There could be many reasons why your PPC account is not performing and returning valuable ROI. Some factors are more common and obvious then others, but this is determined by your knowledge and experience using PPC platforms. At LogicBarn, we have come up with the top ten most likely reasons you aren’t seeing the returns from your PPC campaigns.
- No use of negative keywords.
All PPC accounts must have this task performed at least twice a week, especially if it’s a new account. Running search terms reports will show you exactly what people typed in to find and click on your advert, costing you money in the process. So, if the keywords used aren’t relevant to your business, then it’s a waste of money . Showing your adverts to people who are not uninterested in what you offer is a huge mistake for new accounts.
- Not tracking conversions
If you haven’t got tracking enabled and the code implemented on your website, then how will you know if any sales or leads have come from your PPC accounts? Furthermore, you won’t know which keywords resulted in an action or conversion. This is vital as you can move more budget to keywords that convert and away from non-converting keywords. Implementing tracking should be one of the first tasks you do when running a PPC campaign.
- Not using an ad schedule
If nobody is answering your phones at the weekend, then running your adverts over the weekend is wasting money. Not all industries or businesses will be affected by ad scheduling, but if your business involves responding to calls fast then ad scheduling should be used. This also frees up more budget to be used when you are in the office to respond to calls.
- Targeting the wrong locations
This would usually be down to an error on the account managers part. If you only offer your services locally, say a flower shop or locksmith, then keeping the location settings to nationwide will result in clicks from people too far away. Always make sure you select the presence in your location option only, otherwise you will receive clicks out of your area despite adding it as a target location.
- Using the wrong match type
Using broad match only will eat up your funds and result in a large percentage of your clicks being generated by non-relevant keywords. Always use phrase match and exact match to stay targeted and reduce the number of clicks from keywords you don’t want your advert to appear for. Using negative keywords (see number 1) will also help eradicate this issue.
- Device bid management
If your website is not mobile responsive (if so contact us for a quote to fix this) and your PPC campaigns also show on mobile phones, then you are wasting budget on visitors who won’t be able to browse or use your website adequately and probably finding it hard to navigate and read text, so they eventually just leave. If this is the case then set your campaign to only show on Desktop PC’s.
- Poor ads and landing pages
A mis-leading or poorly written advert can attract the wrong type of person to your website. If you give the wrong impression or mention products or services you don’t sell or offer then people will click on your advert, costing you money but not performing your required end action. Correctly written adcopy is essential to attract the most relevant customers. Same goes for a landing page design. If the on-site experience when they land on your website is poor then they will leave, meaning your bounce rate will be high and your budget is wasted as you attracted the wrong audience or the audience you did attract could simply not use your website. This is more apparent if your website is not mobile responsive and visitors find it hard to use.
- Putting all your keywords in the same adgroup
If you sell multiple products or offer a variety of services then it makes sense to create an adgroup for each product category or service you offer. Simply bunching all your keywords into one adgroup will result in poor stats and performance. Your keywords should be in sync with your adcopy so you can use relevant text content to describe the category the keywords represent, then you usually link direct to that page on your website. Reducing the amount of clicks the user needs to make to find what they are looking for.
- Ignoring audience targeting
Google Ads has ready made audiences you can create campaigns to target for. The amount of data and history Google can call upon when it comes to peoples search behaviour is unfathomable. So you really should make use of this by using the ready made groups to target. No matter what industry you are in, there will be an audience you can select to market your campaigns to.
- Sporadic management
To really reduce your wasted click spend you should be managing your account almost on a daily basis, especially if your budget is high. The PPC market changes on a daily basis and so do peoples habits so keeping track of what is happening in your PPC account is vital. Leaving it unattended for a number of days or weeks could result in wasted clicks due to the changes required not being made.
