Reasons Your Pay Per Click Campaign May Fail

Nobody wants their PPC campaigns to fail. A lot of time and effort goes into crafting the proper Pay Per Click program and you want that program to do well. By the same token, sometimes they do fail and there can be multiple reasons for that. What we will look at in this article is if you are inadvertently setting your PPC program up for failure by making some simple mistakes.

The first common mistake is putting too many options on your landing page. Everyone knows that having a good landing page is important. It is very common to overdo on your landing page and give your customers too many options. It is very important to keep your lander focused.

The purpose of a landing page is to facilitate contact from your audience by using a call to action.  You want people to take that next step and call you, fill or a form, requesting a quote, or even downloading something. But, it is very easy to have your page go astray by simply providing too many options. One or two options is plenty because if you provide too many, customers can get sidetracked or confused and do nothing at all. Keep it concise. Keep it simple. You will see better results if you do.

The second most common mistake is simple neglect. If you want your PPC campaign to fail then just ignore it for 6 months or more. If that sounds silly to you, you’d probably be surprised at how often this happens. Sometimes people just think to set and to leave it is all it should take.  There can be valid reasons for the neglect:  maybe employee A thought employee B was taking care of it. Maybe somebody went on vacation or left for another job and just forgot about it.

Whatever the reason, it is an easy way to ensure that your campaign will not achieve the desired results.

You will never get excellent results with a PPC campaign if you don’t experiment, try different strategies and tactics, and change things up a bit.  Sometimes that means taking some risks, but mostly it just means monitoring things on a daily, or sometimes hourly basis. You need to know what is working and what is not working and make the necessary adjustments to avoid flushing your PPC dollars right down the toilet.

The third mistake that you must not make is NOT including site links. Site links are a very important way to put additional links on your page and also take up more ad real estate. You can send users directly to the right page to fit their needs and it is a win-win for everyone.

Links can also improve ad ranking and although some people think that they only want to send a visitor to this one landing page, links aren’t necessary.  What they don’t realize is that site links can be used with different messaging to get users who might otherwise not have clicked on the ad. Overall, it is well worth the effort

Fourth mistake is focusing on the wrong metrics. It is very easy to get fixated on one or two metrics to the detriment of others. There is a lot of pertinent information available to you as you analyze your PPC program and it is easy to think that focusing on a single metric such as Quality Score, will take your campaign to the next level. Generally, however, if you base your campaigns entirely on one or two metrics you will not have sustained success.

Nobody wants their PPC campaign to fail, that much is obvious. Just keep in mind these few simple points and you will be much less likely to unintentionally sabotage your own campaign.  Get in touch with us today for advice or help to optimize your Pay Per Click Campaigns.