SIR THORNEY

Initially PPC advertising seems like a simple concept; people are searching for your services/products, and you pay to arrive on search results. In actuality, the landscape is very complicated, and understanding how searchers use search engines to find products and services takes a long time to understand.

Here are the biggest mistakes that advertisers make when using PPC advertising:

Paying to be the 1st ranked result for as many searches as possible 🥇

One of my customers recently told me that another advertising agency promised they would get their website to rank as number 1 on every search todo with a particular keyword.

This was a flawed concept for 2 reasons:

1. It’s impossible to be number 1 for every single search, because Google rotates which advertiser is in the 1st spot. You can pay to be there the most, but not 100% of the time.
2. They would need to up the keyword bids to over £5 per click for that particular keyword, and the customers budget wasn’t big enough to cover every search for that keyword each month if they were bidding that much.

Trying to get the 1st position for 1 particular keyword is a pointless goal. It’s simply not cost-effective, and you’ll probably not gain any more sales by trying to do this.

Instead, you’re better spreading your budget across several keywords and trying to get the 3rd/4th search position, and then up the bids on the keywords that are generating the most sales so they can sit in 1st/2nd place.

Paying for as many clicks or impressions possible 🖱

A lot of advertisers will simply just go for whatever keyword will potentially generate the most website traffic, so they target popular searches todo with the industry they’re advertising within.

Sometimes a bigger yield of clicks will generate a bigger result; but in more competitive markets gathering these bigger yield of clicks can be very expensive.

A more cost-effective method of advertising is to do extensive keyword research and put together a list of niché keywords with less searches, but that show the consumer is more interested in purchasing or contacting.

For example, the keyword followed by a location (such as “recruitment agencies Hampshire”) tends to target more relevant searches than just the keyword on its own.

Targeting too small or too large an advertising area 📍🗺

It’s important to advertise within an area you can deliver your product or service, this should be a no-brainer. However, Google makes it surprisingly difficult to only advertise within your chosen area, so make sure you location settings are set to only advertise in the areas you pick. Otherwise you could spend money on getting sales/leads from people that are in completely different countries to your service area.

Similarly, make sure the area you advertise within isn’t too small. Ideally, we would all advertise within a mile away from our business and get an endless amount of sales, but that’s impossible (unless you’re advertising food). The bigger the area, the more potential sales can be generated, so make sure you advertise within the furthest place you’re willing to deliver or serve.

Never assume your PPC campaign is perfected 🕵️‍♂️

Too many times have I thought that an advertising campaign is finished and able to run on its own, only to find that within a month its cost-per-conversion has tripled and the campaign wasn’t anywhere nearly as solid as I once thought.

Why an advertising campaign suddenly pivots is complicated, and there’s a million reasons why. The economy, the weather, the news, a series of bad reviews; all of these things can contribute to how effective an advertising campaign can work.

Because of this, you need to ensure that you keep an eye on your PPC campaigns and constantly tweak them depending on what is happening within your industry.