Google AdWords can work absolute wonders for any business when managed correctly. It’s a rare sight now not to find a business that hasn’t ever tried their hand at Google AdWords. The issue with running a Google AdWords campaign is that people become ‘bored’ of actively managing the campaign. Only ever checking and reviewing it once in a while and getting into some pretty bad habits and routines. A poorly managed AdWords campaign will only ever lose your business money and no business owner can afford that. In this article, I will be discussing 5 lousy routines that you need to break in order to run a successful campaign.
Let’s get started…
1. Not Adjusting Keyword Bids
No matter how much knowledge you have of Google AdWords, you will know that you need to bid on keywords to get to the first/top page of Google. One thing that many people do is to create a campaign, set the bids and just leave the bids to either increase/decrease automatically or just to leave your manual bid the same. This is a habit that you need to change. Not updating the bids on your keywords can become very costly and mean you lose a large number of potential impressions. Adjusting bids on keywords is important because you don’t want to pay too much for a click but at the same time, you need to make sure you’re bidding at a competitive rate to be shown at the top of the first page of Google for the relevant keyword.
2. Not Adding Negative Keywords
Adding negative keywords to your campaign can help manage your budget. Many people, however, do not actively add negative keywords and once you fall into this trap it is difficult to get back on it. Negative keywords will help to save your budget as it will mean your ads will not be shown for anyone who types in a keyword which you see to be negative. A great example which I can use would be if your company sold red paint, no other colours just red paint. Let’s say you have a campaign set up but with no negative keywords, and one of your keywords is ‘buy paint online’. This means anyone searching ‘buy blue paint online’, ‘buy green pain online’ or even ‘buy white paint online’ will see your ad. Obviously, all these clicks on your ad to your website will be wasted as you only sell red paint, and the searcher is not interested in red paint. This is where you would add all different colours as negative keywords to help save your budget, and this will also mean the people who click your ad are much more likely to actually take action on your website.
Find out more information on negative keywords with these 2 great articles:
- What Are Google AdWords Negative Keywords And How Can They Save You Money?
- Why Use Negative Keywords In Google AdWords?
3. Only Having 1 Basic Ad In Each Ad Group
Over the last 12 months, Google has made some pretty big updates to Google AdWords, and one of them was the update to the Google Ads themselves. Back in January 2017, Google released ‘Expanded Text Ads’ which meant you were able to add more content to your ad. You were able to add another headline and the main description text also increased in size. This changed the game for anyone managing a Google AdWords campaign as it meant you could add even more substance to your Google Ads. That being said, many people still only have the old basic Ad formats in their account. If you’re looking through your account as we speak and you can see you have the old basic ads, you need to stop and write some new modern ones! Also, if you can see that you only have 1 ad per ad group you need to add another one pronto. The reason for this is because Google will then alternate between your 2 ads and you will be able to see which one performs better. From here you can then create a new add replacing the poorer performing one and run the challenge again. The reason you want to do this is that you want to get the most from your ads, and by testing ads against each other you’ll be constantly improving your ads as you go.
4. Not Reviewing ‘Search Terms’
As mentioned above it’s important to regularly add negative keywords to your campaign. Actively reviewing your search terms will help you to add new negative keywords and also add new keywords to target in your campaign. Search terms within Google AdWords shows you what people have searched to find and click your ad. This will give you an incredible insight as to what people are searching and what terms you need to perhaps focus on. You will be extremely surprised as to some of the search terms that come up in the list as some people search for some pretty unique stuff at times. But as mentioned, you can simply add these terms to your negative keyword list. All it takes is for you to set a routine up where every week you spend 10-20 minutes just reviewing your search terms and making the relevant changes needed.
5. Not Testing New Ad Extensions
Ad Extensions are absolutely perfect for ‘beefing up’ your ad space within the Google Search pages and help your ad to stand out from the crowd. Having Ad Extensions added to your Google AdWords campaign will help offer more information about your product/service. Adding ad extensions to your campaign isn’t a difficult task and the rewards can be massive. The main ad extensions that you can use are: Sitelink Extensions, Call Extensions, Callout Extensions and Review Extensions. There are a lot more that can be added but these are the main ones you want to start with. If you haven’t ever tried adding ad extensions you should certainly try it as it can boost conversion rates across the board. If it’s the case that you’ve had the same ad extensions turned on for the past year you need to start thinking about updating them. As with anything in Google AdWords, the more you test and tweak the better results you will have.
What To Do Next
If any of the above routines sound familiar to your campaign you need to change what you’re doing ASAP! Getting into bad habits will only ever impact your Google AdWords campaign negatively and you need to avoid this at all costs. If you’re struggling with your campaign get in touch with one of our experts today! The longer you’re running a poorly managed campaign the more money you will be wasting for your business! Just think, would you be happy to throw away £20 a day straight out of your wallet into the bin? Because that’s exactly what you could be doing with your AdWords account!
