Pay per click or PPC advertising is very much useful to gain more and more potential customers to the business website of a business owner. The process is unbelievably simple. The business owner has to create a series of advertisements and therefore link them to particular phrases or keywords. When a customer searches for something on the internet, using those specific keywords, the advertisements of the business owner shows up as search results. Tools like Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, etc. help a business owner to display his ad in the sponsored results of the search. The business owner has to pay a fee whenever a person clicks the advertisement to reach his website. It is an effortless and ideal way for new sites to
attract organic traffic.
However, Pay per click advertisements can be pretty risky for a business owner if it is not executed correctly. It may result in spending a large amount of money without getting the expected number of new customers. For the original websites, there are some guidelines to avoid these costly mistakes. This article will guide the readers about the five expensive mistakes to avoid when running a PPC advertisement.
1. Sending customers to the Homepage:
Suppose, a business owner sells a specific model of a mobile phone like Nokia E6500 on his website, along with many other items. So, he creates an advertisement using the proper keywords related to that particular model but links the URL which redirects the customers to the homepage of his website. Now, the customer has to go through a series of undesired products on the homepage to finally reach his expected outcome. Moreover, if the customer is pretty impatient, he will quit his search, leave the website, and go to other websites. However, since the customer had clicked on the advertisement, the business owner has to pay money without getting the deal. To avoid this, it is better to add such a URL that redirects the customers to the particular product that he is looking for.
2. Sending visitors to the contact page:
Some business owners link the contact page of their website instead of the product description pages and indirectly force them to subscribe for newsletters or fill user information forms. The customers, instead of filling those forms or subscribing, get frustrated, and immediately leave the website, causing a loss for the business owners. This practice is also against the rules and guidelines set by Google Adwords.
3. Do not split testing ad text:
A business owner should not run Pay per click advertisements without testing them. Before releasing the ad, he must create multiple versions of the ad and test run them in various ad groups. In this manner, the most effective way to reach maximum customers by using proper keywords can be identified. Almost all the Pay per click engines allows splitting tests. However, some Pay per click platforms display the advertisement variation successfully by using a predictive algorithm, but at the same time, this weakens the integrity of the split test data.
4. Too much depending on 'broad match' keyword advertisements:
Broad match keyword advertisement is a setting which allows showing search results including the variation of the keywords along with the original keyword phrase-based search results. It is good to boost traffic potential, but it can force to spend extra money as customers seeking for other results can click on these ads which are not useful for them, but causing the business owner pay for it. For example, if a business owner links broad match advertisement with the phrase "Tennis shoes," the search result will include irrelevant products like "Tennis bags." "Basketball Shoes," "Football Shoes," "Tennis Racquets," "Tennis equipment," etc. If the customer clicks on these products, the company has to pay extra even when the customers are not interested in buying those items. So, setting the advertisements to exact search results may decrease the traffic, but it will confine the search results to limited products without making someone spend extra amount.
5. Not utilizing the advantages of the negative keywords:
A negative keyword is the prevention of the advertisements in other search results triggered by a particular word or phrase. If a basketball seller lists "Baseball', "Tennis ball," "Football" etc. as negative keywords, then his advertisements will not be shown to those who are searching for footballs, baseballs or tennis balls. Thus, his ad will be limited to basketball-related sought only. Again, Negative keywords eliminate potential traffics, but it reduces the extra costs as the advertisements are clicked by the Target customers only.
Summing up:
In
digital marketing, Pay per click advertisements are very much helpful for the new and small entrepreneurs. If this process is correctly used, then it can help the new business start-ups increase their conversion rates and decrease the customer attainment rate. Frequent updates, campaign modification, keyword management, etc. are very much crucial for the Pay per click advertisements as this help to generate customer attention and targeted traffic.
