Understand the hidden disadvantages behind some of the most popular approaches in PPC campaigns and how to avoid them effectively.
According to research from WebFX in 2020, nearly two-thirds of small and mid-sized businesses make use of PPC campaigns when it comes to their marketing strategies. With such soaring popularity, it should be no surprise that articles ranting about PPC best practices are now rampant on the Internet.
However, not all of these so-called “best practices” can actually bring back profits and achieve the goals initially set out. In some worse cases, blindly implementing them can do a disservice to the overall campaign and significantly lower your ROI.
If you are interested in learning more about which PPC tactics to avoid, keep reading to find out!
What Is A PPC Campaign?
A PPC campaign – or pay-per-click – refers to a model of digital marketing which charges advertisers a fixed amount of fee every time a user clicks on their ads.
In recent years, PPC has become increasingly popular since it allows marketers tight control over budget spending, provides trackable results in a short time and tends to bring back a higher ROI. If combined with a suitable platform like Google or Facebook, running a PPC campaign can reinforce brand recognition, as well as increase the clickthrough and conversion rate effectively.
3 Mistakes Not To Make In A PPC Campaign
There have been many suggestions on how to optimize a PPC campaign, but some of these are downright unrealistic and can not be applied to all campaigns. Besides hiring a PPC agency for more in-depth advice, you also need to be cautious when confronted with the following advice concerning your ads.
1. Use a fully automated bidding option
Most ad platforms have claimed to spare marketers from the pain of manual bidding and offer a seemingly fool-proof alternative: letting the core engine do the heavy lifting. While it is true that auto bidding can save time and effort, it is not always a reasonable choice to give up total control over your own ad campaign.
First of all, auto bidding functions on the premise that it would do anything to maximize the success of a campaign, regardless of the cost. Needless to say, not all business owners can afford it. Many bids made by the auto mode easily exceed the planned budget and raise the ad sales to the point it leaves permanent damage.
Secondly, for a flawless run, auto bidding requires an accurate input of information. In most cases, you have to wait several weeks or at least a few campaigns until the engine is fed accurate, newly gathered conversion data for optimal performance.
For example, suppose you want to take advantage of auto bidding and use it to boost conversions. In that case, conversion pixels have to be set up properly in the first place.
Next up, a consistent data flow is necessary to ensure your Maximize Conversions or Target CPA choice on auto-bidding is doing its best. Should the conversion tracking setups be erred, the whole goals of the campaigns would be compromised.
Thirdly, certain modes of auto-bidding might appear tempting at first glance but end up not panning out as expected. A prime example is Maximize Clicks. As the name already indicates, this bidding strategy focuses on garnering as many clicks as possible.
To have positive stats in quantity, Maximize Clicks usually relies on bidding cheap keywords with low search volume and little relevance to the advertised products. Hence, the number of clicks – however impressive they are – are, in fact, quite useless, as they do not bring back any profit.
To be fair, using Maximize Clicks would be ideal if you are in the first two stages of a marketing funnel: awareness and interest. Since massive brand recognition is what you seek after, displaying your ads anywhere possible can secure the goal right away. But as you venture deeper into a PPC campaign, try not to lean on auto bidding and let it blindly apply any tactic without your consideration.
2. Trust broad match completely
Broad match is a keyword option that displays your ads to all the searches containing similar words, misspellings, or variations. For example, you put “silk pillows” as the broad match. The ad platform will maximize your ad placement to any search engine result that is closely related to “silk pillows,” like “silk pillowcases” or “cheap silk pillows.”
The idea behind a broad match is to increase impressions and showcase the ads widely. However, search engines cannot always catch up with the mechanism. They may pop up your ads on totally irrelevant search result pages. As a result, marketers sometimes find themselves paying more money for fewer clicks and conversions.
3. Use single keyword ad group
Some people believe that using only one keyword in an ad group can consolidate the campaign’s message and lift the quality score so your keyword bidding can be placed at the top of the ranking. Thus, your ads may stand a higher chance of being on display.
This assumption cannot be further from the truth. Most PPC campaigns rely on a series of closely related keywords (anything from variants to misspellings) to optimize the performance. Therefore, grouping at least five to ten relevant keywords together earns you a better opportunity to get quality ad placements and secure better metrics.
Conclusion
Running an effective PPC campaign is not as easy as marketing gurus make it out to be. While free advice on the Internet might be helpful to an extent, most of which only refer to ad campaigns in general and without focus on your specific business.
Therefore, we highly recommend that you consult Olifant Digital – a leading expert in the industry that delivers tangible results for any PPC campaign. Needless to say, such a flawless performance can dramatically boost your sales and raise a high ROI. Check it out now and see for yourself!