Simple Mistakes to Avoid with AdWords

It is remarkably easy to make avoidable mistakes when devising and implementing a search engine marketing (SEM) strategy. Most of these mistakes are also easy to correct, however some can be disastrous and a significant percentage will be extremely costly if they aren’t caught quickly enough.

But how can you avoid seeing your SEM strategy descend into chaos? Here are just a few of my top AdWords tips to get you started.

Mistake 1: Neglecting to Control your Overall Spend

When it comes to AdWords tips, it doesn’t really get much more important than this: when running an SEM campaign, you must take great care to be smart when allocating your budget. Running a campaign on autopilot and failing to carefully monitor what’s going on is a one-way street to maxing out your budget before you’ve even had a chance to start seeing the results you were hoping for.

I’m far from the only AdWords expert that recommends setting out your ideal spend each day and carefully tracking progress. Any over or underspend can then be deducted or reallocated to another day. Yes, this does create a little more work but it’s worth it for the peace of mind.

Mistake 2: Failing to integrate Search Engine Optimisation with your SEM Strategy

Did you know that you can drive more value from your SEM investment if you run an effective search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy alongside it? It can be all too tempting to view SEM as a way to quickly drive significant volumes of traffic to a particular page, but it’s short-sighted to simultaneously ignore the power of SEO.

Why invest time and resources into driving traffic to a landing page only to dump it when the SEM campaign is over? By simply making those pages evergreen, you can continue to use SEO to drive incremental traffic over time. This, in turn, will ultimately help you to be less dependent on SEM and allow you to reduce your costs.

Mistake 3: Conducting Competitor Bidding for the Wrong Reasons

I’m going to be upfront with you here, bidding on the brand names of your competitors shouldn’t even be an option if your reasoning is “I don’t like them,” or “I want to show them how it’s done!”

Even seemingly innocuous brands can have surprisingly large marketing budgets, so it’s simply not worth risking seeing your own cost per click (CPC) increase when your competitors start to retaliate.

Mistake 4: Geo-Targeting the Wrong Locations

When opening an account with Google AdWords, it will automatically set your default location to worldwide. If you only ship to specific countries, you want to ensure that you aren’t placing adverts in different countries or territories. This is a simple thing to check that will prevent you from burning through your budget needlessly.

Remember, radius targeting can be hugely beneficial if you get your strategy right. So, if you have a physical location, it might be worth targeting from your Google My Business page to ensure that you are reaching the right people.

I have a variety of other AdWords tips and tricks up my sleeve so if you want to streamline your strategy with the help of an AdWords expert, don’t hesitate to get in touch!