For many businesses, Pay Per Click advertising is their go to tactic for paid media. Pay Per Click has been the largest spend for over 85% of online advertisers since its inception. However, with the market being saturated, it can be difficult to market your ads to maximize your clicks. The first thing any advertising team must do is to eliminate the mistakes. Here we list 3 of the biggest mistakes that PPC advertisers make:
3 Reasons Your Pay Per Click Campaigns are Tanking
- Your Ad Stinks
Listen, no matter how many metrics you can drown yourself in… no matter what new analytic buzzword is being written about on the digital marketing blogs… no matter what new secret trick is being spewed by the experts, one truth remains about pay per click ads:
- They mustn’t suck
Look at your PPC ads. Are you proud of them? Would you run them in a magazine? If you were handed budget to run that on page 3 of the NY Times, would you use that ad?
Granted, print ads have a different structure, but, the content of the ad is key.
Frankly, most PPC ads are nothing more than follow-the-leader, me-too marketing pieces that are written with weak wording, and yawn-inducing calls to action.
Your headline must be strong. If it wouldn’t pull in a newspaper, sales letter, magazine, billboard, or direct mail piece, then it won’t pull on Google, either.
You can take a different approach. You can get more creative since the feedback loop is faster. But, if the headline is weak, forget about sales.
You literally have to drag someone by the eyeballs from the white, black, and blue jungle of the SERP to your ad. To do that, you need a strong headline.
You get very limited space in the body, so make it count. If you’re giving something away for free, say it now or lose the sale. PPC ads are nothing more than headline/subhead/CTA. Don’t waste even one character of space.
- Your Landing Page Stinks
You wrote a great ad. Congrats.
Now, go make sure your landing page matches the content of your ad, represents the product or service that you sell, and is written with a strong headline, strong benefit-rich copy, and a benefit-rich call to action.
Where most businesses fail with their Pay Per Click Ads
Where most businesses get into trouble is trying to send 100+ keyword-driven ads to the same (or a few) landing pages. Using broad match over a litany of keywords is fine… if you can match the content to the keyword. We all use the internet in a similar way. We are multitasking, multi-windowing, and listening to Adele’s new album while shopping for running shoes. And our phones are buzzing with texts, SnapChats, and Whatsapps.
In that chaos, you can not expect your customer to make the subtle (but really profound) leap between what they searched for, what they saw in your ad, and what they’re now reading on your page. It’s kinda close but not exactly what I’m looking for… lemme go back to Google and keep looking.
- Your Bids are Too Low
In the early stages, it pays to overbid. The number of clicks your ad gets plays into how much a click costs, where the ad is displayed, and the overall adrank.
Early on, it’s better to pay extra and get those clicks so you can:
- Get a better adrank
- Formulate data about which keywords are working, which landing pages are testing the best, and which headlines are pulling leads
After you gather this info, you can begin to scale back, underbid, then work your way up.
But, this only works if the first two rules are followed. No matter what your bid, bad ads produce no leads. Check out Retaliate1st and our PPC services to optimize your campaigns and save you time and money.
