… And How to Avoid Them (Part I)

Like any new kid on the block, it would not be surprising if you’re losing money on your PPC (pay-per-click) ad spend and seeing little, if any return. That’s because many beginner and intermediate PPC advertisers routinely make three common errors when it comes to setting up campaigns.

In this Part One of a two-part post, I cover these errors in detail.

Huge mistake #1: Using keywords that are too general.

The problem here is that while “too general” keywords (for example, “women’s flip flops”) get lots of impressions and maybe even lots of clicks, they typically generate little in the way of conversions, which costs you big money.

When you neglect “long-tail” keywords (keywords that get less traffic but are highly targeted), you stand to lose significant leads and/or sales.

Suffice to say, to achieve success (high conversions, more sales) with your PPC campaign, you must, must, must thoroughly research your keywords. We’ve already covered this topic in detail in other blog posts: “Five Steps to Building a Keyword List” and “Powering Up Your Keywords.”

Huge mistake #2: Not using ad groups.

According to Dudley Chamberlin, one of our customer success reps here at Yield Software, not using ad groups is the biggest mistake he sees no matter what the company size or type. “Most people will set up a PPC campaign with three or four generic ads that all go to the company’s home page,” says Dudley, “and each ad is based on dozens of general keywords”

If you’ve done your keyword search properly, you should have dozens or even hundreds of potential keywords – including keywords specific to your business or product and keywords that are more general.

By taking a few minutes to analyze your keyword list, you can see that your keywords can be divided into groups. Using our “women’s flip flop” shoe example, you can divide potential keywords into sets by characteristics:

“The key to maximizing a PPC campaign is to develop ad groups based on these sets of keywords,” advises Dudley. “Think of it in terms of a ‘tree structure.’ The campaign is the trunk. Off the trunk you have branches – the ad groups. Within each ad group you have the specific ads themselves.”

Keywords cannot be duplicated within ad groups, so it makes sense to develop an ad group based on like-keywords and then to develop landing pages based on the specific keywords. According to Dudley, each ad group should contain at least three to five ads.

“Once you have ad groups,” says Dudley, “you can then test which groups and/or ads perform the best. You can set up ad groups to test specific keywords, such as more general keywords versus product specific keywords. You can also test dynamic insertion.”

With dynamic insertion, which works across all three search engines, you can have specific keywords automatically inserted into an ad headline. Using our “women’s flip flop” example, a dynamic insertion ad would look like this: “Shop for{red}flip flops here.” The search engine then inserts specific keywords (of your choosing) within the curly brackets.

Dudley recommends that each ad group have at least one or two dynamic ads.

Small plug: our Yield Web Marketing Suite makes much for this work simple, intuitive and easy to accomplish.  Once you have your ad groups in place, the system does all the heavy lifting in terms of managing your PPC campaigns across all three search engines. After guiding your set-up, the system:

Constantly recommends PPC keywords;

Manages negative keywords;

Actively handles geo-targeting;

Determines optimum bids, then places, evaluates and refines them each day; and

Optimize bids and budget allocation based on traffic, conversion or conversion value.

To learn more, sign up for your risk-free, no installation, 30-day trial offer.