5 Common Google Ads Mistakes to Avoid for Your Business
Did you know that e-commerce grew by fourteen percent in the past year?
Online shopping is here to stay, and one of the major skills needed for marketing businesses online is knowing how to develop an effective ad campaign. Being strategic with your marketing campaign dollars will go a long way toward helping you achieve your business goals without superfluous spending.
Unfortunately, many marketers new to this sphere don’t optimize their Google Ads campaigns, causing them to waste time and money on ineffective ads. Keep reading for five of the most common Google Ads mistakes and ways that you can avoid them.
1. Not Using the Keywords Correctly
When creating Google Ads, you’ll input the keywords that you want your ad to display. Google will let you put in as many as you want, but there is a strategy for choosing keywords for your ad campaigns.
If you put in too many keywords, your ad will show to people for whom the ad isn’t relevant. This tanks your conversion rate and costs you money that you didn’t need to spend. Even for campaigns dedicated to building brand awareness, a few specifically curated keywords will perform better than a lot of vaguely related keywords.
2. Only Using Broad Keywords
While broad keywords (also known as short-tail keywords) get the most searches online, this also makes them the most competitive. The cost-per-click on these terms can become inaccessible, and it’s almost guaranteed that most of the traffic for these terms is not actually relevant to your product or services.
Instead, include a mix of short-tail and long-tail keywords in your campaign. If your business has an in-person location or if your services are dedicated to a specific geographic region, try to rank for local keyword strings.
3. Not Specifying Keyword Match Type
There are three match types in Google Ads: broad match, phrase match, and exact match. If you enter all your keywords into your campaign as a broad match type, you’re not using your full ability to specify the audience that you want to see your ad.
Use the phrase match and exact match types to reach a smaller, more specific audience than the broad match type. You’ll have fewer overall impressions, but you’ll probably have a higher clickthrough rate as a result.
4. Not Having a Responsive Landing Page
Over half of all of today’s web traffic comes from mobile devices. If your customers click on your ad from a smartphone or tablet but can’t read your webpage, they’ll leave frustrated and move on to the next search result.
Connect with your web developer to ensure that all of your landing pages for your campaign are optimized for both desktop and mobile viewing.
5. Setting Your Campaign and Never Checking In
Google Ads optimization is meant to be an ongoing process. If you set your initial campaign and never check in again, you miss out on key opportunities to make cost-saving adjustments based on your ads’ performances.
Track how different keywords are performing. Measure how audiences are responding to your various Google Ad extensions. One of the major benefits of Google Ads is that it can perform A/B testing for you automatically; utilize this feature to figure out the best copy for your ad, then get rid of the other options.
Avoid These Google Ads Mistakes in Your Next Campaign
Now you know five of the most common Google Ads mistakes that new professionals make in their digital marketing strategy. Be intentional with your keywords, optimize your content for various viewers, and revisit your campaign strategy regularly. Utilize these skills, and your ads are sure to perform better than ever before.
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