The 5 Worst Pay Per Click Mistakes

Direct marketing using PPC (Google Cash by another name) is the easiest and fastest way into making money online. By its very nature a PPC campaign is made profitable by keeping customer acquisition as low as possible and at the same time promoting products with large profit margins and high conversion rates.

On the customer acquisition end, there are mistakes that reduce and even at times completely decimate profits making a campaign unprofitable. Here we look at probably five of the worst PPC campaigns. They are gleaned from Tyler Huston's "10 Worst AdWord Campaign Mistakes". Huston is the founder and CEO of SearchStrategist.

The first mistake is to have a list of less than targeted keywords. Remember that PPC campaigns depend on the keyword list on which you bid on to get your adverts displayed. Visitors then click on these ads and are directed to your website where you can engage them in a sales process. So a keyword list is literally your means of prospecting for customers. For example targeting the term "weight loss surgery" when you are promoting a diet based weight loss program is most likely not proper.

Second mistake is the lack of a unique aspect of your product or service. In sales parlance this called the USP (Unique Selling Proposition). All weight loss programs are essentially the same. They lead to weight loss. Yet there is that thing that makes each uniquely different. Does your weight loss program lead to weight loss faster, is it healthier, is it dead simple to follow etc. You need always to present the unique side of your product or service because that is sells. It makes your advert to stand out of the crowd and gives a surfer reason enough to click it.

The third mistake is electing to show in the content network without changing your bid. The content network tends to convert less than those showing in search. PPCs and AdWords in particular give the option of bidding different prices for content and search displays. Bidding the same price for search and content when content converts less is the definition of insanity in PPC.

Mistake number four is the use of broad match only. In keyword matching discussed here a few weeks back you have four settings. This allows you to target you visitors with more specificity. The broad match option allows a multiple word keyword to show for any query with the terms, no matter the sequence of the words. For example, if you bid for the term "drug free" using broad match, your advert will also show when a surfer searches for "free drugs". Obviously not the kind of prospect you want. You will need to learn to employ alternative keyword matching like exact match, phrase match and negative match

The fifth mistake is using only one adgroup. Keywords in an adgroup share an advertisement. Google AdWords allows you to have as many adgroups as you fancy. It is best to group very closely related keywords in one adgroup. For instance separate keyword that are related to "diet" from those related to "losing weight" even though they all lead to the same product page. This helps in keeping bidding prices low.

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