Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads are perhaps one of the most successful or frustrating marketing channels on the internet today. There are many companies that waste thousands of dollars per month because their PPC campaigns fail. Luckily there are also many success stories.
4 Reasons Why PPC Campaigns Fail
Some of the reasons why PPC campaigns fail are due to a few simple mistakes. Here are some of the most common PPC mistakes you can commit and how to correct them.
Obsessing Over CPL
Cost-per-lead or CTL is a metric measure to find out how cost-effective your marketing campaign is when it comes to generating new leads for you. There some campaign managers that obsess over this metric because they think this is how to know if the PPC campaign is producing results.
Over the years, PPC has shifted from optimizing clicks to optimizing conversions. Nowadays, CPL is an indicator rather than a measure of success.
Instead of being fixated on CPL, focus on profitability. To do this your PPC campaign should be tied to your bottom line. You should know which keywords have the lowest cost-per-sale, which search terms produce the most revenue and which ad copy creates the greatest return on investment.
Once you focus on profitability, you can adjust bids, keywords and budget so that you can have better control of your ads and campaigns.
Keyword Overload
According to the Digital Marketing Institute, the average PPC account is generating sales from just 12% of its keywords. This means that if you’re just like any other marketer, all your sales is produced from just 12% of your keywords. The study also discovered that the remaining 88% of your keywords eats up to 61% of your budget. Many marketers and companies know which keywords are generating the most sales. Problem is, they keep bidding on other keywords in the hopes of generating more leads.
The best way to fix this is by not using the broad match. It’s the default setting for many campaigns and they are budget sucking. To do this open AdWords, go to your Keywords tab and click “Search terms.” From there, you can create a filter for “Conversions < 1” or something similar so you can eliminate poor performing keywords.
Bidding too Low
The higher you bid, the more your bid will cost. However, you also need clicks especially early in your campaign. This is why many marketers gradually go up the bidding scale. However, it takes too much time and you can end up spending more on your bad keywords. So while it feels that gradually increasing bids is a good way to save money, this strategy could end up with you spending more.
To correct this, it’s better to start high and then dial down as you figure out which keywords work best for your campaign. However, this strategy only works if you have a consistent and compelling funnel for your PPC ads. If you don’t have a consistent message or compelling offer you could end up losing money or earning very little.
No Call Tracking
Companies – especially lead generation companies – consider phone calls as some of the most important sources of their leads and sales. However, despite the availability of tools like Google’s call forwarding platform, many of them fail to track their phone calls effectively. Without proper tracking, how do they know which channels are truly profitable?
This is an easy fix too. Aside from using Google’s call forwarding feature, there are also other methods such as using a forwarding number in your ad copy to record calls down to the ad group level, you can also use a code in your ad that dynamically replaces your onsite phone number to a call forwarding number to track campaigns. Other tools like Call Tracking Metrics or Five9 can be smoothly integrated into your CRM.
Forgettable Ad Copy
We know that copywriting can be hard and making a copy generate sales is even harder. However, writing a good copy is important because you don’t only want to generate leads and sales, you also want to be noticed.
To get noticed (and clicked) you need to standout. Focus on the pain point your product solves for your target market. Put the pain point you’re solving directly in your ad copy.
PPC can be a good way of fast tracking your business. However, it can also be a complicated endeavour especially for rookies. Fortunately, there are Sydney AdWords Managers that can take care of this step for you so you can focus on growing your business.
