Common PPC Advertising Mistakes And How To Avoid Them
Because it allows you to target prospects specifically by interest and location, pay per click advertising, or PPC, is one of the best options available. You can measure results precisely, and control ad spending, too. It’s also more affordable for small business owners than many other options, including billboards, television and radio.
Of course PPC has its negatives, what doesn’t. Most of the problems people encounter with pay per click is when they go in headfirst without devising a plan. Their first ad campaign often results in hundreds or thousands of dollars wasted. There are books out there that can help and an ocean of helpful articles on the web.
Starting up is easy enough, anyone can get involved without having to sit down with a manual for a few days. There are a few basic tips, though, for anyone thinking about experimenting with pay per click it’s a good idea to examine them close. The majority of mistakes are really easy to fix so that PPC campaigns can get back on track fast. This is a small list of the most common mistakes people make, and how to fix them.
1. Using your home page as a landing page. It doesn’t matter what search engine you’re using as a base for your campaign. You get to decide where customers are directed when they click on an ad. It seems logical to direct customers to the home page - after all, it’s your webpage’s front door. However, this is a bad idea in the long run.
That’s because people who click on your ad are looking for something very specific. Their keyword search brought them to your ad. Instead of bringing them to the home page of your site, create a landing page. That allows you to present customers with just what they’re looking for. Focus each landing page tightly on the keywords you’re using in your ad, and don’t include other links or distractions.
2. Improper customization of landing pages. Ideally, your PPC campaign should work by presenting a potential customer with an ad closely targeted to their keyword. The landing page they arrive at should be closely geared towards that keyword, to present no confusion as to what the page is about. Your customer should never have trouble finding what he or she is looking for! Put each product or service on its own landing page, to avoid confusion.
Mistake 3. Using ineffective ad copy that just doesn’t suit. You don’t have a lot of space to work in PPC ads. Try to look for impact from your ad copy and avoid old clichs that you see on store windows like “qualified technicians” or “quality guaranteed”. Even if these statements are true about your business, they just don’t work in pay per click advertising. Put some thought into an attention-grabbing headline and follow it up with a strong promise you can give your customers. Line three is a good spot to include special features of the product or service, or an offer you want to make.
Mistake 4. Low bid placement usually means low placement on the search page. Search engines use different methods for placing your ad. Yahoo and Google use a system that consists of examining the relevancy of your ad, combined with your bid price. Tightly targeted keywords will get you top placement and this means really crunching statistics and putting lots of thought into your approach. Eighty-five percent of all PPC clicks happen on ads in the top three positions, so it’s worth putting in the effort.
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