Signs You’re Wasting Your Google Ad Budget

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, or in this case, Google Ads, is an important factor in many digital marketing campaigns. Unfortunately, there are many easy errors to make that will drain your ad budget without giving you the results you want. Here are some mistakes that are quite common in underutilised PPC campaigns. 

You’re Not Tracking Properly

Without analysing the data, you could be misspending your ad budget without even knowing it. One of the best things about PPC is that it gives you insightful and useful data that you can use to strengthen both your PPC and SEO campaigns. 

A critical piece of data will be your conversion statistics. We don’t just mean your bounce rates; it’s essential to recognise where your leads are coming from, including call, email and social media inquiries that may have been brought to you indirectly through your PPC marketing. Ensure you’re not double-counting conversions as this can be a major factor in misleading bounce rates.

Paying for the Wrong Keywords

Forget the keywords that you think you should be targeting and start going for the ones that will earn you quality traffic or conversions. Many companies believe that they need to compete with big companies to get noticed in their keyword categories. This is both not true and it also may be a massive waste of your ad spend trying to keep up with high authority sites. 

Some companies need to focus on finding quality traffic that will spend more than a few seconds on their site. Time spent on your website in the sales funnel’s Consideration stage is not money misspent. While not every visit will result in a sale, these visits are just as important as they may lead to a return visit and still show up well for industries where consumers need more time to research.

Depending on the business’s nature, other companies may profit more from targeting high-conversion keywords. For businesses that do not require much research or can quickly convert leads into a sale, this is a better use of ad spend. For example, a tow truck company is probably getting most site visits from people who need their services immediately and would do better with keywords to match that strategy.

Staying Static

PPC campaigns are meant to change. They should be reactive to what your potential customers are telling you they want. As more data rolls in from your campaign, you should always tweak your keywords so that you can see better results.

If you’re ‘setting and forgetting’ your campaign on Google, you’re wasting your budget and probably leaving money on the table. Frequently review your keywords and if some are not getting results despite testing in different match types and making bidding adjustments, replace them.

Linking All Ads to the Home Page 

Linking all of your Google Ads through to the home page could be ruining the work you’ve done to get people to your site in the first place. Since we know that new visitors will only spend a few seconds on the page on average, you need to make sure they’re getting clear and targeted messaging that matters to them.

A great solution to this problem is to create landing pages. While this will be separate from your Google PPC campaign, it’s just as crucial of a step. By creating landing pages, you can ensure that people are getting specific information depending on the terms that they have searched. These pages are known to help increase conversion rates. Ensure these are mobile-friendly to get the most bang for your buck.

Ignoring Negative Keywords

It’s just as vital to identify the queries that you don’t want to be matched for as the ones that you do. Utilising negative keywords is an essential part of your keyword strategy if you want to make sure you’re not wasting ad spend on areas you already know will not bring you traffic or site visits. This will set up a funnel that eliminates searches you don’t want to be linked to.

While you’re thinking about negative keywords, you should also reassess your Match Type Strategy and find out what is working and what isn’t. Look at maximum cost vs conversion for all keywords, whether that’s with Modified Broad, Exact, or other match types. You may need to dig into different subgroups, not every keyword needs to have the same match type.

Zib Digital is a leading specialist in SEO and digital marketing work. Get in touch to learn what we can do to enhance your digital presence, increase your SEO results or overhaul your PPC campaign.