PPC (pay-per-click) marketing is a great way to get in front of consumers, but it can also be expensive if you're not careful. Poorly managed campaigns can lead to wasted money, but there are ways to avoid them. Here are eleven things that companies do that waste their budget:
- Click Fraud
Click Fraud is a big problem for PPC campaigns. It's when you pay for clicks that never happen, which can occur for many reasons.
The first is that you're paying for bots—initiated clicks. Competitors are stealing your clicks using automated tools or manual labor (like someone sitting at their computer all day clicking on ads).
The automated programs click on ads and then disappear, never to be seen again. These bots are designed to steal clicks from advertisers and make it seem like they are more popular than they are.
They also make getting accurate data about what works and doesn't work very difficult and unnecessarily cost you money!
This happens quite often in industries where there's not much competition yet high CPA prices, such as insurance or loans.
- Unoptimized Campaigns
The most common waste of money on PPC campaigns is an unoptimized campaign. Unoptimized campaigns aren't set up correctly or don't have enough information about your target audience.
This can lead to the following:
Poor performance in ad ranking and clickthrough rates (CTR) - meaning you're not getting the best results from your ads, which means you won't be able to use them effectively for conversion tracking or ROI measurement.
Poorly targeted ads could result in irrelevant ads appearing next to a user's search result and driving them away from making a purchase decision!
- Poor Targeting
Poor targeting is a common mistake that many businesses make. The main issue is not targeting the right keywords but also not using negative keywords and location-based targeting.
If you're not using these tactics, then it's likely that someone who lives outside of your area will see your ads when they shouldn't be seeing them at all.
The best way to avoid this type of mistake is by using device-based targeting (mobile or desktop) and location-based targeting (zip code level).
You should also consider broad-match keywords instead of exact matches when possible because they're easier to manage and can help increase brand awareness without costing as much money per click.
- Lack of Quality Score Optimization
Quality Score is Google's way of measuring the relevance of your ads to a user's search query.
It's one of the most critical factors in determining whether or not you'll be able to rank well in their search results, and it influences all other aspects of your PPC account management.
Google uses this score to determine how much they will charge you for each ad click and how much traffic you can expect from them.
If you have a high-quality score, your costs per click (CPC) will be lower and more people will click on your ads.
Conversely, if your quality score is low due to poorly optimized campaigns or irrelevant keywords, both will happen. You'll pay more per click while getting less traffic than if these issues were fixed first!
- Generic Keywords
Keywords are the words or phrases you want your ads to appear for. They're critical because they determine which users see your ad, but they can also be costly if they aren't specific enough to the product or service you offer.
For example, suppose you're selling auto insurance and use the keyword "auto insurance" in one of your campaigns.
Then anyone searching for car insurance will see your ad alongside thousands of others competing for their attention (and dollars).
What if, instead of using "auto insurance," we use something like "Florida discount auto insurance" (which happens to be an exact keyword)?
In that case, your ad would only appear on searches related specifically to Florida discount auto insurance. This makes it much more likely that people looking specifically for this policy will see your ad first!
This is just one example. There are many other ways around this issue: being creative with how to craft keywords so as not to waste money when trying them out during PPC unnecessarily!
- Lack of Conversion Tracking/Data Visibility
Lack of conversion tracking/data visibility is a huge problem for PPC marketers. The good news is that it's easy to fix!
The first step in improving your conversion rates is setting up conversion tracking and ensuring it's working properly.
This means using Google Analytics or another analytics platform and setting up goals and funnels (which we'll go over below).
Once you've got that set up, use the data from those reports to improve your campaigns by testing different ads with different audiences--and then measure how each one performs!
- Abandoned Shopping Carts
Shopping cart abandonment is a problem that has been around since the dawn of e-commerce. It's estimated that 75% of all online shopping carts are abandoned before checkout.
A shopping cart abandonment occurs when customers add items but don't complete their purchase or check out within a specific timeframe (usually 30 minutes).
It can happen for several reasons--maybe they got distracted by something else on your website, or perhaps they realized after adding more items that what they wanted wasn't in stock anymore.
But either way, it's bad news for your bottom line if you don't take steps to prevent them from happening in the first place!
- Wasted Reach on Social Media (Ignoring Organic Posts)
Social media is a great way to get in front of your audience, and it's essential for businesses that want to build a brand and create awareness.
But when running a paid social campaign, it's easy to lose sight of what matters most: driving traffic back to your website where they can convert into sales.
The problem with this strategy? You're spending all kinds of money on Facebook ads without any guarantees that anyone will see them--let alone click through or buy something from you.
The solution? Make sure your organic posts get the same kind of attention as those paid ones by giving them equal prominence on Facebook (or Instagram or Twitter).
The bottom line is that there are many ways to waste money on PPC. If you're looking to save cash and get better campaign results, it's time to take action.
Start by auditing your current setup and ensuring everything is optimized as much as possible before moving forward with new keywords or ad copy tests.
Then move on to landing page optimization work so that visitors find what they need quickly when they click through from an ad--this will help improve conversion rates too!
