also helps to use at least one of the keywords in the display URL. www.nameofcompany.com/keyword. 11. Using One ad per Adgroup- Google allows you to run more than one ad per adgroup, each running at 50% of the time. Solution: A.B.T., Always Be Testing. Use A/B split testing and let the market decide which clicks what ad is best. By default AdWords will optimize by showing the one with the higher click-through rate more often. This does not take into consideration conversions and often they “jump the gun.†Uncheck the optimize box and wait for enough* clicks in order to have a statistically relevant test (often at least 100 clicks split between two ads). By consistent testing and ad improvement, you can significantly increase your click-through rate, which will increase your Quality Score and lower your cost-per-click over time. 12. Macro-bid Managing-If you have your conversion codes set up properly, you can see the conversion rate on every keyword, not just adgroup. You can even bid on a match type level of every keyword, meaning three different bids for the same keyword. Solution: Once you have a healthy amount of clicks coming through and have a lot of conversion data, you should be micro-bid managing for a while. You’d be surprised how much better a phrase match type keyword converts. This does not mean you should not bid on exact or broad match, it just means you should bid less until you are reaching your cost-per-conversion goal for every keyword. 13. Treating Every Adgroup Equally- You can bid on keywords at an adgroup level, similar to the last point. You must drill down and not bid the same for every adgroup. Some adgroups will obviously have a lot more relevant traffic. Just as with everything, there is an 80/20 rule factor, where 20% of your adgroups will be producing 80% of your results. Solution: Keep an eye out for your best performing adgroups. Some adgroups containing keywords which do not get searched as often may need a higher maximum cost-per-click, so when the keywords are searched, the ad is in a high position. 14. Causing Detours in Click to Contact- A phone number and an email address is not enough. It may be late at night or during work hours when users find your website. Solution: Add a contact form to your website AND landing page/squeeze page attached to your ad. Doing so will increase your conversion rate by at least 50%. 15. Completely Trusting Broad Match- There are three match types: broad, phrase, and exact. By default broad will show your ad when your keywords are contained in a long phrase with may or may not be relevant. Solution: Buy all three match types and bid on them separately, but watch your Search Query Performance report for negative keywords to add triggered by your broad match keywords as well as NEW adgroups to add by Google uncovering synonyms. 16. Ignoring 3 Crucial Reports- Search Query Performance, Placement /Keyword Performance, and Placement Performance Reports. Solution: Run these reports often and use the information you learn to make decisions in structuring, maximum cost-per-click, negative keywords, and placements. 17. Accepting the Conversion Status Quo- Once a conversion rate has been measured, some site owners do not understand that they should keep trying to improve this number by experimenting. Solution: Always be trying to improve it by a/b split testing ad copy/graphics/headlines using the Google Website Optimizer. 18. Neglecting use of Negative Keywords- Adding a negative keyword to your ad group or campaign means that your ads won't show for search queries containing that term. By filtering out unwanted impressions, negative keywords can help you reach the most appropriate prospects, reduce your cost-per-click (CPC), and increase your ROI. Solution: Find negative keywords by using the Search Query Performance report, keyword research tools, and raw query string Google Analytics hacks. 19. Failure of “Goal†Planning- Which numbers do you want to improve? You have to have a goals for your campaigns and continually create controlled experiments to reach these goals. Solution: What is your cost per acquisition goal or conversion rate goal? Put yourself on a timeline to either lower or raise specific metrics. 20. Stopping the flow of New Keywords- Often AdWords users will eventually stop adding new keywords. This could be costing you a lot in lost opportunities. You never know what the next low cost, high value, phrase will bring. Solution: Continually add new keywords and adgroups if conversion rates do not prove profitable, expunge them. 21. Not Chasing the Long Tail– The long tail could include phrases which are 4 to eight words long. These can bring inexpensive, high value, traffic. Solution: Use software like Hittail or just your Google Analytics entry keywords to build a list of longer phrases. In this instance, you can put many of them in the same adgroup as long as the keyword family contains a couple of the same keywords. Bid low on these phrases. Related Posts on Digital Point 32 Useful AdWords Tips for Intermediate to Experienced Users