6 Common PPC Mistakes Every New Small Business Owner Makes
In a digital age, most small business owners are aware that online advertising is a MUST. For most new business owners and entrepreneurs they lack the working capital needed for marketing efforts, so they seek to do everything themselves. With self sufficient marketing, many beginner mistakes can cause an expensive mess. Ideally, small business owners should rely on an online ad certified professional to help setup and maintain their campaign. However, without the cash flow for such an expense, if you must run your ad campaign on your own, here are the major mistakes to avoid:
1. Bidding
Mistake: Not setting a realistic budget or a cap on CPC (Cost Per Click).
Best Practice: Start by setting a monthly budget rather than a daily budget. Mapping out your campaign at large will help you set your ultimate goal for the campaign and help keep your costs at a minimum. Usually we take a clients total monthly budget and divide it by however many days are in that particular month, this will allow us to set a proper daily budget that won’t spend the complete budget in one week. Knowing how much your selected keywords cost per click is also very important for setting an accurate campaign budget.
When it comes to bidding, for any campaigns up to $2,000/month, I wouldn’t suggest spending anything over $10 on a CPC. You want to spread your budget out as much as possible so you are able to test as many keywords as necessary to see which convert better for your geographical target.
2. Keyword Selection
Mistake: Not researching keyword CPC or keyword variations to target.
Best Practice: Selecting keywords is probably the most important part of your campaign along with your ad designs. Get in the mind of your users.
- What are they searching for?
- If I was looking for how your product or service could help me, what questions would I be asking?
Develop a keyword list from those questions. I use Google Adwords Keyword Planner to not only find the CPC for my selected keywords but also to find other variations of those keywords that I may not have thought of. The keyword planner can also help you find cheaper keywords that work in your budget much better. Use the following free online keyword tools to see what kind of monthly search volume your target keywords are receiving, how much they cost, what are some variations you can also target, what other related searched your audience uses to help better understand your target group, help develop your ad copy, and set a proper monthly budget:
3. Geographical Targeting
Mistake: Targeting nationally for your first PPC campaign, without researching the market first.
Best Practice: For newer businesses and small businesses, I strongly suggest starting locally for your first couple ad campaigns. It is very difficult and expensive to go out and target the nation right out of the gate without the proper knowledge and tools. Targeting nationally opens up a lot of competition against bigger brand names, especially if you are just starting out. Targeting locally not only gives you a better opportunity of converting more searchers into business, but also helps your business develop brand awareness. Most consumers like to do their business locally, use this to your advantage. Also, make sure you use the above keyword planning tools to find out what your keywords costs in your particular target area.
4. Ad Design
Mistake: Not including campaign keywords or calls to action in ad messaging. Not including a proper destination landing page URL.
Best Practice: Including one of your campaign keywords in your ad title or ad body will increase the likeliness that your ad will be displayed accurately to the searchers you are looking to target. Having a good quality score on your ads will help decrease the CPC you spend, as well as bring more qualified searchers to your ads, more likely to convert.
Quality Score refers to how well your ad relates to your keyword targets and how well it relates to the landing page you are sending searchers to. Having all 3 of these in sync will ultimately grant your ads a higher QS, rewarding you with a lower CPC for your keywords.
What A Good Ad Looks Like:
5. Landing Page Design
Mistake: No immediate calls to action on landing page. No immediate contact information or means of contact on landing page. No quick product or service information for user to understand why they should pick your business over your competitors.
Best Practice: Landing pages on PPC campaigns should deliver information and a call to action within seconds of a user landing on the page. Highlight product/service details, what makes you better than competition, and how they can immediately contact you to learn more.
What a Proper Landing Page Looks Like:
6. Negative Keyword Monitoring
Mistake: Not monitoring negative keywords, resulting in unrelated searchers contacting you, and spending your budget quicker with no real quality leads.
Best Practice: Make it habit to check your adwords account daily and the actual search queries and terms searchers are typing in search engines to find your ads. You can find this by going into your adwords accounts – ‘Keywords’ Tab -Select The ‘Details’ Drop Down Menu – Select ‘All Search Terms’.
You can add unwanted searches to your negative keyword list by selecting the query and then tagging as a negative keyword at a campaign level.
Example Of a Negative Keyword Search:
Campaign Keyword: Business Loans
Negative Keywords To Add: Personal Loans, Car Loans, Business Loan Careers