Common PPC Mistakes #9: Fixing Your Eyes Too Firmly On The Prize

There has been some discussion already of the problem of breathlessly chasing the number one ranking for a certain keyword. Some people will get involved in a bidding war to have this ranking, in the belief that it will result in big-time PPC results – but all too often they are wrong. Certainly, there is a very real chance that you will end up spending too much for the price of a keyword to really be justified in terms of what it pays out to you. And this is all the more regrettable, because there are real advantages to not being right at the top.

We’ve all done a bit of window shopping in our time – and there are as many of us who will not take the first choice offered to us as those who will. This means that just being in the top three, four or even five ads will have positive results for you. If you have done a good enough job of selling the product on the landing page then you may well find that the lower price you paid to be slightly lower on the ranking was excellent value, because people will check a few different sites before settling on a final decision.

The prize, after all, is not just being in first position on a list of rankings which are decided on he basis of who pays most. The real prize is the income from clicks and sales which can only really be achieved by good selling on your site. By all means aim for number one on the list of rankings, but if you fall a little short it really is not the end of the world.

Common PPC Mistakes #8: Resting On Your Laurels

The old saying which goes “a watched pot never boils” is there to dissuade us from micro-managing everything in our lives. It is important, though, to recognize that just as intricate, obsessive following of details will do us more harm than good, the best way to do things is not the exact opposite of micro-management – rather, it is somewhere in the middle, between too much and too little focus on the point. Therefore, when you start placing PPC ads it is important to realize that there is such a thing as too much “laissez-faire”.

The statistics that come with any PPC account are important. You will see where your clicks and referrals come from. This will not only be the search engines that feature your ads, but also the networks to which they distribute those same ads. All of the major search engines do this, but they cannot control absolutely the quality of the networks they send your ads to. This can end up in a very low conversion rate for referrals from those networks – which will generally turn out to be fraudulent. If you have referring domains with a bounce rate around 90%, it will be fraudulent. Some search engines will ask you to call them to remove these sites from your list and save you from paying for useless traffic – however, Google allows you to move them into an “excluded sites” folder. Don’t just let this go – it can cost you money for no benefit, and can drain a budget if left alone.

Common PPC Mistakes #7: The Disconnect

Internet Marketers have been experimenting with the medium for a few years now, and one thing that has become very clear is that if it takes someone three or more clicks to get to where they want to be, they will often give it up and go somewhere else. This is naturally something you will want to avoid when you are marketing, so it is important to avoid this kind of disconnect. Keep everything interesting where your potential customers will be able to see it, and you will get a lot further in your marketing campaigns. Make them work for it and they will just find someone else.

Part of this mistake is when you pick the wrong page as a landing page for customers. If they click your ad, they are of a mind to make a purchase. Therefore, it is about taking that initial lead and turning it into a successful sale. The landing page they come to should showcase the product, tell them why they should consider making the purchase from you, and show them why making the purchase now is in their interests. If you have mentioned special offers on your ad, then make sure that the landing page tells them how they can get their hands on such offers.

There are few things more frustrating for a customer than clicking on an ad and finding what amounts to irrelevant content. It will make them doubt the worth of the site, and the conversion rate drops with every click it takes to get them from your landing page to your sales form.

Common PPC Mistakes #6: Not Getting The RIGHT Information In Your Ads

There is an old joke, which frequently turns up both in spoof ad pages in magazines, and still to this day in some classified ads. It says “FREE SEX!” in big, bold letters, and in the smaller text on the following lines says “Well, not really, but now we have your attention…”. Although fairly tedious, this does help to make a point, which is that the most important thing about PPC advertisements is their ability to grab a person’s attention. You can worry all night about what you are going to feature in your ad and what you will cut, but in the first instance, you need to be getting the salient information in.

For example, if you have special deals on the products you are selling, tell people! That’s what they are interested in, and what will grab their attention. Do they want to save money? Sure they do, so give prominence to how you can help them do this. That’s something they will want to know about. Also – naturally – say something about your product. You haven’t got much space, so if your ad just says “A&P Consulting! We Have Bargains! Look At Our Site! Lots of Variety!” and variations upon that theme, you’re less likely to get clicks, and more likely to have people click another link while wondering what exactly you do.

You have a word limit, so make absolutely sure that each word used has value. Don’t just throw a hotchpotch of superlatives, and don’t just use bald information. You need the information in there and you need to make it interesting.

Common PPC Mistakes #5: OMG, TMI! Keep Your Information Useful.

When you only have limited space to make yourself understood, to sell something or to grab people’s attention, it is important to set a hierarchy of what is genuinely important. If you are trying to sell, it is obvious that you will want to mention the product, any deals and, if possible, the company name. What you do not need to do here is go into detail. There is a limited amount of benefit in extraneous detail, and when you are working with a character limit it doesn’t much benefit you to have it in there. Keeping your information down to what is useful will pay off for you.

For example, many people put the company phone number in their PPC ad. This is a mistake in more ways than one. For starters, it takes up space. Additionally, it is not going to make people pick up the phone and call, so putting it right in front of them is a waste of time. Finally, even if people do pick up the phone and call the number, it isn’t helping you any because they are unlikely to click the ad if they are of a mind to do business over the phone. A telephone number in a PPC ad is wasted space, whatever way you look at it.

Your best bet is to keep your ad short and punchy. Detail about the company can wait for the landing page. When people get there, they can and will read what you have to say about the company and the product – and you’ll have much more space to nourish their interest.

Common PPC Mistakes #4: What’s Your Keyword?

If you are putting together a PPC ad, it can be tiresome thinking of what to put in it to make it different from the others, but there is one thing you absolutely should not leave out when it comes to the finished ad. In order to make sure that people click on your ad, you should take care to ensure they remember why they are clicking it. It is fairly simple, but many people forget it – and that is the keyword itself. Strange as it may sound, plenty of people compile PPC ads without any mention of the keyword in them. It won’t stop your ad showing up, and you may still get clicks on it – but research shows that if the keyword isn’t in the ad, clicks are less likely.

One of the major reasons for this is the fact that a keyword in a PPC ad will show up in bold on the screen. This level of emphasis has proven over time to be more persuasive than ads without the bolded keyword. It sounds simple, and obvious, but the fact is that people with a limited amount of space for text will often cut out everything that they can get away with in order to get in the maximum information and persuasion. In truth, your PPC ad should only ever be a taster for the real selling, and therefore it does not make sense to cut out the major selling point. So keep your keyword in your ad, whatever else you cut.

Common PPC Mistakes #3: Boring Ads

If you have gone to the length of spending money on ad position, then you want to make sure that the people who see it (as a result of this excellent positioning) will actually want to click it too. This is a mistake that too many Internet Marketers make. Thinking that they have got the Holy Grail through getting a significant position in the rankings, they rest on their laurels and forget all about putting something attention-grabbing in their ad. So people will see your ad, fine, but if the ones either side of it are saying something interesting, then you may well find that you’re losing out on business to the guys who are entertaining.

If your ad is simply a short description of your business or your affiliate, do not be surprised if you have a low click through rate. Even if the landing page is full of enthralling insights and offers, it matters little if people never get to see it. And if your ad is boring, then people will be more likely to head elsewhere. That is practically math. You may not have many words in which to say something, but the key for you is to concentrate on making those words punchy and dynamic. Don’t try and copy your competitors (even if their ads are punchy and dynamic), but there’s nothing wrong with seeing them as a template. The words to remember are “unique” and “relevant”. Apply both to your advertisement and you can’t go far wrong.

Common PPC Mistakes #2: Bad Content

One of the unfortunate consequences of the rise of SEO in Internet Marketing – among the many good and fortunate ones – is the fact that there are sites out there which, however temporarily, benefit from a high keyword density to ride high in search engine rankings. They take up a position that would be more deserved by a well-put-together site with decent content and, even though they will fall from their position, they get in the way. It is thoroughly irritating when you have a site with well-written content and see someone who has clearly just welded keywords together with nonsensical writing rank above you.

The most important thing is to not fall into the trap of thinking that their success means you should behave in the same way. Most importantly, if PPC is to work, reports have shown time and time again that the most successful ads are those which are placed on sites where the content is readable, stands out and is innovative. A strong identity is the most important commodity a site can have, and in this respect there really is no substitute for good content.

People are looking for a reason why they should make a purchase, and content which reads either exactly the same as dozens of other sites, or else reads like black-hat SEO nonsense will not cut it with potential customers. You do want people coming to your site – but you want them to actually go the extra mile and buy. This will be best achieved with good content.

Common PPC Mistakes #1: The Wrong Landing Page

So you’ve got your keywords, and your budget. You’ve assigned your budget in the most sensible way to make each keyword as lucrative as they can be, and you’re ranking pretty highly in the search engines. You are, rightly, pretty confident of success. Then the money simply fails to roll in. You’re confused and frustrated, and who wouldn’t be? It looked like you had it all figured out – what’s going on? Well, chances are that the mistake you have made is in setting your landing page. Isn’t that daft? All that work up front, and the conversion rate is low because you set the wrong landing page.

It is vitally important that you are awake to the necessity of making sure that once people click on the ad, they are in a position to do something about it. You may very justly be proud of your whole website, and think that the front page looks so impressive that visitors will be captivated. They may well be, but if they don’t know why they should order something from you – or even how to go about it – then the conversion rates will remain low. This is naturally frustrating, so make sure your landing page is set up correctly.

People will often come to a landing page, look around there and then surf off somewhere else. If your landing page is attention-grabbing, tells the potential customer how to go about purchasing and explains why they should, they will be a lot more likely to turn your click into a conversion. Getting this nailed down should be an immediate priority.

Thinking Outside The Box On Keyword Selection

Let us start this piece with an analogy. A man hears Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony on the radio as he sits in reception before a business meeting. Amazed by the tempestuous beauty of the piece, he decides that he will learn to play it and sell it as his own. It is not long before he is laughed out of town by people already familiar with the piece, and he realizes that what matters is not the ability to recognize something amazing, but the ability to be creative and to turn one’s talents to being individual and remarkable. Humbled, he goes away and tries to create something new – it’s not as good as Beethoven’s Fifth, but it is his own and people appreciate it.

Now, selecting keywords for a PPC campaign is not as exacting a task as creating classical music, but there is a similarity. You can put as much effort as you like into getting the most valuable keywords, but remember that the competition at the top is markedly more fierce than it is anywhere else. You can bid low on the most valuable keywords, but this will by necessity mean that you get fewer clicks and you will make less money. Being innovative in how you approach keyword selection means that you will attract more clicks for less competition.

It is therefore better to spread the net a little wider, think about keywords that are similar to the most valuable one without having the same high price on them. If your budget is smaller than those of your competitors, you need to make it go further.

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