Matthew Hertzman

Search Marketing: 3 common mistakes marketers make using Google AdWords

May 17th, 2013

Through testing with our Research Partners, I’ve discovered a few common mistakes marketers make when crafting paid search campaigns using Google AdWords.

So, in today’s MarketingSherpa blog post, my goal is to provide you with a few fundamentals  to aid  paid search marketing efforts and, hopefully, help you avoid a few pitfalls along the way.

 

Mistake #1: Grouping all keywords into one ad group

Keywords are the heart of your ads and relevance is their soul.

So, if you lump all of your keywords into one ad group, the impact will be some keywords become highly relevant to the ad group while others are not.

This is a common mistake marketers make under the guise that the tactic will boost impressions. It will – but this approach is more expensive and those less relevant keywords that boost impressions are also likely to underperform.

Think of it this way … would you run an ad for plumbing fixtures in People magazine with the expectations that it will perform like an ad for the latest celebrity perfume line?

 

Mistake #2: Not testing ads

Another common mistake marketers make is not testing their ads.

Although testing is something we live and breathe every day at MECLABS, it’s important to understand in digital marketing, there are no sacred cows. Speculation on campaign performance is for the birds – unless you test, you’ll never discover what really works.

So, my suggestion is that you test. With AdWords, having two or more tests running is ideal as there is no other way to effectively benchmark an ad’s performance efficiently.

Mistake #3: Sending all your traffic to the homepage

You matched the motivation of your visitors search …

You ad was enticing enough to be clicked …

Now where should you send your ad traffic?

Often marketers will send their ad traffic directly to the homepage, and this is a mistake.

As user traffic makes its way from the search ad forward in the sales funnel, the optimal place to send your ad traffic is to a landing page matching the relevancy of their search.

 

Related Resources:

Competitive Analysis: Stepping outside the industry and ahead of the competition

Paid Search Marketing: 3 optimization ideas to test in your next PPC campaign

PPC Optimization: Tips from your peers on regional differences, Google Product Listing Ads, distracted visitors and offline conversion

Categories: Search Marketing Tags: , , , , , , ,



  1. May 22nd, 2013 at 21:37 | #1

    Very useful post on divide an conquer. Don’t try to do everything in one page/post. thank you!

  2. June 14th, 2013 at 04:10 | #2

    The three major mistakes that you have mentioned in the post is exactly right. I wish more people will read this and by means of reading the specific post, they will definitely avoid such mistakes.

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