Avoid these 5 pitfalls when placing Google ads in 2019!

When placing Google ads, we sometimes choose different delivery methods according to our habits. However, some bad habits can cause budgets to be used incorrectly, leading to depleted cash flow with little discernible return.

Here are a few common advertising mistakes that could cause you to waste your Google Ads budget. Find out how to avoid these pitfalls in 2019!

Ignore negative keyword lists

Don't ignore negative keywords, as they can help you make the most of your budget.

When you bid on keywords, you pay for related search terms based on the match type. So while you may have a campaign that bids directly on keywords, if you’re using broad match, you’re paying for a whole bunch of keywords.

For example, you might charge $50 per click and not offer free consultations. For some users who are looking for a freebie, when they click on your landing page and find out it’s not free, they leave and you spend $50.

To resolve this issue, you need to generate a negative keyword list. If you have a high budget, you’ll need to execute your negative keyword list more frequently to keep up.

A big mistake on Google Ads is to add keywords as negative keywords directly from the tag:

Why? Because the match type is not taken into account:

Next time you add negative keywords, create your own list on a separate document, separated by match type.

For example, instead of blocking the keyword "free consultation" all the time, you can add "free" as a negative keyword at the Google Ads account level.

This blocks any search terms that use the word “free,” meaning your ad will never show to searchers if you don’t offer free searches.

A good rule of thumb to follow for negative keyword maintenance is:

• Clicks: If you generate more than 1,000 clicks per week, you should perform weekly maintenance on your negative keywords to keep your budget under control.
• Daily Review : Review your negative keyword list once a month and add any new keywords/keywords you don’t want to pay for.

Too much reliance on automation

All the hard work on Google Ads can often feel overwhelming, so many of us choose to automate processes, such as sending automatic emails, automating workflows, automating bid adjustments, and so on.

While these may be great, they may be blocking you from getting the most out of your learning experience with Google ads.

Paying attention to Google Ads instead of relying too much on automation will allow you to identify problems quickly and optimize ads without requiring too much context, saving the cost of letting automation learn.

While automation can be helpful, relying too heavily on it can destroy your budget in the long run.

Bidding too much on popular terms

When you use popular words as keywords and spend a lot, you need to be careful.

For example, let’s look at a popular keyword search term like “SEO tools.”

Here are the SEMRush data: One click is $10.54. This keyword is very broad, what kind of SEO tools do they want? SEO tools can be anything from backlink analysis to page checkers and technical scanning tools.

Second, the buzzword is already saturated with competitors.

Check out the top rankings for this term on Google Ads:

These are million dollar plus businesses who can afford these marketing budgets, and they have been advertising on these keywords for a long time, and they also have time to optimize their ads.

So, we should look for keywords that can bring huge returns.

For example, take a look at this keyword — “best SEO tools for small business”:

It’s closely related to SEO tools, but you get specific, and there’s a lot less competition.

A less niche keyword can help you maximize your budget in 2019.

Budget is too spread out

When you start using Google Ads, the options are really endless, and depending on your overall business goals and ideas, whether it's selling products and services directly or getting consultations, there may be many keywords that you can target.

We can target any keyword that users around the world are searching for. But it also makes it harder to launch Google Ads:

Where to start?

One of the biggest problems we encounter when it comes to budget management is spreading it too thin.

Auditing accounts, seeing the same settings over and over again:

If your maximum budget for your entire account is $500 per month, you'll notice some serious problems. Especially considering that keywords can cost up to $50 per click.

If your ads aren’t performing well, stop spreading your budget too thin and focus on a single campaign. Once you are able to successfully profit from this single campaign, you can increase your budget.

When you have enough budget, run multiple campaigns at the same time.

Experiment and test frequently

Just like spreading your budget too thin, another way to abuse your budget on Google Ads is to test too often.

We all know that tests are important and they do work, but these tests are not for everyone.

Changing minor campaign factors like CTA and button color can help, but they won’t have a big impact on revenue.

The two most important factors when testing Google Ads are – the creative and the audience.

However, be careful with samples; if the sample size is small, the test will not be statistically significant.

Don’t consider testing more frequently unless you:

• Minimum 1,000 impressions per month
• Minimum 200 conversions per month
• At least $500-1,000 per month Willing to risk/spend for zero return
• Multiple campaigns have been running for at least 60 days without changes

Making changes is a good choice, but if they don’t pan out, then the hundreds or thousands of dollars you spent will have no results.

I believe that with our gradual exploration, we can all achieve good results in advertising.

Author: Papaya Mobile

Source: Papaya Mobile