7 Costly Mistakes You Can Make With Google AdWords

Are you paying a lot of money per month for Google Adwords? Do you wonder that all your money brings the best efficiency to your business or are you losing money for some costly mistakes that many amateur marketers can make with search marketing?

If you are caring about it and want to save money, Subiz will show you top 7 mistakes and how you can improve your campaigns.

Not structuring your campaigns properly

Google AdWords tips - structuring campaign

Structuring campaigns properly to be easier for managing and optimizing

Depending on your products and services, Google gives us many choices of campaign types, ie: Search Network, Display Network, Search Network with Display Select and others. If you want to focus on your brand awareness, Display campaign seems to be the best choice.

On the Display Network, you can target your ads very effectively. Your ads can be shown at the right time and place on thousands of website worldwide where your customers are browsing the Internet.

On the other hand, Search campaign can bring you the most profitable result with high conversion rate and low cost per conversion.

One of the biggest mistakes online marketer can make is to create campaign Search Network with Display Select which is the default campaign type of Google AdWords. This site can save you time by using the same structure of ad group, ads copy and keywords. However, it will take the money from your pocket if you don’t set it right.

Both Search and Display network use shared budget in one campaign so you can not control how much money you want to spend for Search and Display. Moreover, your targeting will also be limited so you can not get the best result from this campaign.

The ideal structure for an excellent Google AdWords account is to create separate campaign for each type of network. Check your account now to see what campaigns need to be fixed immediately.

Not grouping relevant keywords correctly

In Google AdWords we can create multiple campaigns and ad groups to manage different types of campaign. Within campaign, we can break down keywords and ads copy in your ad group.

However, many people failed into this trap when they don’t group similar keywords in 1 ad group. They just create the campaign with only 1 or 2 ad group, and then put all the keywords in 1 place. This not only affects adversely to the health of the campaign but it also cost you much money.

All of us agree that the more relevant keywords to the ads copy, the more likely people click to the ad. It is because ad copy brings the first impression to the customers who are searching for a product or service. If it does not match their needs; they will not click or click to your ads but bounce immediately after seeing the content on your landing page.

Let me give you an example:

Sheila manages an electronic store where she sells many products, such as TVs, laptops, tablets and others. If she does not break up the products into multiple campaigns and ad groups, she can not write the best ad copy that matches what people are searching for.

For instances, someone searches for a Sony tablet, others search for Sony TV, but both keywords “sony tablet” and “sony tv” in the same ad group so she can not write specific ad about TV or Table. The landing page is confused in this situation.

Don’t be lazy to create a fully campaign which is optimized by ad group and keywords arranged properly. The more you break up your ads and keywords into theme, the easier your campaigns will be managed and optimized. Of course, the result from your campaign will be improved dramatically.

Not using the right keyword matches

There are three keyword match types that every Google AdWords marketers must know and understand how to use them.

  • Broad match
  • Phrase match
  • Exact match

Each match type has its advantages and disadvantages. The mistake people often make is using wrong keyword match.

Broad match is the default match type that all your keywords are assigned. Your ads will show on searches that include misspellings, synonyms, related searches, and other relevant variations.

Broad match modifier is another type of Broad match keyword which will trigger your ads when the modified term (or close variations, but not synonyms) searched.

Phrase match: Ads may show on searches that are a phrase, and close variations of that phrase.

Exact match is the closely keyword type. Ads may show on searches that are an exact term and close variations of that exact term.

From my experience, Broad match modifier and Exact match are two best of keyword types that every marketer should use for their campaign. Broad match can make you lose much money as it can trigger a lot of search terms that are irrelevant to your product or service.

Don’t pay much attention to Quality Score

Google AdWords tips - quality score

The higher quality score is, the lower money you have to pay for Google!

Quality score is one of the most important metrics in the calculation of how much money you have to pay for each click. Each keyword in your account is assigned a quality score from 1 to 10. You should always try to get 7 or better because the higher quality score is, the lower money you have to pay for Google.

Unfortunately not all keywords have high quality score, some have 3 or 4. In this situation, we have to improve it. However, quality score can not be changed quickly, it depends on many factors so many people don’t care too much about it.

There are many things you can do from now on to improve the quality score of the keywords in general:

  • Create a dedicated ad group for every keyword and insert keyword in the headline of the ad copy.
  • Increase the relevancy between keyword, text ad and landing page.
  • Add the keyword to the display URL.
  • Optimize the landing page.
  • Make your initial max CPC higher than suggested.

Not using full ad extensions

Google AdWords tips - Ad extensions

Use full ad extensions to increase quality score and make you ads compelling

Google AdWords gives us many ad extensions to improve ads copy, such as Location extension, Call extension, Sitelink extension, Callout extension, and others. However, not all people know and use it effectively.

The more ad extensions you use, the more compelling your ad is. According to Google AdWords, ad extension also plays important role to the quality score of the account. If you can take advantages, you will get better result.

For example: You own a brick and mortal store in Hanoi. You can use Location extension and Call extension to show your business address and phone number in your ads, which makes your ad more compelling and trusted.

Not adding negative keywords regularly

One of the must-do activities you have to do every week, even every day for your Google AdWords account is adding negative keywords. Because of the keyword match type, there are many irrelevant search terms could be triggered by your keywords which cost money from you without any conversion.

In this situation, adding negative keywords regularly to prevent unwanted traffic is a good idea.

Here is the tip for using negative keywords:

  • Don’t just copy and paste your negative keywords across your whole campaign. Customize them into short tail negative keywords.
  • Use negative keyword match type: Broad, Phrase and Exact.
  • Add negative keywords for your campaign/ad group level.

You are not tracking conversions

Clicks are good but we are not advertising Google AdWords to get clicks. All we want is sales, sign ups, actions. If you are not tracking conversions on your site, you can not know what you are doing is right or not.

Implementing Google Conversion Tracking Code on your website is to make sure that you are doing the right things with accurately measured. Money should not be invested for under-performing campaigns, ad groups and keywords.

In conclusion

Check your account now and fix all the problems you have. Better result will come soon!

Related Article: 8 Reasons Your Business Should Use Google Adwords

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February 17, 2016 - The Rhythm of Digital Marketing