Envision Your Website Blog

Yesterday we talked about 5 ways marketers waste their money on Pay-Per-Click marketing due to simple mistakes and overlooking key components. Today I will further discuss MORE ways marketers are hurting their campaigns and wasting money. With these helpful tips, you will be able to successfully advertise and market your company or business and utilize all the benefits PPC can offer.

6.  Ignoring Negative Keywords-
Unless you're offering is FREE, thinking about applying negative keywords to your campaign is probably a good idea. I could be wrong, but the last time I checked, Omniture was not a "free" web analytics solution.

7. Ignoring Ad Scheduling-
Although it takes a little more work to analyze your campaigns and determine when the conversions are happening, it is well worth it. Armed with the knowledge that your conversions take place Monday-Wednesday between 9am-4pm, you can modify your campaign so you spend more of your budget when the traffic that you want to attract is online (and pay less for traffic that does not convert).

8. Not Breaking Out Content Targeted Traffic
This is another HUGE mistake marketers make with PPC, Unless you create a separate campaign with separate, unique destination URLs for the Content Targeted Traffic, it is very difficult (even impossible depending on what analytics package you are using) to differentiate the search/search network traffic from the Content Targeted traffic. And, even though you can pay less for the Content Targeted traffic without breaking it out into it own campaign, you still should take the time to break it out into its own campaign.Because, what you may find is that traffic may not be as qualified in terms of conversions (sales), but it may generate good leads that just need additional re-marketing to eventually convert. (And, you may find data that leads you to specific Site Targeted campaigns that really perform great).

9. Ignoring Click-Fraud or Invalid Clicks-
I know that researching to determine click fraud can be time consuming, and arguing with the search engines can be very frustrating and potentially even a dead-end. I am not saying that you should spend all of your time or focus on this, but I do think it is worth paying a little attention. Lyris HQ (formerly ClickTracks) has a great Click Fraud Report. But, you must know when it is potentially click fraud versus just a poorly performing ad.

10. Ignoring the Quality Score-
The quality score is definitely a moving target and it recently has changed again. But if you understand your quality scores, by simply improving your ad or your landing page (or weeding out non-performing keywords), you can dramatically lower your cost per click. And, if you do this across the board for all of your ok or poor quality keywords, the savings can make a HUGE difference.