This is the first part of a 2 part post. You can access Part 2 here.

Common PPC Shortcomings 1-3

Through our work we often come across Pay Per Click ads that are almost spot on, but one aspect of them is letting them down. Unfortunately one small mistake can have a huge impact on your click-throughs and conversions. Something as simple as having an ad linked to the wrong page can snowball and end up costing you a significant amount of money. We’ve put together this list of 6 of the most common PPC shortcomings we come across. We’ll explain what the problem is and why it is a problem.

Ads Directed to the homepage or wrong page

Imagine if you were looking for a specific restaurant in a city that you aren’t familiar with. If you ask a stranger for directions to the restaurant, but they just send you to the city centre instead, that’s not a good or useful experience. This is a similar experience to when you send a potential customer to your website’s homepage from a PPC ad.

Google AdWords gives us the ability to control exactly where visitors from certain search terms should be directed to on your website. Let’s say someone is searching for a “summer dress” for example, and we own a clothing site for women. Sending that individual to our homepage is only going to create more effort for them to find and purchase the summer dress they want; they might even give up trying to find the right page and abandon the website altogether. Directing them straight to a landing page dedicated to summer dresses however is going to remove any confusion or headache for the potential customer, allowing them to focus on the browsing and purchasing part of the sales funnel.

The more precise you can be when directing potential customers, the more likely you are to generate a positive ROI from your PPC campaigns.

 

Lower Ad position after recent google changes UNADDRESSED

Back in February, AdWords saw one of the most shocking updates in recent years. All regular text ads were removed from the right side of Google search for desktop users. What does that mean for us as advertisers? Well, if you’re not in the top three to four ad positions, you’re going to get significantly less traffic as all other ad positions are now displayed at the very bottom of the organic search results. Just think back to the last time you scrolled to the very last result of a search page; it’s not a common occurrence with most people browsing Google’s search engine.

As a knock on effect, being in ad positions lower than the top three is going to significantly influence your average CTR for the worse, which in turn means you’ll receive less traffic and leads from your AdWords campaign.

Google ppc sidebar shortcoming

If you’ve noticed poor performance in your account over the last couple of months then be sure to check the history of your ad positions, it could be one of the contributing reasons.

 

Not using remarketing to it’s full potential or even at all

Have you ever felt that niggling regret over something you didn’t buy? Sometimes we can get distracted from a purchase or perhaps even forget about it entirely. Your customers are no different! Remarketing helps you to reconnect with people who’ve left your website without buying anything. It lets you remind them of that great offer they missed out on as they browse the web, use mobile apps or search on Google.

Yes, as potential customers carry on with their daily lives, Remarketing gives you the opportunity to put customised ads in front of them so they don’t forget about your offering when it comes to making their final decision on a purchase. Flexible settings also allow you to have full control of the behavior of these ads, including:

• How often your ads are displayed to customers.
• What type of customers you’d like to target, with regards to how far they ventured down the sales funnel.
• Where you’re happy for your ads to appear in terms of placements.
• The ability to stop targeting customers who have already purchased from you.
• And much more

Read Part 2 Here

PPC shortcoming remarketing

If you’re not already using Remarketing then you’re missing out on a critical part of AdWords.

If you’d like a PPC expert to assess your PPC efforts and let you know if there are any areas you can improve please don’t hesitate to get in contact. Book a 100% free account audit with us today to find out what other areas of your account might require attention to improve your PPC ROI!

PPC shortcomings audit

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