When people are starting out with PPC marketing, there are a few common mistakes that have a tendency to appear.
A very common mistake is to not turn off the content network ads. The content network are all the pages that use Google´s AdSense and the quality of this traffic is usually not very good. To forget to turn off, or just not knowing about the content network ads being enabled by default can cost you quite a bit of money with very little or no return.
Apart from the low quality of the traffic, you will also get a massive amount of impressions on your ads. This will usually cause your Click Through Rate (CTR for short) to go way down. With a very low CTR, Google will think that your ads are not relevant to the search terms you have specified and will penalize you. This will result in a higher cost per click. All this is quite simplified but the important thing is that a low CTR leads to higher price for the same click. And a good CTR means a lower price for the same click.
The next common mistake is bidding too high initially. Start out with smaller cost per click, especially when you are learning how PPC works. Bidding high will give you top positions and a lot of exposure, but that will not help you if you are a novice at creating landing pages. Even if you get a bundle of hits to your page, it will be worth nothing if you can't convert it into a sale.
So, start small and learn both how to get an appealing ad that pulls in a good CTR and polish your landing pages so that you have a high conversion ratio.
Both these things are done best by split testing two versions against each other. Run two ads for the same landing page at the same time, see which one gets the highest CTR. Remove the one with lower CTR and try to improve the one you have by making yet another ad, split test these against each other. Always try to improve your landing pages as well, but remember to keep the previous versions in case the new one is worse!
This brings us to a third common mistake that new PPC marketers make. Not using landing pages. You need to send the traffic from the PPC searches to a well prepared and very targeted landing page. If you run a big campaign, you might even need to have several landing pages for different niches within your topic.
It´s never a good thing to be ”general” when you are working with PPC. If you are selling a specific part for a specific model of cars, for instance, do not bid on just ”car” as search word. Be as specific as you can. It will generate less traffic to your site but the traffic will be better quality.
Working with PPC marketing is about always improving what you currently have in, my opinion. Test and test again what works and what doesn't. It will pay off in the end.
If you would like to read more articles related to making money online, head over to www.MaverickMoneyMakingHome.com/ where I write about my experience in internet marketing.
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