Whether you like to admit it or not, pay-per-click marketing is still a very strong marketing tool for many websites. The revenues that these websites make from such ads are proof enough that these do work. If you have tried PPC and found that your ads are not converting as well as you hoped they would, maybe you should check your efforts to see if you are missing anything or if you are doing something wrong.
As easy as PPC may seem to some, you will find that not all of these ads do make the kind of money that they should, and you can place the blame squarely on avoidable mistakes. These are errors in pay-per-click advertising that you can actually keep from making, and in doing so, can make better headway with your PPC efforts. Here are some of the top errors that you should try to skirt as much as possible:
Using broad match keywords for your ads – when you use broad match keywords, you are essentially wasting a lot of money on clicks that won’t bring you any revenue. Why? Let’s take for example the keyphrase “bulk baking supplies”. If you use broad match, you will end up with your ad showing (and possibly being clicked through) by keyword searches for bulk training, office supplies, and baking lessons, to name a few. The use of broad match will enable your ads to show for any of the three keywords that are in your target keyphrase. What you should do is to set your ads to show for exact match or phrase to ensure that you are indeed showing your ads to your target market.
Not doing a split-test of ads before choosing which ad to run – split testing PPC ads is much like test driving cars. You do not buy the first car that you see being sold. You test drive two or more cars to see which one performs the best, and which one best suits your needs as well as your wants. The same goes for PPC ads. In order for you to see which ad performs better with your target market, you should run two to three different variations of your ad to see which one works the best. This will ensure that the ad you do end up running for longer does make your company money.
Call to action missing from ads – this is another mistake some pay per click marketers make when putting together their PPC ads. They are so hell-bent on creating the perfect ads with the perfect wordings made to entice people to wonder about their products, that they forget to add in a subtle yet effective call to action that will encourage their market to actually click through and check out their wares. Apart from this, some PPC marketers also fail to use the right kind of phrase to get people to click their ad and to go to their landing page. When you are figuring out which call-to-action phrase you should use, keep in mind that Google does have some restrictions in this area, so keep away from the usual “click here” phrases that this search engine does not tolerate.
These are just a few of the many mistakes that you should avoid when doing PPC for your website. In order to steer clear of the non-revenue creating PPC ads that you might end up creating, other mistakes that you need to take note of include creating badly crafted landing pages, sending people from your ads to your home page, and becoming too obsessed about staying in the number one spot for your ads.
