You probably know already that using Google Adwords to advertise online is one of the best marketing techniques around. It can certainly be a much cheaper method of advertising than traditonal media like magazines and radio.
BUT running Adwords campaigns successfully can be a VERY complicated and time consuming process and making mistakes can cost you real money.
Here are 4 common Adwords mistakes that could be costing you money:
1. Only one AdGroup in your campaign:
This lack of differentiation means Google can’t understand the context – i.e. what your Adwords ads are about. This means that all search queries are being shown the same ads. A better approach would be to have highly relevant ads targeted to specific search queries.
2. Keywords Not Optimized:
Keywords that are known to produce conversions have not been expanded and optimised to increase sales. To get the best results out of your Google Adwords you need to be monitoring results and then “optimizing” your ads. Optimizing means improving the range of ads that you are running so that they are more targeted and providing higher conversion rates (i.e. getting you the results you need, like sales or phone calls).
3. Google Analytics Not Set Up or Set Up Poorly
In order to get the best results out of your Adwords campaigns and your website, you really should be using Google’s Analytics tool. It is free and probably the best way to manage your online marketing as it provides a detailed and clear picture of what your website visitors are actually doing while visiting your website.
There are many things you can do with Analytics to improve results, but generally speaking what Analytics does is it allows you to see the factors that directly result in enquiries and sales. This means you know what works so you can replicate, and what doesn’t work so you can eliminate it.
4. Website Not Optimized
There is no point running an efficient Adwords campaign if you are not backing this up with an excellent website that gets those sales or gets the phone ringing off the hook.
Just having a normal website that you thought was pretty good when you had it made is not enough. For starters, just because you think that your website copy (the words) is up to scratch doesn’t mean that it is necessarily resulting in the best results.
Further to this you really should be running keyword specific Adwords campaigns into landing pages (pages within your website) that are highly relevant to the keywords used in the ad (and the terms your prospect typed into Google to end up seeing your ad in the first place).
The best way to do this efficiently is to “split test” several landing pages for each different Adwords ad, which as you can probably guess, can mean running many different landing pages at any one time. Thankfully, Google’s Website Optimizer tool makes this automatic once you’ve done the initial set up.
Split testing is a continual process of experimentation and elimination to see which factors (Landing Page design, copy, headlines, etc) give you the best results. Assuming that any given factor will work is not as effective as split-testing several different strategies to discover what works in reality.
If you are running Adwords campaigns for your business right now then you should check to see if you are making any of these 4 mistakes. There are plenty of other factors to consider, but these four are certainly very important.
Of course, doing all of this can be very time consuming and complicated, so if you are busy running your business and would like some help with your Adwords ads, landing page optimization or advertising copywriting (the words you use in your ads or web pages) then please do contact us using the contact details below.
We offer a FREE no-obligation Adwords account review which will show you how you could be getting a higher return on your Adwords advertising investment.
Contact us now to find out more:
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