Common PPC Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

While running PPC campaigns, success may come easy to some. However, more often than not, driving such programs could prove to be a harder shell to crack, than one might expect it to be.

This article shall walk you through some of the common PPC mistakes that you may tend to overlook in your PPC strategy. While some of these mistakes may be obvious and already identified by your organization, some of them can unearth optimization areas that will surprise and intrigue you as well as the organic foot traffic your website receives, as we continue to explore new strategies to make your campaigns successful.

The Campaign Goal

Campaigns appear successful on the surface until you realize you are looking at the wrong metrics and ultimately fishing in shallow brooks or the wrong waters. This happens when you aim to achieve multiple campaign goals instead of defining and strategizing for the main campaign goal. A common misconception is that a single digital campaign will achieve all the marketing goals like engagement, shares, awareness and sales. It is rarely ever possible to fit such overarching strategic frameworks within one digital campaign.

It is vital, nevertheless, to weigh out the end goal or the most essential goal and dedicate your campaign strategy wholly to it, for maximum evident yields. You may discuss and communicate with your team, the single, end goal and devise strategies to accomplish the desired outcomes.

Marketing your remarketing correctly

Remarketing to your existing customers can bring powerful results and achieve that single, end goal. However, it should not be the sole consideration for the digital marketing strategy that you would need for your brand. There is a limit to the number of times your existing customers will come back to your brand and convert. It is important to reach out to new potential customers. Including awareness and prospecting to new customers as part of your campaign strategy will truly help expand your customer base and your sales.

The landing page experience

Landing pages of a campaign are often an afterthought. After strategizing the ad copy, keywords, site links and budget, many fail to consider the added importance of a landing page. It has been collectively observed by many successful brands and companies that where you choose to send your customers after they click on your ad, can make a significant difference to your campaign results. The apparent route you would use is immensely instrumental in sending users to the final product page.

However, redirecting a user to the product category page instead is a much stronger marketing move, that can motivate users to become potential buyers and customers who give in to their whims under the influence of a tempting and well-built category page. While the product in your ad entices them into your webspace, they might browse through your product category page and discover that they want to buy a product with more features, a different color perhaps or another variant.

If we think back to our shopping behavior, we will find instances where we have travelled through this same, partially erratic customer journey. Getting users to the main product page might trigger them to leave if they happen to feel unsure about the purchase, but on the other hand, directing users to the product category page can reduce your ad bounce rate and may guarantee a potential sale from the user.

Competition

It is a big plan fallacy to not consider and closely observe what your competitors are doing. As common as it is to overlook and completely miss out on this particular marketing strategy, going through your business competitor’s marketing activities can change your digital strategy and behavioral approach to your target audience online. While researching competitors, we might be informed of newer ad types, ad copy and keywords that we need to utilize to keep up with the upscaled marketing tactics. Interestingly, analyzing your competitors will help identify areas of opportunity that they haven’t considered. For example, looking for an important keyword that your competitors are not actively bidding on can help you take the path less travelled and effortlessly win more clicks for all your ads.