Common Google Ads Mistakes To Avoid
Digital advertising has become increasingly complex as platforms like Google and Meta introduce more technology, strategies and settings into their advertising platforms.
Today we’re going to discuss some of the fundamental things you need to understand when it comes to utilising an advertising platform like Google Ads or Meta.
Campaign Type Selection
The key to picking the right campaign type is understanding the purpose of what each campaign is set to achieve. Here are some example intentions.
Want to get your business in front of someone looking to buy right now? A Google Search campaign is what you need to be at the right place & right time for that click.
Selling a service that has a long consideration time? You might spend a lot of money on ‘window shoppers’ without any conversions with a Search campaign.
A business without a lot of high-intent demand might consider a Google Display campaign (or a Meta Awareness campaign) to put their product or service in front of the target audience and educate them in an effort to generate that demand.
These are just a couple of examples to show that when it comes to campaigns there is no magic bullet, one size fits all (no matter what Google tells you about Performance Max).
These campaign types are tools and like any tools you need the right one for the right job.
Account Structure
Marketing is about messaging.
You want to have your messaging aligned. From campaign structure, to keywords and onto the landing page, every aspect of your campaign should be reinforcing the others.
The best campaigns know who they’re speaking to and what they’re selling and utilise best practices along the entire campaign journey to reinforce the message, not dilute it.
This is where segmentation and campaign structure becomes important.
There is no point designing a set of ads, descriptions and headlines for them only to be occasionally triggered by a similar but different product keyword you’ve added to the campaign “just in case more people see it”.
If I’m searching for a particular product or service, any deviation that presents me with something I’m not expecting risks kicking me off the customer journey, and onto someone else’s website.
Thinking about your ads from a customer’s perspective and accounting for their expectations is a great way to lessen friction and avoid creating that feeling of ‘being sold to’.
It’s ok to want to advertise multiple things, but thinking about segmenting them from each other in ways that make sense not only to you but the prospective customer is incredibly important to get right.
Understanding Scope
Understanding your budget and what effect that will have on the scope of your advertising efforts is also important.
Not only can inefficient spending hurt businesses entering the space with smaller budgets, it can also lead bigger budgets into trouble with either underspending or under optimising their account.
‘Scope’ is effectively about the efficiency of the dollars you are spending and grounding your objectives and actions in the reality of that scope.
Advertising your ‘winning’ product instead of trying to spread a budget across multiple projects is a good starting point.
This allows you to get return on ad spend and get results in a controlled fashion, which then builds a platform to pick the next product or service to start advertising.
If your budget is spread too thin then no single product will be able to get in front of customers effectively, meaning it wont get sales and your advertising budget will be swept down the drain.
