Part II: Is Your Business Making These Costly Google Ads Mistakes?

In Part I, we looked at the ways choosing the wrong keywords and ignoring mobile searches can hurt your Google Ads (formerly AdWords) strategy.

Here, we look

3 additional Google Ad Mistakes

1.  You Need to Get Properly Matched

Unless you tell Google Ads otherwise, it’s going to match the keywords you choose to the largest possible audience.  This is referred to in Google Ads terminology as a “broad match.”  What it means is that some people will see your ad, even though they type in words differently than the way you wrote them.  For example, if you choose the keyword phrase, “commercial car” and someone reverses the order, typing in “car commercial,” they’ll still see your ad, even though what they’re looking for is probably a marketing agency, not a car dealership.

There are several features of Google Ads which will help you target the right people for your business.  One, for example, is the so-called “exact match.”  When you choose this option, only prospects who type your exact keywords (or very close variations of them) will see your ad.

Another is the “negative match.”  This feature lets you tell Google Ads what people you don’t want to see your ad.  For example, if you’re the used car dealership, you could choose the negative keyword phrase, “buy new cars in Pittsburgh.”

2.  You Need to Know What Time It Is

Here’s a typical Google Ads nightmare scenario.  You have a carpet remnant business.  To boost business, you’ve decided to put on a big sale.  To publicize your sale, you create an ad that instructs prospects to give your business a call—but there’s one problem.  Your business closes at 6 p.m. sharp every day—but some people see your ad at 7 p.m., or 8 p.m., or midnight (maybe they can’t sleep until they get the remnant they want!).

The result?  You come to work the next morning to encounter a flood of voice mails on your phone, and some of them are from prospective customers who are more than a little miffed (“why did you tell me to call your store if it’s closed?).

Google, not surprisingly, has anticipated this problem—and created a solution for it.  You can tell Google Ads precisely when you want your ad to appear, and when you want it to go dark.  It’s called “ad scheduling.”  Ad scheduling lets you turn your ad on or off to match your business hours, or for any other reason.  It also allows you to change your bids along with your schedule to best meet your marketing needs.

3.  You Need to Manage Your Advertising Budget

Here’s another nightmare scenario:  you choose some great keywords and ads, the kind that put your ad in front of a tsunami of prospective customers a large portion of whom click on your ad.  Sounds great, right?  There’s just one problem—you’ll need to pay for all those clicks, and that can be a budget-buster.

Fortunately, there’s a better way to manage your advertising budget—it’s called “bid adjustments,” and it works like this.  You can tell Google how much you’re willing to spend on a given campaign.  That will mean that your ad won’t display every time someone types in your keywords, but perhaps every other time, or every third time.

You can also use bid adjustments to manage how much you’re willing to spend (your “bid”) depending on when and where your ad displays.  You might, for example, be willing to spend more if the click occurs on a mobile device as opposed to a laptop, or for prospects in locations which are more favorable to your business.

Your Next Steps

So, what’s the takeaway?  Google Ads can be a substantial boon for your business, one which drives more traffic to your website, generates more leads and drives more conversions and sales—but it can also be a colossal failure if you don’t do it right.

Fortunately, there are experienced and knowledgeable marketing agencies who can help. Our expertise is in search engine optimization (SEO), web design, web audits, PPC advertising and social media marketing. 

Let me know below if you have any question, we’re happy to help

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To learn more about the ways these and other of our services can help you achieve your marketing goals and grow your business, book your free audit today.