Every year, business owners invest thousands of dollars in AdWords to promote their products and services across web, but not all of them get good return on investment. Some businessmen either blame Google's ad policies or think that they did not get success due to stiff competition in the market. The second reason can be true, but instead of blaming Google, these people should concentrate on their own AdWords campaign management techniques. It may sound surprising, but most of the times, AdWords PPC ads don't increase conversion rate because of the mistakes made by the marketer.
# Choosing too many keywords: Some marketers think that including too many keywords in their PPC campaign is a good idea, but it is a huge mistake. If you add too many keywords, you are basically increasing expenses without making much changes to the conversion ratio. Secondly, if your keywords only generate clicks, but do not convert, you are giving Google money for nothing. For example, a website design company may include "responsive web design" in the ads, but if they do not provide the service, those who click on "responsive web design" will be annoyed and leave without asking for a quote. However, as the ads were clicked, the web design company must pay Google.
# Composing dull ad copy: A PPC ad may contain only 95 characters, but it takes intelligence to write something interesting. You can spare only a few words to impress potential customers, so choose your words carefully. Your ad copy should give viewers a reason to click. Here are some tips for writing a good ad copy:
Headline must describe the main offer.
Use keywords in the ad copy.
Give a persuasive call-to-action.
# Not using conversion tracking facility: Google AdWords offers conversion tracking code for free and you must use it. The conversion tracking feature helps you identify the best performing and worst performing keywords.
# Not connecting conversion tracking with Google Analytics: Connecting conversion tracking with Google Analytics is a must for successful AdWords campaign management. When you connect conversion tracking with Google Analytics, you not only gather information about the keywords' performance, but also track what visitors are doing after coming to your site.
# Paying too much to grab the top spot: When you run a well optimized campaign, the position of your ad does mot make much difference. There is no need to pay a staggering amount of money to get the first ad position. Your ad can rank lower and yet bring hundreds of customers if it's well written and provide customers exactly what they are searching for.
# Driving the traffic to website's homepage: This is one of the most common mistakes made by marketers. You should think from the customers' perspective and link the ad with the correct page. Suppose, you sell all types of electronic gadgets from your online store. When you give an ad like this - "buy iPhone 5S at $200 only", buyers will click on it to see the iPhone, not all the products you sell. Therefore, instead of sending the traffic to the homepage, you should lead them to product-specific pages for better conversion.
If you are responsible for AdWords campaign management of your company, make sure you don't commit the aforementioned mistakes.Poulami Ghosh is a professional PPC consultant. She provides guidance to newbie advertisers on AdWords campaign management.
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