Common PPC mistakes and how to fix them
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Google PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Ads are ads where you get charged as a business each time someone clicks on your ad. These appear at the top of Google’s search results as “sponsored,” which helps to give your business visibility for your product or service. More visibility = more conversions = growing business.
What’s great about this is that you can run the ads to target specific users who are looking for exactly what you sell. For instance, if you sell ‘running shoes’, you can run ads that show ‘shop running shoes’ every time someone searches for this on Google, as shown in the example below.
This allows your ads to appear, but you only pay when someone clicks on your ads. This is a really great way of getting your business front and centre for the things people are specifically searching for online. Think of it as a shop on your high street that gives you a preview of items, featured products/pricing, store details & sales – online. This helps with much better-qualified leads.
But what if you’re spending a lot of money and not seeing profitable enough returns? There are likely a few crucial errors that you might be making. Especially if you’re managing a pretty big ad budget! No pressure, it’s all a numbers game, and we’ve got a few cheat codes. These are 5 common PPC mistakes you might be making and how you can easily fix them without spending lots of money.
Choosing the wrong strategy
There are 8 campaigns in total that you can use, and often people will fall into the trap of only using search. An absolute must for your business is to diversify how you target people in your strategy. For instance, PMAX (Performance Max) allows you to target users across YouTube, Gmail, Maps, Display, and an absolute must for e-commerce businesses, Google Shopping.
You may even find that you are running too many PMAXs, in which case you may need to control spend by breaking this down even further. This can be done by using campaigns that work best for your product/service.
Here is an example of how you could structure your campaigns:
1st Tier – Shopping
Google shopping, helps to capture low CPC traffic to see what products sell (convert) and what don’t so that you can streamline your focus on top-performing, best margin products. This also allows you to see if you need to make adjustments to your products. For example, you might be getting a lot of traffic for a product, but it’s not converting. This would allow you to understand how your business is different from anyone else, such as price competitiveness, or highlight in your ad messaging what makes you stand out from the competition.
2nd Tier – Search
Target more high-intent purchases by focusing on keywords that are relevant to the products you sell. You can imagine the number of people every day who must be Googling the term ‘running shoes’ is astronomical. However, if you target keywords that are more longtail, such as ‘blue wide fit running shoes’, then naturally you will have a lot fewer people looking for this. The benefit of this is that there’s less competition, meaning your average CPC will be a lot lower, making your campaign much more cost effective. Not only this, but you can also start to target users who have a high intent to buy. They are usually much further down the buying process stage, as they know exactly what they want. All you have to do is show up for it on your ads.
3rd Tier- Demand Gen
Not everyone will purchase the first or even the second time they see your ad. At the end of the day, we all like a bargain! Roughly only 4.8% of users make a purchase when exposed to an ad. In other words, people will typically shop around for a few days before coming back to your site; this is where retargeting comes in. Demand Gen is an AI-powered campaign on ads that uses a lot of content-focused visuals to recapture those already interested audiences. If you’re a business that has a lot of strong image & video content, then this is the perfect way to re-expose potential buyers to your business. Ultimately, this tool helps to turn interest into sales. This is also a great opportunity to cross-sell & upsell related products or services.
Understanding your target audience
Knowing who to target is essential for businesses to establish themselves in their market. A lot of ads will be set up by location, age, gender, and even what device people use to make a purchase, such as computers, mobiles, or even tablets. However, campaign targeting can go much further than this.
What’s at the core of what makes your brand interesting? Targeting the right audience doesn’t just mean demographics anymore. We can also target users based on what they think, how they behave, and what previous buying habits they have.
Sticking with the running shoes example, Google ads will allow you to target users on what they are actively researching, such as ‘Trainers’ and what their interests and habits are e.g., ‘running enthusiasts’.
Ad messaging is also important for drawing in the right users. For example, if there is no clear USP and you just have generic ad copy like ‘Apply Now’ with no clear distinction, then it could push people towards your competitors. A low CTR would usually suggest that your competition has more compelling ad copy, so it’s important to include:
1 Lead with benefits, not features – avoid saying ‘cheap’ but use affordable or ‘save £100 on…’
- Match intent with keyword – Mirror keyword to headlines, for example, if the keyword is “affordable running shoes,” the headlines should read “Shop Affordable Running Shoes”
- Add urgency and build trust – Create a bit of FOMO by having promotions such as “10% For Limited Time” or “Don’t miss out on the Autumn Sale Ends Friday”. This can then be displayed in the ads as a promotion extension. It’s important not to forget to display you promotion on the website too, usually as a banner on the carousel or above the fold, so that it’s the first thing users see. This is handy because there are 2 touch points where potential buyers can see the offer; otherwise, it could create confusion. This helps to make the customer journey much more streamlined & relevant.
Landing pages
You might find that despite really strong traffic, good CTR, and a solid SIS (search impression share), you’re still not getting conversions through the site. This might be due to your URLs on the ads not matching the exact landing pages on your site so again, ensure your campaigns are targeting the most relevant landing pages. GA4 is a great tool to use to track where the highest number of conversions & traffic is, to see where you would like to branch out campaigns further.
It also boils down to the general landing page experience. Here are a few reasons you might not be seeing conversion come through as quickly as you would like.
A slow page speed can trigger a higher bounce rate. This is where users bounce off the page before it loads. A load time of 1-5 seconds causes 90% of users to bounce off the site, while a load time of 1-3 seconds drops the bounce rate down to 32%.
Usually, page speed is slightly slower on desktop devices, but if this is typically where you see the majority of your sales/leads then optimising these pages is key to driving conversions. If you have a B2B site, then most sales will be through computers, so you will want performance to be strong here.
Test your website on Pagespeed Insights here to see how you perform. Poor mobile optimisation can be a huge issue since most traffic is through mobile devices, especially if you have lower AOV products & you run shopping campaigns.
A weak conversion path may also cause bounce rates to spike. Unclear CTA, confusing forms, and too much friction can ruin the customer experience with your site. In order to combat this, consider using strong headlines that instantly confirm the offer. Then reinforce this with clear benefits, such as why this product or service will solve their problems. There is also the added benefit of Google giving you a better indexing organically, too, if there is more information for the system to crawl on your product pages. Here is a simple formula to work out how you perform in terms of ad rank.
Ad Rank = Bid × Quality Score.
If you’re finding you’re getting a lot of new customers acquisition through your ads, it might be time to start building a strong rapport by gathering & displaying reviews. These can then be displayed through ads too when you have built up a strong presence – this is free from Google, so ensure you have a Google My Business page set up. If you want to advance this further, you can use plugins on your site, such as Reviews.io or Trustpilot. Some of these platforms you will have to pay for however, they will proactively encourage users to leave reviews rather than relying on just organic reviews.
Tracking the correct conversions
It’s easy to fall into the trap of setting up conversion tracking once, then relying on it for months or even years without ever changing it. However, the absence of frequent adjustments may keep your business from having a chance to lower costs and increase ROI. Here are just a few examples of leads you can track:
- Purchases
- Leads
- Calls
- Form Sumissions
- Sign Up
- Newletters
- Contact Forms
- Directions
It’s an expensive error to run PPC without tracking results because this helps to inform not only the optimisation made on the account but also Google’s machine learning, as it needs to know what it’s pushing the campaign to do whether that’s purchases or leads. In essence, the algorithm works best when both Google Ads & GA4 are set up with the correct conversion goals. Otherwise, you might find that your campaigns are working towards goals that are not correctly aligned with your longer-term strategy and can slowly decay performance over time.
Continuous optimisation
Budget – If your budget is too low, consider scaling back before upping the budget straight away. Data accuracy is crucial for decision-making, so observe both long-term & short-term data to decide what works and what does not. For example, take a look to see if there are any redundant keywords you can review, update old assets like headlines and images, and implement an ad schedule for your top converting times.
Bidding – Overbidding and underbidding can either waste money or lose cause you to lose visibility. Check if you are using the right bidding strategy, as some can be automated or more controlled. Budget accuracy and scaling sustainably are essential.
Automation – Future-proof strategies with automation. For example, A/B testing will allow you to better understand what the likely outcome will be by splitting your budget between different approaches. This will help your campaign learn much faster. AI is for mediation, not replacing creativity, so remember not to fully automate everything. Despite this, it might be good idea to start testing keywords using AI, as this is relatively new but will evolve over time.
Ready to grow your business?
Combining the knowledge of account structure, online customer experience, conversion tracking and data based optimisation, this will give you the perfect headstart to taking your business to the next level. Here at Embryo, we have the tools & expertise to help you. Contact us today.
Ultimately, there is no one right way to build out a perfect campaign, but building good habits over time makes it much easier to identify who your target audience is and helps you save on your advertising costs. Google ads it as an ultimately invisible system that separates money-making businesses from those that just feed the machine.
