While most small business owners may have a hard time really grasping how Google pay-per-click auctions exactly work, they understand that pay-per-click advertising only charges your business when your ad is actually clicked on. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a fast way to draw more potential customers to your website. And you only pay when someone actually clicks through to your site.
But if you’re not careful, you can make mistakes with your PPC advertising that can waste money without getting the targeted customers you think you’re getting. That’s just another of a long list of reasons to use MyAdvice to handle all of your SEO, DMS, and PPC needs.
Just so you see some of what your competitors will be doing wrong, here are five mistakes they’re making with their PPC advertising.
Not sending the visitor directly where they clicked
If you’re running a PPC ad on tummy tucks, your ad will be set to hit when anyone searches for that phrase on the search engine you’re working with. Problem is you set the redirect page to land on your practice’s home page. This isn’t where the searcher wanted to go, though. She wanted to go to your tummy tuck page, and now you’re making her click through at least two other steps before getting there. There’s now a good chance she has already clicked away.
You didn’t test your ad copy
If a business owner is doing his or her own thing they’re busy and the thought of writing two, three, or four different ads may not be something they want to bother with. But by not doing so, you’re shorting yourself. Search engines allow you to split-test ads, meaning you can try different copy variations to see which one pulls the best. The search engine will randomly display the different variations and provide you with details on which ads pulled the best.
Making visitors go directly to your contact page
Some businesses direct their PPC ads to send the new visitors directly to their website’s contact page, forcing them to subscribe to email or fill out a form. The thinking is, we’ll get them on our newsletter list and we’ll have their email, so that’s awesome. In truth this is a great way to make a potential customer pissed off at your business. Here they clicked on your tummy tuck ad and now they have to figure out a way to not subscribe to your newsletter. Can you say goodbye? Plus, on Google it’s not even legal according to their guidelines.
Not understanding keywords
In an effort to grab the most traffic, it can be tempting to use broad match keywords. They mean you will be clicked on if all or part of your target keyword phrase is searched for. But, while you may get more traffic, it may not be the traffic you want.
Let’s say you’re doing a broad match ad based on the phrase “breast augmentation.” You’re hoping your ad will appear when people search for “breast augmentation,” but by doing a broad match ad you could also get “breast augmentation fails,” “breast implant ruptures,” “the downside of breast augmentation,” “lip augmentation,” “breast cancer,” a whole host of searches that you don’t want to waste money on. Remember, if they’re clicking, you’re paying, even if they were actually looking for lip augmentation.
When we set up your ad, we use the exact phrase or exact match to ensure those queries are actually what your potential customers are interested in, not just one or two of the words.
Not bothering with negative keywords
Negative keywords are also important because they prevent ads from displaying when certain words are searched for. So, if someone is doing research on implant ruptures, they won’t come to your breast augmentation page simply because “breast” was part of the search. By adding negative words to your PPC campaign you can control relevancy while still allowing broader matches. If we’re handling it, we will generate all of those negative keywords for you, utilizing our experience and making the list very relevant, saving you money.
There’s much more to online issues such as pay-per-click advertising than meets the eye. The vast experience of MyAdvice gives our clients a real advantage when it comes to the quality of their traffic.
