In simple words, Pay Per Click or PPC is a premium online advertising technique for a website promotion on WWW. Here, advertisers pay a certain amount whenever their PPC ad is clicked by customers. A good number of entrepreneurs use PPC advertising to improve their website visibility on search engines, get more traffic, and generate lots of business. All these benefits come in your way provided that you do PPC campaigns rightly. PPC pitfalls cost you dearer, and it results in the wastage of lots of money with no sufficient ROI.
Do you run PPC campaigns? Not satisfied with your performance? Looking for ideas to fix PPC pitfalls and improve your results? If yes, then go through the below-mentioned tips:
Problem 1: Excessive Use of Irrelevant Keywords
As advisors have to pay a certain amount whenever their PPC ad is clicked, excessive use of unworthy keywords can burn a lot of money with no substantial gain. Several online marketing researchers have demonstrated that only 12% of any PPC campaign can generate results required by advertisers. Most of them spend around 61% of the total PPC cost of non-performing 88% keywords.
Solution:
Don’t start bidding on irrelevant keywords. Take your time and research a broad category of keywords under your niche. You can use Wordtracker to find out general keywords and permutations of phrases. Use Google’s Keyword Tool to obtain authentic and high performing keywords for your PPC campaigns. You should use long-tail keywords to help your PPC advertisements appear in search results and gain business opportunities.
Problem 2: Too Much Attention To CPL
Most advisors focus too much on CPL as they assume it as the main parameter to evaluate the success of their PPC campaigns. So, they remain hyperactive and keep a close eye on it. Nevertheless, this is not an appropriate approach if you keep the current online marketing trends in mind.
Solution:
Don’t optimize your PPC ads only for clicks, but for improving the conversion rate. Use CPL as an indicator, not as a parameter for success, because it doesn’t guarantee a profit.
Problem 3: No Call Tracking
Always keep in mind that phone calls are the most effective tools in lead generation campaigns. When visitors click on PPC ads placed by you, visit your website, see your products/services, and make calls (in most of the cases) to buy the offered stuff. The majority of companies fail to track calls effectively. So, they lose lots of business opportunities and chances of lead generation.
Solution:
There are numerous ways to track the customer’s call. You can forward calls in ad copy and fix code on your website. You can also use call tracking platforms for the same purpose.
Problem 4: Targeting Uninterested Customers
Before the commencement of your PPC campaigns, just plan each and everything in advance. In today’s highly competitive world of PPC, aimless PPC campaigns bring about the complete fiasco and burn money in great quantity. Always keep in mind that your PPC campaign will not perform well if you target uninterested customers.
Solution:
Plan everything in advance before you start your PPC campaigns. You should have a clear understanding of your PPC campaigns and ultimate targets, such as marketing a new product, increasing brand awareness, boosting sales, etc. Target only those people who show some interest in your products/services. This will increase the chances of conversion and ROI up to a great extent.
Problem 5: No Geo-Targeting
When you run PPC ads, even a single $Dollar matters a lot. A good number of entrepreneurs ignore the huge importance of Geo-Targeting in PPC campaigns. Let’s understand it as an example- If you are a local businessman in London, there is no benefit of spending money advertising to people who are sitting in Sydney. It only wastes your money and kills ROI.
Solution
Google AdWords and other similar platforms allow you to target your PPC campaigns based on a user’s location. If you focus on Geo-targeting in PPC campaigns, it will allow people near your area to see your ad and choose your brand without having any second thought in mind.
Problem 6: Ineffective Call-To-Action Buttons
Call-to-action buttons are those buttons that encourage visitors to take the desired action after reading the content. When a customer clicks your PPC, he/she looks for CTA buttons after going through it. If your CTA buttons are ineffective or wrongly placed, they leave your website immediately without giving you any business.
Solution:
Just place effective CTA buttons in PPC ads. Engaging CTA buttons will increase the likelihood of conversion up to a great extent, and you will have more lead generation opportunities.
Problem 7: Low-quality Ad Content
Lousy content is one of the main reasons why PPC campaigns fail to perform as per expectations. There is no meaning of spending money on PPC ads if your ad content fails to encourage people to deal with your brand. The use of ineffective content will not help you to generate leads in bulk.
Solution:
Customers see thousands of ads each day while searching for products and services on the global internet. But, they react to only a few ads. So, quality content matters a lot in PPC campaigns. So, write A-1 Quality content for your PPC ads. Highlighting special offers or promotions, Concise descriptions, call-to-action phrases, etc. A PPC campaign done with high-quality content can give you better ROI even on a low investment.
Final Words:
It is extremely significant to avoid potential pitfalls if you want speedy success in PPC campaigns. By doing extensive research and data mining, you can easily know the best PPC practices. Here in this article, the main PPC pitfalls have been mentioned with solutions. So, just read them out, understand completely, implement those tips in your PPC campaigns, and get the desired success in an easy way.