Pay per click or PPC is one of the best ways to get in front of your target potential clients. When used correctly, paid media can yield a very high return on investment and is an intelligent way to spend your available marketing dollars. PPC works hand in hand with your SEO campaign, so most people take on a dynamic approach when allocating marketing dollars. On the flip side, many companies waste copious amounts of money on failing PPC campaigns and aren’t sure what went wrong. Here is a list of five common PPC mistakes and how to avoid them.
Spreading Your Spend
Some marketing managers think the more options, the better. This is not the case with a PPC campaign. When you spread your budget too thin across too many keywords, it is difficult to gain traction with them. Often, there is not enough money behind the campaign to get the results you are looking for. It is better to put your money behind one or two primary campaigns that are converting then to spread yourself around with too many mediocre performers.
Time of Day
If you are running your ads 24 hours a day, 365 days a year you are making a huge mistake. You are paying for ads and placements that are not returning at the rate they should. A way to optimize your ads is to study the time of the day and days of the week that your ads are performing. Then you can optimize your campaigns to run during these peak times.
Landing Pages
Many companies throw a lot of money behind their PPC campaigns only to have a high bounce rate on their site. One of the main problems with this is not providing high-value content relevant to the ad that is running. Spend some time working on your landing pages and have a clear call to action, and you will see significant improvement with your campaigns and bounce rates.
Set it and Forget it
When you have an ad campaign that is performing well, it is easy just to let it run and move on to the next task. This is a mistake in the world of PPC. There are always improvements that can be made to any campaign. You should be continually massaging the campaign, expanding your keywords and negative keywords. Pay special attention to the time of day and days of the week that you are getting the best cost per click or CPC. This can be very telling and help you to optimize your budget.
Stuck in a Rut
It is easy to get very comfortable with the campaigns you have running. Once you find a formula that appears to be working, many companies will duplicate that same formula over and over again. What they are not doing is evolving their ads and optimizing their spend. As a result, they have multiple mediocre campaigns running that are potentially costing them valuable marketing dollars.
