The 10 most expensive Adwords Mistakes
24. Jan, 2009 
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Adwords has become the first point of call when it comes to pay per click advertising. Yet many advertisers are throwing money down the drain because they are making one of these mistakes.
1. Not targeting specifically enough – This mistake is by far the most common. A perfect example is a digital camera retailer advertising for the keywords “digital camera”. A person that is searching for “digital camera” may be looking for a lot of different things. He may be looking for digital camera reviews, digital camera pictures, digital camera giveaways etc. It is unlikely that advertising for that keyword will return a profit. Instead, use more targeted keywords like “buy digital camera” and “digital camera shop”. Another example is an Adwords manager advertising on the keyword “adwords”. Any Adwords manager that does this is throwing money away and can hardly be trusted with your own Adwords campaign.
2. Daily Budget too small for the cost per click – This is a very costly yet surprisingly common error that is often made by experienced marketers that are not familiar with Adwords or online advertising. It occurs when you have, say, a $20 budget, are paying 50c per click, and you get $20 worth of clicks by lunch time. The campaign won’t be showing for the rest of the day once the budget has been hit. The solution is to lower the amount you are paying per click. In this example you would set your CPC to 30c. The campaign would run all day and you would receive more visitors for a lower price per visitor!
3. Not taking location into full acount – This mistake is very common. A good example is a Victorian tour operator that advertises for the keywords “Bus tour”. If it isn’t set up as a specific match, he will be buying clicks when people search for “Adelaide Bus Tour”. If you are a location based advertiser, the solution to this problem is to set up all your keywords as specific matches (use “[" and "]” around your keywords), and also set up keywords for your locations. (e.g. [bus tours Victoria])
4. Not using conversion tracking – Every marketer knows that to justify spending you need to be able to measure results. Conversion tracking is very easy to set up and every campaign should have it. If you don’t have it set up contact me now and I will do it for you very quickly. Your boss will love you. Without conversion tracking, you don’t know how effective your campaign is, and you won’t be driven to improve it.
5. Paying too much per click – #1 is not always the best spot. If you’re competing against the big guns with bottomless budgets, you should not be at #1. Those guys know they are losing money on their campaigns, but that doesn’t mean you should! If your goal is to maximise ROI, you should choose a price that maximises your ROI. The big guns are often blowing money “branding”, or simply have huge budgets because their online advertising budget looks small next to their TV advertising budget.
6. Not paying enough per click – If you are making a positive ROI, you should keep spending to maximise profits! For example, if you figure out through conversion tracking that ever visitor is worth $2, spend up to $2 per visitor. Don’t stay at $1 because it is currently turning a profit. There are exceptions to this of course, one is if you can’t handle the extra workload more visitors will bring.
7. Paying too much for clicks from the content network – This is another very costly but very common mistake. The content network is much less targeted than the search network and therefore, will convert a lot less. If you advertise on the content network, lower your bids for it by a large margin first.
8. Not using landing pages – The page your visitors come to should be a continuation of your ad. If your site is large, your home page simply won’t fulfill this task effectively. Use targeted landing pages to keep the flow in your sales pitch, and to make it easy on your customers to find what they’re after.
9. Not using more than one ad – Unless you are the perfect copywriter (which you aren’t), you should test different ads and see which works best. The difference of one word can make a huge difference. Even one minor spelling difference can make a difference. Once you’ve established what ad works best, see if you can better it by creating a new ad and comparing them. Repeat this process indefinately!
10. Adding all the keywords Google recommends – If you use all the keywords Google recommends you to use, you will be spending a lot of money on visitors you didn’t want. (See mistake #1). Use Google’s Keyword tool as a guide, but always refine your keywords and target them very specifically to your market.
Hopefully you will be able to take something away from this article and use it to optimise your Adwords campaign.
If you would like help with your Adwords campaign, or would like to set up an Adwords campaign, contact me and we can talk about Adwords for your business.
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