Are You Wasting Money in Your PPC Campaign?

Pay per click advertising, which we affectionately refer to as PPC, can be one of the most effective digital strategies for your business. It can also be one of the costliest. No matter how you approach it, PPC is an investment and the more you work to nurture it, the more bankable your return will be. 
 
It’s tempting to try your own hand at PPC management. The problem is that too many businesses dive in head first, throwing their money at what they think is the best strategy but in reality, have no workable idea of how to optimize their PPC campaigns.
 
There’s a bit of a learning curve to PPC, and no matter how well you scour the internet looking for advice and tips on how to optimize your strategy, there isn’t a piece of content you’ll digest that was created for your individual business. It doesn’t help that major PPC platforms like Google and Facebook are constantly evolving their own paid ad architecture. Hitting the target with PPC can feel like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.
 
This why so many businesses end up wasting money with their PPC campaigns. If you’ve found yourself in the hole with pay per click advertising, is it possible to turn the trend around? Absolutely, once you understand where money is being wasted and how to remedy the problem. Here are 5 ways that you might be throwing money down the drain with your paid campaign and what to do about it.
 

Not Keeping an Eye on the Goal

 
Whether you’re talking about PPC or other digital tactics like search engine optimization, you’re probably designing your campaign with the intent of fueling a massive surge of traffic to your website. Visibility and clicks bring digital consumers to your site and that’s a great thing.
 
But what happens with that traffic – meaning whether or not they convert – is equally important. If you’re measuring the success of your PPC campaign by traffic and not conversions, you’re sort of missing the whole point.
 
With PPC, you’re paying each time someone clicks on your ad. This means that the visitors that eventually convert are exponentially more valuable than those who don’t. Clicks that don’t covert cost you money with absolutely zero return. The solution? Make sure your using a conversion tracking tool and using those insights to adapt your PPC campaign to attract higher quality traffic.
 

Ignoring the Importance of Keyword Analysis

 
With PPC ads, you have but a tiny smidgen of space to make an incredible impact with your words. Having the right keyword strategy is key for attracting the right audience, especially with paid ads.
 
If you haven’t invested the time in keyword analysis, you’re taking the chance that your ads won’t appear in front of your target audience. This leads to poor campaign performance or paying for clicks that lead to nowhere.
 
It’s important to not take a tunnel vision approach to your PPC keyword strategy. Do some keyword research and then use targeted groups of keywords to segment your campaign. Test your keyword strategies to fine tune your campaign for results.
 

Are You Asking the Right Questions?

 
It happens far too often that a business sets out on their PPC journey with no real sense of direction. Maybe you’ve heard that PPC produces fast results and you’ve done a little research into what your competitors are doing, but that’s about the extent of mental energy you’ve put into it.
 
For PPC to be effective for your business, you need to identify your goals and the target that will help you reach them. Blindly investing in a PPC campaign and hoping for the best is pretty much a guarantee that you’re going to throw money away.
 
Before you waste another cent on paid ads, take a step back and ask some important questions about the strategy and health of your campaign.
 

• What are your goals and how will you define success?
• Who is your target market?
• What segment of your sales funnel do you want to engage?
• Do you have a system in place for conversion tracking and other key analytics?
• Do you feel comfortable measuring and tracking PPC on your own?
• Have you done the necessary keyword analysis and how do you plan to segment your audience?
• What is the overall message you want to deliver with your campaign?
• Is ad copy focused on the consumer?
• How do you plan to optimize PPC landing pages for conversion potential?

Throwing Money at the Problem

 
If your business is fortunate enough to have the resources, it can be tempting to just keep throwing money at PPC in order to earn the #1 spot in search engine ads. If you’re at the top, you’re bound to get good traffic.
 
This is true, but then we revisit the recurring theme that not all traffic is quality traffic. It’s almost always better to invest your resources in creating ads that are targeted to specific audiences, rather than putting all your resources into being number one. It can be lonely at the top, especially when it’s costing you money.
 

Not Working with a Professional Digital Agency

 
While we all understand the challenges of managing the business budget, choosing to not work with a digital agency for PPC is one of the costliest mistakes you can make.
 
PPC advertising has lots of moving parts and there’s a lot more to building a successful campaign than you’ll ever read on any blog. If your business doesn’t have a dedicated marketing department, it’s worth the investment to work with a digital marketing agency that knows how to build PPC campaigns from the ground up.
 
Do you want to generate measurable results with PPC marketing campaigns that you can see in your bottom line? Whether you’re just embarking on the world of paid ads or have grown fatigued with a poor performing campaign, we’re here to help. Contact JLB today to learn more about our marketing strategy for your business.