Are you getting the most out of your Google Ads campaigns? When it comes to managing a successful campaign, some essential factors will help you avoid running a weak strategy that doesn’t convert or wastes your budget. Let’s take a look at some key mistakes to avoid while running a Google Ads campaign and how you can improve your current strategy.
1. Avoid Using The Wrong Keyword Match Type
When running campaigns, many people assume that as long as you have a handful of keywords and a high enough bid, you’ll be able to run a successful campaign. However, a large part of your success depends on your keywords and their match types.
There are three different match types for keywords: Broad, Phrase, and Exact. Each level gets more defined, which can either help or hurt your campaigns. If you have too many broad match keywords, you’ll show up for everything that could ever relate to that keyword. You’ll get a lot of clicks, but your lead quality will likely drop.
On the other hand, if you have too many exact match keywords, you’ll have a lower amount of people clicking your ads because your keywords are hyper-focused and only show up for searches that match that keyword exactly. The key is to play around with it until you find the ideal mix of keyword types.
2. Stay Up To Date On Negative Keywords
One of the more unsung heroes of a Google Ads campaign is your negative keywords. Negative keywords are a list of terms that you can apply to an ad group or a campaign for which you can choose not to show your ads.
By going to your search terms report and compiling a list of the terms you don’t want to show up for, you can improve your bidding strategy and better target the suitable types of search queries. This can help you save money and improve the quality of your leads by cutting out unrelated searches.
3. Pick The Right Network To Advertise In
When setting up a campaign, you have the option to select either the Google Search Network or the Google Display Network. Search is limited to Google Search, and Display can show up on partner sites as banner and display ads.
Typically when setting up a campaign, the Display Network is a default selection with the Search Network. The best practice is to remove the Display Network from your campaign if you’re running search ads. The Display Network has a much lower average conversion rate than the Search Network. This is primarily because Display Network ads serve like a digital billboard rather than a targeted search. Focusing on just Search Network can drastically improve conversion and click-through rates.
4. Don’t Forget To Use Ad Extensions
Ad extensions are a great way to help you provide more information on your Google Ads. Ad extensions are clickable elements you can add to your ads to help searchers access pertinent easier. You can add extensions that allow searchers to click from the ad to call your business, or they can provide a site link with information about admission, warranties, and more. It’s up to your discretion to determine which one will let more people click on your ads and help your business the most.
5. Send Traffic To The Right Landing Page
An essential facet of running Google Ads is your landing pages. You’ll want to be sure that you send users to a relevant landing page that focuses on the exact keywords you’re bidding on. By aligning your keywords from your campaigns with your landing pages, you can improve your ads quality score and give users who click your ads the information they’re looking for.
6. Not Using Audience Targeting
Many managers tend to overlook the use of audience targeting in their ads. This can be a handy tool to help you narrow the focus of your campaigns to your preferred target audience. With audience targeting, you can focus on specific attributes of users such as their jobs, interests, education, and more. This can help your ads show up more for people who fit the bill for your ideal audience. It can also help you lower your conversion cost and improve the overall quality of incoming leads.
7. Not Having Enough Ad Variants
Another rule of thumb for running Google Ads is to have multiple ad variants in your campaigns. By having various ads in your campaign, you can experiment with what variations of headlines and copy work best to get people to click through to your website. People respond differently to different words, so experiment with what works best for your campaigns.
8. Not Bidding On Branded Terms
One way to help boost the success of your campaigns is to have a dedicated Brand campaign that bids on your company’s name or variations of it. This can be helpful to your cost of conversion as branded terms are more likely to convert than service-related terms. It can also help your business reach the top spot in search results and improve your visibility in Google Search.
The Takeaway
Regardless of what your company is selling, Google Ads can be a helpful tool to garner more leads and improve the quality of users going to your site. By learning from some of these common mistakes, you can improve your Google Ads’ efficiency and effectiveness and start to see a more significant ROI from your digital marketing efforts.