There are some fundamental mistakes that many people make when running PPC ads that waste their money. With PPC, because each click costs you money, you want to make sure they’re performing as efficiently as possible. These four mistakes are easy to fix.

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Be sure to register for it so you can hear more about this topic live! You’ll learn 4 mistakes most business owners make with Adwords that wastes money, how to easily identify the problem areas and what to do to fix them.

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In my free report, 10 Ways to Get Found Online Today, I detail out ten different ways your customers will find your products and services.

Many people think that search engine optimization or SEO is the only way to get found on Google, but there are several ways to get listed there.

Google can display several different types of search results on any given search engine results page (SERP), including:

• Organic search results
• Local search results in a “3-pack”
• Pay per click ads
• E-commerce results
• Images
• Etc.

Of those possible results, the one that you have the most direct control over are paid ads or pay per click (PPC) ads using Google Adwords.

PPC can be quite effective, especially if you have a lot of online competition or you want to turn up the search volume quickly because of seasonal or other changes in your market.

PPC ads give you a lot of control over many aspects of your marketing including (but not limited to):

• Where your ads show up geographically
• What keywords you want to show up for (or don’t want to)
• Tracking your return on investment (ROI) for your ad spend
• A/B test different ad text, landing pages, and calls to action

And so on.

Furthermore, Google makes it very easy to create an account. Fill out a few basic boxes, get it set up in about 15 minutes, and you’ve got ads online very quickly that will generate clicks.

Unfortunately, there are some fundamental mistakes that many people make when running PPC ads that waste their money.

SEO clicks are free, so it’s great to get as many as you can, but competition is stiff. With PPC, because each click costs you money, you want to make sure they’re performing as efficiently as possible. After all this is money coming out of your bank.

PPC Mistake #1

This is probably the biggest mistake people make. When you create an ad, you have to tell Adwords where to send the click. Many people send the click to the Home page of the website.

This is a problem for several reasons.

First, your Home page is typically pretty non-specific. So let’s say someone is searching for “leather dog leashes”. If they click your ad, and unless that’s ALL you’re doing your home page won’t convert well. It’s too generic.

Next, your Home page probably isn’t search engine optimized for the keywords that are driving the ad. This will cost you money because there’s a mismatch between the SEO, the search terms, keywords you’re bidding on and the ad copy. These should all match.

Typically, you want your ad to land on a landing page that is specific for that set of keywords.

It should have a very strong and obvious call to action, and the SEO should match the keywords, ad copy and search terms. This will lower your click costs, and dramatically increase conversions.

PPC Mistake #2

It’s important to be very choosy about the keywords you’re bidding on (see next section) because you’re paying for clicks on those keywords. However, it’s equally important to have negative keywords in your campaigns.

In Adwords it’s pretty inconspicuous, so it’s easy to miss or ignore. Unfortunately, it can cost you a bunch of wasted clicks (money!) if you don’t set it up.

What’s a negative keyword? It’s a search term for which you don’t want your ad show up.

Let’s say you have a one-person dog grooming business and you have an ad running for people who are searching for dog groomers in San Francisco.

If someone searches for dog grooming jobs San Francisco, that’s not a relevant search term, because you’re not offering any jobs. So jobs would be a negative keyword.

If anyone is searching for a job or jobs in your field, the negative keyword will prevent your ad from showing up, and it won’t get clicked. This saves you money, and wasted clicks!

PPC Mistake #3

Google’s Keyword Planner tool makes it very easy to generate a long list of possible key phrases for your ads to bid on. However, you have three ways to tell Google to use them:

1. Broad match – the keyword phrase by itself, like leather dog leashes.This will match any order and any combination of words as long as it matches those words. It will match leather leashes for dogs or dog leashes made of leather. This is the most common way to list your keywords, and it’s the most expensive.
2. Phrase match – put the phrase in quotes, like “leather dog leashes”. Now it will only match if that phrase is in the search term, like large leather dog leashes or leather dog leashes for big dogs. This is a less expensive term to bid on than broad match. 
3. Exact match – put the phrase in square brackets, like [leather dog leashes]. This will only match if the searcher types in exactly leather dog leashes. It’s the least expensive version of that term.

So in the list of your keywords that you’re bidding on, you’d list all three like this:

leather dog leashes
“leather dog leashes”
[leather dog leashes]

PPC Mistake #4

Finally, in your ad copy, you can substitute the searcher’s term directly into your headline. This is called Dynamic Keyword Insertion or DKI.

The advantage is that you aren’t stuck with a single headline, and your searcher will see their search phrase mimicked back to them, making it more likely they’ll click your ad.

All you have to do is put this in place in your headline:

{KeyWord:Leather Dog Leashes}

The mixed case “KeyWord” tells Google to make the searcher’s term to be initial caps.

So if their search term is 25 characters or fewer, then Google will put their search term in your ad headline. If it’s more than 25 characters, it will use your default headline, in this case Leather Dog Leashes.

DKI can improve your click-through-rate (CTR), which lowers your cost per click, because a higher CTR means your ad will get rewarded with higher position or lower cost per click (or both).

Free Webinar

I hope you’ll join me on our free webinar on this very subject. It’s Wednesday, December 9, 2015 at 9:00 a.m. Pacific/12:00 noon Eastern.

I’m going to demonstrate exactly how to set all this up for your business so you can use it yourself and start saving Adwords dollars!

Register Now! »