7 Painstaking Reasons PPC Campaigns Fail (And How to Stop It From Happening to You!)
Posted July 14, 2016
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PPC marketing, which stands for pay-per-click, is an age-old method of Internet marketing. The way it works is pretty simple. You come up with an ad, you link that ad to certain keywords, and then that ad appears in search results, and is hosted on websites. Every time someone clicks that ad, you pay a fee to the website where it was hosted. The idea is that if no one clicks your ad, and thus visits your page, then you don’t have to pay anyone hosting your ad. You’re only paying for the traffic you get.
That sounds like a great idea, but there are a slew of ways your PPC marketing campaign can fail. So, before you set out to increase your audience, make sure you consider this advice to be sure your campaign doesn’t drop dead under you.
Reason #1: Not Using Negative Keywords
Keywords, as we all know, are the search terms that determine when your ads pop up. If someone is looking for shoes, and your ad has that as a keyword, then you’ll pop up for the viewer to see. However, negative keywords allow you to narrow your focus, making sure you don’t show up to try and sell to uninterested viewers. If you sell women’s shoes, for instance, then “men’s” would be a good negative keyword to make sure people shopping for men’s shoes don’t see your ad.
Reason #2: Focusing on The Cost Per Lead
PPC marketing is, more or less, generating leads. You have people who are interested enough to click, which means they’re walking into your shop and looking around. You still have to sell them, though. So, instead of focusing on how much you’re paying per lead your campaign generates, look at your conversion rate instead. That’s where your focus really needs to be.
Reason #3: Overloading Keywords
Keywords, when used properly, are the bread and butter of your campaign. They are how people find you, and you will go nowhere without them. However, if you start front-loading your campaign with keywords, then you’re going to find out quite quickly that quality is better than quantity. Focus on the keywords that define your audience, and which you can place high in, because it’s better to reach a small number of interested people, than a large number of uninterested people.
Reason #4: Not Creating A Landing Page
Most homepages are not set up for the increased traffic that comes from a successful PPC marketing campaign. This can lead to all sorts of problems, and result in you losing leads that might otherwise become customers. So, create a landing page, instead of just sending users to your homepage. It will save you, and them, a lot of time, effort, and energy.
Reason #5: Blase Ad Copy
Getting your audience’s attention is important, but not as important as sinking the hook and reeling them in. Your website design will do part of the job, but your ad copy will do the rest. If it’s boring and bland, then people are going to immediately walk right back out your digital door. Be engaging, and you’ll get more conversions than you know what to do with.
Reason #6: No Testing
If you’re going to run a PPC campaign, you need to run some tests before releasing it into the wilds of the Internet. If you’re shooting from the hip, then the results you get will be based more on luck than strategy, which will make them impossible to duplicate down the line. Those are not the kinds of results you want.
Reason #7: No Goals
Have you ever made a new year resolution that failed miserably? Chances are it was because you didn’t set a specific goal, but instead couched it in such general terms that success was impossible. The same is true for a PPC campaign. Know your goals, because the entire campaign is going to be based around them.
