7 Mistakes To Avoid With Google Adwords Campaigns In The UK

Seeing as you have chosen to enhance your marketing with Google Adwords PPC, you probably know that it’s a brilliant opportunity to increase profit quickly.

But did you realise the extent to which your Google Adwords budgeting saves you money?

If you do it right, Google Adwords will be one of the most efficient and cost-effective business choices you make. However, most people who are new to the programme stall their own progress by falling into traps and making very common, very avoidable mistakes. By knowing about and understanding how to avoid the slip-ups in your campaigns, you will see greater returns and reduced bid prices on your keywords and ads.

Here are the 7 major mistakes to avoid in a PPC campaign and how to resolve them. If you pay attention to these and carry on monitoring any changes, you WILL notice campaign improvement in future.

1. Setting all keywords to broad match

This is very common with people who don’t understand how to optimise PPC keywords. When you are putting multiple keywords into ad groups, you might not realise the keyword targeting options available. On the other hand, you might think that broad match will show your ads for more searches and therefore get you more visitors.

Both mistakes will be very costly. If your keywords are set to broad match, your ads will show for a wide range of distantly related searches. Naturally, they will show to people who are less likely to be interested in your offer, meaning high impressions but LOW CTR (click through rate). Any clicks will be less likely to be valuable or convert to sales – a define waste of money!

The resolution: Get more valuable ad impressions and clicks by setting most keywords to ‘phrase’ or ‘broad modified’. This means your ads will only show for searches with that exact phrase or with certain words. Only include a small number of broad keywords that you have researched and KNOW will attract relevant traffic.

2. Including UK wide and local keywords in one campaign

Keeping tabs on your business’s local and UK wide performance can be tricky, but it will be even harder if they are combined in one campaign. You will have no way of setting up separate targeted locations, adjusting bids for more profitable areas or comparing different location performance.

Internet searchers will be confused too. An ad that says “local Manchester service” will be useless to someone in the South East. Potentially, you will be eating into your budget for visitors who leave your page straight away.

The resolution: The simple answer is to create two campaigns; one local, one UK wide. Then you can manage ad content, CPC bids, locations and other performance metrics in a clear, organised manner. This is an instant time-saving and customer-attracting solution.

3. Not knowing your USP when writing ads

USP stands for Unique Selling Point; a critical tool in any form of marketing. In Google Adwords, no part of the campaign needs a USP more than your ads. If you write the headline, features, benefits and URLs without knowing how to sell the offer to a specific customer, your ads will fall flat. They won’t attract attention or appear relevant to your website, causing CTR, impression share and ad position in the search results to go down.

The resolution: Before writing any Adwords ads, be clear on the important features and benefits of your offer. Understand your target customer, the problems and solutions they would value. Reflect all of these points in your ads AND landing pages. If you get your ideal customer to click, you will be rewarded with higher CTR, conversions and return on investment.

4. Out-bidding competitors for the highest position

Don’t be fooled into thinking that you must bid the most to get higher search result positions. This is a common Google Adwords budgeting mistake that will waste money and leave you with nothing more to spend! It may get you to the top temporarily, but it’s definitely not a sustainable strategy.

The resolution: Opt for the long-term, budget-saving solution. Improve the relevancy and consistency of your ads, their keywords and landing pages, then Google will increase your Quality Score (QS). If you are awarded a Quality Score of 6-10 the ads will be shown more often, at a higher position and guess what – your CPC will go down. By improving overall quality in PPC campaigns, you spend less for a higher position.

5. Poor relevance between ad and landing page

You MUST link each ad to a relevant landing page on your website. A landing page basically provides your final sales pitch before a customer decides to leave or complete an action or purchase.

If a visitor finds that the page doesn’t reflect or tell them more about your offer, they are very unlikely to fill out your form/download your e-book/buy your product or service. This will give your ads a low Quality Score and Bounce Rate, leading to higher Adwords budget spend and higher bid prices.

The resolution: The simple answer is to understand and stay true to the offer in your ad. Link that ad to a landing page URL that uses the same keywords, has relevant, enticing content, brevity and, above all – a clear call to action. Don’t allow visitors to navigate away from the landing page using other links; all focus should be making that sale.

6. Setting up a campaign while it’s “live”

You’ve set up a Google Adwords account, entered a budget and other settings, now you can start creating a PPC campaign, right? Wrong. Many new users don’t realise that any new keywords and first draft ads will, by default, go “live”. In-keeping with PPC’s key feature; all campaign changes will affect your performance in Google’s search results instantly. This means poorly chosen keywords and bad ads will be shown, lowering your Quality Score and budget.

The resolution: Pause your entire campaign before getting started. This allows you to test and make mistakes WITHOUT affecting your PPC budget or online reputation. Once you’re happy with every aspect of the campaign, you can set it to “live”.

7. Not checking your campaign’s progress regularly

Google Adwords sounds simple and is known for user-friendliness, but don’t take it for granted. Without proper understanding, some business owners create a campaign then let it run without monitoring progress. Others check it, but not at regular intervals, making progress hard to measure.

Without regularly checking how your campaign is doing, you could be ignorant to serious loses from underperforming keywords, ads, landing pages, CPC and other performance metrics. You can waste HUGE amounts of your PPC budget.

The resolution: Don’t take your eye off the ball. Your business life may be busy, but setting aside an hour every 2 days will save you money and stress in future. You can quickly improve any weak spots and continue optimising performance and measuring the results – a smart strategy for Adwords budgeting.

Article by Laura Wootton