Google AdWords is one of the biggest opportunities that many businesses can take advantage of to get more traffic to their website, but there are a number of pitfalls out there that can make your campaigns less effective and cost you money!
Follow these top 5 Google AdWords mistakes that can be easily avoided in order to make your campaign more successful today.
1. Not including a clear Call To Action (CTA)
If you are paying for ads that do not have a clear and specific call to action for readers to follow, you are missing out on valuable conversions! Telling readers exactly what you want them to do will help give them very concise direction and encourage them to actually take that action and interact with your ad.
2. Not building a cohesive strategy
Some advertisers adopt the spray and pray method of using AdWords, which is a big waste of money. In order to take advantage of the powerful targeting mechanisms in AdWords while getting the biggest return on investment, you should be taking care to plan out a clear and concise strategy. Even if you are making 100 ads for a wide range of products, take the time to lay out all of your campaigns, ads, and keywords to make sure that your dollars are paying for the most effective ads possible.
3. Going overboard with keywords
Like number 2 above, it’s easy to go way overboard with the keywords being added to your account. If the keywords in your campaign are not targeted appropriately to what you are looking to do with the ad, you will be throwing away money on clicks that do not want your product or service and will not convert. Google doesn’t always help with some of their suggestions either, since many of these can have minimal connection to your actual campaign. Be sure to carefully review these suggestions and your own lists to ensure your keywords are targeting your intended audience, and you’ll have better success getting clicks that are genuine opportunities.
4. Ignoring campaign reports
Taking advantage of the reporting and review features of Google AdWords is one of the most important parts of this process. The deep data reports that Google generates can give you clear, deep insight into what campaigns are doing well, which you should move money to / away from, and how you can edit your campaigns to grow their effectiveness even further. Not taking the time to review and understand these data sets means you are missing out on a ton of opportunities to grow the effectiveness of your campaigns and gain more customers!
5. Not taking advantage of A/B testing
Google AdWords is so flexible and powerful that advertisers can make changes in real time using up-to-the-second analytics and reports, which means that you can easily test out multiple ad formats side by side and get the most bang for your buck! Try a few variations on how you word your ad, the landing page for the ad, or how you format your value proposition side by side, and you can use the results to hone in on the most effective ads possible for your campaign.
There are many other pitfalls to avoid when creating Google AdWords campaigns, despite the flexibility and power of the platform, but with the power of AdWords in your corner, your business can drive more valuable consumers to your website. Next time you are creating a campaign remember these top 5 common Google AdWords mistakes.
