4 Biggest PPC Mistakes Online Marketers Make

With the cost-per-click prices on the rise across all search engines, many online marketers struggle to attain positive ROIs for their PPC campaigns.

Yet, in a highly competitive PPC landscape, especially on Google Adwords, building an effective campaign could mean the difference between losing sales and attracting solid buyers.

Here are some of the most common PPC mistakes both pros and beginners make and how you can avoid or amend them:

Failing to set goals and measure conversions

Starting a campaign without goals is like going on a journey without a destination in mind.

Surprisingly, it is still very common to see marketers launch Adwords or Bing campaigns without setting steadfast metrics that indicate conversion.

The metrics you choose to measure will depend on your business objectives. However, some metrics are more valuable than others are. Measuring click through rates alone does not give you the full picture about the performance of your campaign.

Overall, the goals of a PPC campaign should fall under these four categories, each of which has its own specific metrics that can be used to measure conversion:

Goal 1:  Attract

• Impressions

Goal 2: Engage

• Click through rates

Goal 3: Convert

• Conversion rate
• Overall cost per click
• Cost per conversion
• Profit per conversion
• Return on Investment

Goal 4: Renew

• Return visitors and the revenue they generate

It is important to properly install conversion tracking and analytics tools to help you get the right numbers for all these conversion metrics.

Overlooking mobile usage trends

Mobile advertising is a fast growing trend and many marketers are jumping on board to reach their mobile users.  Statistics indicate that by the end of 2014, mobile will overtake desktop usage.

Although creating mobile ads was initially difficult, Google’s Enhanced Campaign feature on Adwords now makes it easier to create ads optimized for mobile.

With more and more consumers using their mobiles to locate businesses and to shop, failing to have a mobile PPC strategy means missing out on the millions of mobile users who could be looking for a product or service similar to yours.

Setting up a poorly executed landing page

A poor landing page experience makes your PPC campaign less cost-effective.

If potential customers click through your ad and they are directed to the landing page but they cannot find what they are looking for, they will definitely hit the back button. In spite of the high click through rates, the CPC prices simply will not add up because customers are not taking the desired action.

When creating landing pages, the rule of thumb is to ensure that the information on the ad is similar to that on the landing page. At the same time, different keyword-optimized ads should point to different homepages. It makes no sense to point all your visitors to a single homepage when each could be looking for different products or services.

Poor keyword targeting strategy

Many new marketers target broad-based keywords with the intention of being #1 at the search engines. But, broad-based keywords are extremely competitive, costly and are not likely to bring in any valuable traffic.

Long-tail keywords offer better ROI as they are more targeted. Users who search using these narrower terms are likely to be higher up in the buying funnel.

A major mistake marketers make is jumping to generate keywords without thorough planning. It is especially important to get clear about your campaign goals and business objectives before embarking on keyword generation.

Many PPC Mistakes Can Be Avoided

Remember that the keywords you use for sales goals could be quite different from the keywords required for other types of conversions.Many online advertisers confess to losing a lot of money on PPC campaigns that were poorly structured. Taking the time to understand core campaign goals, integrating key metrics, and having a solid tracking system are key to getting bang for your buck with Google and Bing online advertisements.