Google Ads ad: 9 mistakes you shouldn't make

You created your campaigns, wrote your ads, added your keywords, indicated your budget and placed your bids. You have completed all the steps as required. Your sales should increase, right? If that's the case, good news! If not, you are like the majority of our customers, tell yourself that it is entirely normal.

Rest assured. It is very easy to believe that simply telling Google to be present when a keyword is searched can generate sales for us.

I would love to tell you that yes, but unfortunately that is not the case. It is much more complex than it seems and if it were too simple, the return on investment for all businesses would be extraordinary. Keep in mind that there are others B2B sales methods to promote your services.

Unless you offer a very specific product or service, your Google ads are competing with a large list of businesses that use the same keywords as you and are trying to reach 1st place.

If you're reading this article, you're probably wondering why you're not generating as much revenue as expected with your ads. How to improve your click rate, sales, acquisition cost, etc.

Here are eight common mistakes when creating Google Ads campaigns and why they could cost you money.

1. Activate search and display network partners
2. Add a very large number of keywords
3. Use only keywords for broad queries
4. Go to the home page or contact
5. Relying only on the number of clicks to assess the performance of Google ads
6. Indicate a global budget instead of a daily budget
7. Use an automatic bidding strategy
8. Target a very large territory, see the whole world 😳
9. Don't rule out irrelevant search terms

1. ACTIVATE SEARCH AND DISPLAY NETWORK PARTNERS

When you create a Google Ads campaign, the platform guides you through the creation process. One of the first options will be the networks on which your ads will be shown:

• Research Network Partners
• Your ads will be shown on websites other than Google. The search engine indicates that it is partners “that partner with Google to show ads in their search results.”
• The problem is that we don't know which partner it is, what audience is targeted or how many times ads are shown on these networks. Most of the time, the results will be poor (especially if you are targeting the Quebec market).
• If you're targeting the United States, I recommend testing the network for a month. Depending on your industry, it could be beneficial. The best way to find out is always to test the network regardless of what territory you want to broadcast, but remember to turn it off if performance isn't up to par.
• Display network
• This network makes it possible to broadcast visual advertisements, i.e. in images that can be found through websites such as MeteoMediaOr La Presse.

• There is no problem in distributing this type of advertising across the web, even as we often recommend it for reputation or remarketing purposes.
• The problem is that these two types of ads do not correspond to the same objective and the same stage in the user's research process. Ask yourself: are you more interested in a product/service when you do a Google search or when you want to know the weather forecast? You're probably more interested when you're doing a search.
• Tip: It would be better to separate campaigns in two: one campaign for ads in the search engine and another for visual ads, i.e. in Google Display.

Attention, Google Ads checked the options without your consent. Be sure to uncheck them.

2. ADD A VERY LARGE NUMBER OF KEYWORDS

It can be tempting to add a very large number of keywords to be present often in the search results, but an excess of keywords can be harmful to your results.

For example, you offer carpooling services and you rely on the following keywords:

1. Carpooling
2. Ridesharing services
3. Carpool car
4. Car for rent

The latter is obviously at high risk, as it may come from users who are looking for a car to rent from a dealership and not from a company that offers a car-sharing service.

It is possible that the last one will make a sale, but it is more likely to fail than the others so why risk losing money?

Focus your energies on keywords that are more likely to generate revenue. After a few months, you'll have enough suggestions to test new keywords.

3. ONLY USE KEYWORDS IN BROAD QUERIES

If you didn't already know, there are three match types for keywords. Three ways to let Google know that the keyword we've chosen may vary depending on user searches. These types of correspondence are:

• Broad query
• Exact expression
• Exact keyword

Here is a graph from Google Ads that explains the difference between the three types very well.

To learn more about correspondence types, click here.

We don't recommend using broad search keywords because they'll show ads for terms that aren't at all what we want. Instead, use the “exact expression” and “exact keyword” types. You will be more specific, show your ads to a better audience and have a better chance of getting the first position.

It is better to get 10 clicks that bring 10 sales What 100 clicks that bring 10 sales. The former will save you a lot more money than the latter.

4. GO TO THE HOME PAGE OR CONTACT.

When a user searches and clicks on my ad, do I send them to the best page on my website in order to convince them and encourage them to buy? Ask yourself the question. If you think they may get lost or simply leave the website because they can't find the information they're looking for, change the page or create a unique landing page for your campaign.

The home page can be great for showing everything you have, but if your user is looking for a certain product and you take them to the home page that has more than 250 products: they may decide to give up.

The same principle applies to the contact page, especially for those who aim to generate leads. The content on this page often contains very little information other than a form, phone number, or business address. Yes, it is probably the shortest way for the user to contact you, but is the contact page enough for the user to be convinced of your services? Remember that we are very lazy when we are browsing the web. A simple misunderstanding by the user and he will leave your website after making you spend a few dollars for a click.

5. RELY ONLY ON THE NUMBER OF CLICKS TO ASSESS THE PERFORMANCE OF GOOGLE ADS

Even if clicks are an interesting statistic to assess whether our campaign is functional, they are considered useless if they do not generate sales.

If we use the example of carpooling services a little above, I can add to my ads that we offer in promotion the 1st free use to encourage users to click. On the other hand, if it is not registered on the landing page, the user will leave. He will think it was a trap. That way, it would be easy to generate lots of clicks, but almost no sales.

Another element to consider are users who click on Google ads but don't read the content first (I understand them, we all have busy days). It generates a click, but with no results.

This is also one of the reasons why I do not recommend using keywords for broad queries (error #3), because they appear on searches that do not always correspond to our services. Again, the user will click but not achieve the objective.

For a quick understanding of performance, I recommend looking at the following statistics to assess performance:

• CTR : The ratio of users who clicked on your Google ad after viewing it. This translates into the quality of your titles and descriptions, if they match user research well.
• Conversion : The action to be carried out according to the objective of your campaign: purchase of a product, contact by form, telephone call, trip to the store, etc.
• Cost/conversion : The marketing cost you need to spend to make a conversion. This is equivalent to the acquisition cost. A very good indicator of the performance of your campaigns. The lower the cost, the more profitable it is.
• Conversion rate : The ratio of users who converted after interacting with your ad. The higher the percentage, the more you'll save because you're presenting your ads to people who are interested in achieving your marketing goal.
• ROAS : The return on advertising expenses. So if we have an ROAS of 10, that means we're generating $10 in revenue for every $1 spent on Google ads.

If you want to learn more about Google Ads terms, you can check out the Google Ads glossary.

6. INDICATE AN OVERALL BUDGET INSTEAD OF A DAILY BUDGET

This mistake is my biggest fear.

Several years ago, a colleague had to launch a campaign with a budget of $3,000 per month. He believed that with Google Ads the budget for campaigns worked over the entire period, that it would be spent fairly from December 1 to December 31.

It was only a few days later that my colleague realized that search engine ads work on a daily budget. In other words, he had set up expenses for $3,000 per day, not per month. You can imagine the twinge in his heart when he saw how much money he spent after a few days.

In short, check your budgets several times when you launch new campaigns.

7. USE AN AUTOMATIC BIDDING STRATEGY

The first strategy that Google Ads will offer you is an automatic bidding strategy that allows you to modify the bids of your keywords according to your budget. The search engine may decide to increase your bids to $50/click if it wants to. Instead, choose the “manual CPC” manual bidding strategy. You can decide on bids for your good and not so good keywords based on what they bring you in revenue and you will save a lot more.

Tip: Automatic bidding strategies can be interesting when you have collected more than 50 conversions since the Google Ads algorithm will better understand your target and adapt the bids accordingly.

8. TARGET A VERY LARGE TERRITORY, OR EVEN THE WHOLE WORLD. 😳

Unless you're very brave, I don't recommend targeting the whole world with a single campaign. It would be safer to create multiple campaigns and separate them by region and language. So be very careful when creating a campaign to choose the “Enter another geographic area” option, because Google has automatically checked “All countries and territories” for you.

9. DO NOT RULE OUT IRRELEVANT SEARCH TERMS

Under the “keywords” tab, you have a small gold mine that contains all user searches. These searches, called search terms, may contain Interesting keywords Or search terms that Are not at all suitable for your services or products.

For example, if you sell pet food, you don't want to advertise for human food. At least, I hope so! Fortunately, Google Ads allows you to exclude user searches that do not concern your services or products.

Simply check the ones that don't work for your business, click on “add as a keyword to exclude” and you're done! Remember to filter search terms at least once a week.

CONCLUSION

By correcting the nine mistakes mentioned above, you will significantly increase your click-through rate, number of conversions, cost/conversion, and conversion rate. In short, more sales, more savings, and less frustration with the results. If you need help with your campaigns, we can help. Learn how By clicking here.

Keep in mind that there are hundreds of recommendations that could take your Google Ads ads to another level of profitability. Stay on the lookout for the next tips by following us here:

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