Certified Premier Google Partner
Certified Premier Google Partner
Time and time again, our agency hears stories from people who come to us with stories of their attempts to run Google Ads Campaigns with limited success.
Google Ads offer a rapid and effective method of driving more visitors, leads, and customers onto your website. However, this is only true when you avoid the common and costly mistakes that many business owners make, leaving them convinced that Google Ads wouldn’t work for them.
Learning how to set up high-converting Google Ads requires extensive training. Professionals in the area are certified with Google. Effectively learning how to run Google Ads properly is not something most business owners are going to have the time or inclination to do.
By all means, you can create a Google Ads account and set up a campaign that will be up and running very quickly. You may even be able to get top rankings for most or all of your targeted keyword searches locally or even around the world.
However, effective Google Ads campaign management comes down to one thing – ROI (Return on Investment). It is highly improbable, as a novice starting out in PPC (Pay Per Click), to have the understanding whether or not your campaigns have been optimised correctly for your requirements. This leads to wasting a lot of time and money, and is unlikely to produce the best results.
Trying to handle your own Google Ads without being properly trained or certified is a bit like asking a backyard mechanic to work on a race car, and to produce a winning result.
Here are some of the common mistakes:
This reason was in fact a late entry. Upon checking this article with our in house Google Ads specialist, we were told that in fact, the number one thing that business owners get wrong is they think that Adwords is ‘set and forget’.
Google loves people who do this, because over time it makes them the most profit. Business owners have not time in their busy schedule to be tweaking Adwords settings EVERY DAY. Most should have more important things to worry about.
This mistake is probably the most common for a local business that our agency sees. For local businesses, nothing will eat into your PPC budget more than appearing in locations that your company does not service.
While it is one of the most common mistakes that we see, it is also one of the easiest to resolve. Defining your geographic area of service is paramount when creating Google Ads to avoid this oversight.
If you are a service business, chances are you only work within a 50-100km radius. Nothing will waste your advertising dollar faster than having your ads generating clicks from outside of this.
The above image is an example of a local service business appearing outside of their service area. The search was conducted for an electrician with Google’s search location defined as “Whangarei”. This is over 2 hours away or 158 kms from the advertisers service area in Auckland. They could potentially be generating clicks from all over New Zealand when they only service Auckland.
There are three basic categories of keywords on Google Ads that any advertiser should be acquainted with:
A common mistake advertisers make is not utilising these keyword types correctly. It would help if you experimented, enabling you to ascertain which type or combination of models will work best in your business.
With broad match, your ads display with a search of your keywords. Your ads will display regardless of the order of the keywords. For example, if your company is targeting “men’s leather backpacks”, your ads will show up for a broad range of keyword searches including: “leather backpacks”, “leather backpack mens”, “backpack leather mens” “best mens leather backpacks”, “mens leather backpack for sale” etc.
You can expect a lot more traffic and clicks using broad match keywords; however, take a look at the above example with Air Zealand. It appears their campaign is set for all broad match search terms that contain “Air” and “NZ”. However, they will be seeing a lot of money being wasted by appearing in searches like the above “air quality nz” or “hot air balloons nz”.
When advertisers opt for phrase match keywords, ads will only appear when the search term is in the same order as your desired keyword search phrase. For example, if your business is targeting “best seafood in Sydney”, your ads will be displayed only when people search for those keywords in that exact order. Your ads can also appear for other searches, for example, “where is the best seafood in Sydney” etc.
Exact match keywords are the most precise and tend to convert highest of all of the three categories. It excludes all impressions other than the exact match. Using the example above, unless people type in “best seafood in Sydney” and nothing else, your ad will not show up.
Using exact match you will be sacrificing a lot of traffic. They won’t reach as many people as broad match and phrase match, but the advantage is that over time the conversion rate can be higher, and the cost can become more efficient (however this assumes you know what you’re doing!)
An effective Google Ads Campaign needs to be strategic. It needs to track and measure conversions, revenues and profits.
Not all searches with your keywords in them may always be ideal. Unless you are very careful, your keywords can produce search engine results that are irrelevant to your products or services.
For example, if your business sells ceiling fans you don’t want to be appearing for searches like pedestal fans or portable fans.
Another example…
This company sells commercial and industrial weighting equipment or scales. However, here they are appearing for the very generic term of weight lifting, which would most commonly be in reference to the sport of the same name. Perhaps, they have set up the campaign to appear for all searches contain the word “weight”. If that is true, they will be wasting a tonne of money appearing for completely irrelevant searches like “weight loss” or “weight watchers”.
Another frequent mistake advertisers make is not considering negative keywords. This is especially important if you are undertaking broad match keyword campaigns. For instance, imagine your business sells baby formula; do you want your baby formula ad appearing for a search like “toxic baby formula”? Not only is this particular search unlikely to produce high conversions, but it also has the potential to do considerable damage to your brand’s reputation.
Pay-Per-Click advertising done right is one of the most effective forms of marketing available. Unfortunately, many small businesses attempt to manage their campaigns without the required skillsets and wind up frustrated, giving up believing that it doesn’t work for them.
Quikclicks can help you maximise the profit potential for Search Engine Marketing (SEM).
We have years of experience managing campaigns for many clients within various sectors. Why not leverage our experience and stop wasting your time and money?
If you’re not getting results from your online campaigns or don’t know if your campaigns are truly successful, contact us for a free appraisal.
