Google AdWords Advertising Mistakes

Google AdWords is an incredibly powerful and potentially lucrative tool- in the right hands. Many companies, big and small experiment with Google’s advertising system only to give up when returns fail to materialise. Another aspect that can deter marketers away from using AdWords is that the program can actually incur debts if utilised incorrectly. Many businesses fall into the same pitfalls when setting up AdWords and these issues are usually the reason for the lack of profit. By avoiding some of the more common mistakes, users can enjoy all of the many benefits that come with utilising Google’s advertising system.

Keyword Grouping

One of the more common mistakes made by AdWords users concerns the way in which they group their keywords. Keywords are pivotal to the type of adverts which are shown to potential customers and therefore the likelihood that they will be clicked. Google include features within their program that allow users to group specific keywords within different campaign ad groups. This means that browsers will be shown advertisements which are relevant to the keywords they are searching for. Many companies either choose not to use this feature or don’t know it exists and so all of the keywords from their entire range of campaigns are lumped together in one large group. The problem with this is that customers are going to be shown advertisements which are not relevant to what they are searching for and are therefore less likely to click on the ad.

Practice Makes Perfect

The way in which a piece of advertising copy is written can completely affect how well it does utilising AdWords. Businesses who aren’t receiving much or any interest from their advertisements may opt to leave the program before making changes. This should be avoided as very small changes to your copy can completely transform the way in which customers react to your advertisements. Before making any drastic decisions, companies should change a few of their keywords whether it be in their page title, description or the actual body of text and see how that affects results. Experimenting with AdWords in this way can help users in understanding what changes should be made in order to fully actualise their advertising system.

Be Specific

Samsung Galaxy GearAnother important aspect of Google AdWords is specificity. Your advertisements should utilise a URL containing relevant and informative keywords. For example, if Samsung was creating an advertisement for their smart watch they would use a display URL of wwww.samsung.com/galaxygear rather than just www.samsung.com. This is another common misstep which often results in low or non-existent traffic but it’s easy to rectify. .

Customer Experience

A mistake that some companies make when setting up their AdWords infrastructure is they make it difficult for customers to interact with them. Links which redirect to a general homepage rather than a specific product page can be damaging. This inconveniences the potential customer who may then leave your website, stopping any chance of a sale. The position of your advertisements is another important factor which affects the likelihood of clicks. As with many of the other problems mentioned, this can be solved with experimentation. Try different ad positions to see how they affect your page views and build on this information.

Expectations

Your AdWords marketing strategy may prove to be lucrative but don’t expect everything at once. One of the biggest mistakes that companies make when choosing to utilise AdWords is that they expect significant results in a short space of time. Like many aspects of business, this form of advertising takes time and effort to become fruitful. It is also worth keeping in mind that you may never see huge payoffs but that doesn’t mean you should underestimate the program. Implementing a comprehensive and successful marketing infrastructure often requires a multifaceted approach- basically, don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.