The Mistakes That Sabotage Most PPC Campaigns and How to Avoid Them

Investing resources into a PPC campaign is arguably the best way for a business to gain popularity, revenue, and conversions from day one. However, regardless of the potential benefits, PPC campaigns must be executed with caution and a fair amount of meticulous research. Many people often overlook this and forget to lay the proper groundwork for achieving success. In turn, instead of gaining conversions, they are left with failure and a budget deficit as a result.

So, how do you avoid this? Before you kickstart your first PPC campaign, it’s important to know of everything that could go wrong. Being successful doesn’t only involve working towards set goals, it’s also about knowing what to avoid. As such, in this article, we’ll be covering a few crucial blunders that might happen when you carry out and maintain a PPC campaign. Having this knowledge could change the way you conduct business radically.

Incorrect Targeting

Having a unique business idea and excellent ad copy are some key factors for campaign success. However, all of that goes to waste if you aren’t reaching out to the right customers. Targeting is all about knowing what your audiences will find the most appealing. If done incorrectly, your ads might end up underperforming, generating fewer conversions than expected.

One way to overcome this problem is to do in-depth research and create a Buyer Persona before you launch a campaign. A Persona is an imaginary customer that encapsulates all the demographic, psychographic and behavioural characteristics that you would like to target. To formulate an appropriate persona, start first by asking yourself these questions:

  • At what time would they browse the internet?
  • What colours would appeal to them the most?
  • Which text form would interest them right away?
  • How old would they be?
  • What kind of offer would make them decide to use such a service?

Regardless of whether you’re using Google AdWords or Facebook Ads, you’re going to have to fully understand your customer base first before you reach out to them. Being more meticulous with your targeting process will ensure that your PPC campaign performs right off the bat.

Improper Bidding

PPC campaigns are nothing without keywords. In order to make your ads visible to users, you need to begin by bidding on certain keywords. And that is a process that requires a substantial amount of budget planning. Most of the time, however, campaign performance is underwhelming for one or both of the following reasons:

  • You are bidding too much money on keywords that don’t convert
  • You are bidding too little money on keywords that actually convert

Monitoring the data generated from your PPC campaigns will allow you to derive which is the case with ease. But if you’re still not entirely sure about how your conversions and revenue will be affected due to shifts in the budget, it might be good to experiment. Employing the following two steps will help you to solve most of the issues behind improper keyword bidding:

  • Try increasing your daily budget and only doubling the money of your top three keywords, without touching the rest
  • Try cutting the funding of your three worst keywords in half, without touching the better ones

If your ratings increase after employing the first step, that just goes to show that your campaign is being hindered by incorrect bidding. But if no changes are observed after carrying out both actions, then perhaps the following blunder is the one you should take note of.

Ad Copy and Creative Design

Ad copy is probably the most important thing in PPC campaigns, but many digital marketers don’t focus on this. Why? That’s because it’s one of the toughest things to get right in marketing as a whole. As such, many people often come to terms with the fact that their campaigns are lagging because of it, yet they choose not to take further action because they aren’t sure how to improve.

Well, why not try studying other ads? This is a question that often catches many off guard. There are some that cite honour as an argument, saying they would rather not copy content from others. However, studying high-performing ads with well-crafted copies could very well be the gateway to success for your campaign.

Every great ad was inspired by another. Modelling, after all, is a basic form of creation and evolution. Evaluating why your competitors’ campaigns are doing well will afford you with many valuable ideas for improving on your own. This is how the marketing industry advances: by building on one another’s works to produce something fresh.

So, don’t rush to publish your campaign. Take some time to monitor the way your competitors write their ad copy or come up with their creative design and infuse those ideas into your own unique goals. This will most definitely guarantee results.