5 Common Mistakes To Avoid Managing Your PPC Campaigns

Over the past few weeks a theme has been running through a range of inbound marketing enquiries…. more money is being thrown into Adwords accounts across the country, but less time is being spent managing that spend.

Primarily the conversations relate to the business owner taking his/her initiative and managing the business Adwords campaign in house. Not only due to the obvious cost-savings to be made, but also their understanding of the market and the message to send to prospective customers.

I cannot outline enough the importance of a business owner being directly involved with the structuring and monitoring of any form of online advertising. Likewise, the necessity to ‘test the water’ in regard to Paid Search advertising before throwing vast amounts of budget into Google Inc.

However! Before entering the often complex world of Adwords Advertising, read through the 5 potential pitfalls listed below and see if any ring true for you and your business.

1.) Running Adwords Campaigns takes your focus away from other key areas of business.

No Adwords professional, marketing manager or business owner is going to tell you that Adwords Campaign Management is a walk in the park. Far from it…. the depth of investigation required to run an efficient and cost-effective campaign to maximise your ROI can take hours upon hours out of your weekly schedule. Without access to the necessary data, or the ability to successfully analyse the data, business owners can spend a large chunk of their time delving into what, maybe, useless information.

Google, through a combination of Adwords and Analytics, provide you with an abundance of data. Knowing how to quickly extract, intepret and act upon the RELEVANT data for your Adwords decision making is far from a simple process.

The question to ask yourself… is your time better spent working on other aspects of your business rather than spending time running reports, updating keywords, amending under-performing ads and sifting through the information that may, or may not, be necessary to make informed decisions regarding your Adwords campaigns?

2.) Assuming your campaign is running to it’s maximum potential

More than once over the past month I’ve sat down with business owners to hear “I’m spending £x a month, and seem to be doing quite well”. The unfortunate side of this comment is that there’s simply nothing to compare to. Adwords allows you to view, down to the isolated keyword, the relative success, both in terms of ROI and effective lead generation, of any given Google ad. This, of course, requires a range of tracking devices to be placed within your site… which is a whole different story!

Not knowing whether your campaigns are running to their true potential is a side effect of a lack of experience within Search Marketing and Analytics. Is the 5% conversion you’re seeing on your ads a sign that they’re effective? Yes, they tick the box to deliver the necessary ROI, but how achievable is 10% or even 15%? Managing your Adwords campaign in-house allows you to maintain complete control, but how do you build a sense of the true success of this fantastic revenue stream if there’s no external data to compare with?

3.) Focusing on words that mean something to you… but not to your prospects

As the man/woman at the helm of your business you’re the one person who knows your business better than anyone…. but does the necessarily translate into your knowledge of your prospective clients or customers?

It may be surprising, but often time with a large proportion of my clients it’s the Customer Services or Sales staff that have the greater understanding of current trends or current requirements of potential business prospects. This is becoming increasingly the case with my retail-based clients.

If this level of information is making it’s way to your own desk… fantastic. If not, is it fair to say that you may be spending time bidding on terms or phrases which don’t necessarily match the trends of your industry?

4.) Not realising that Search is an industry within itself for a reason….

Whilst building and maintaining your Adwords account in-house you don’t need to be reminded that it’s your business’ hard earned budgets you’re potentially sacrificing to generate a successful online ad campaign.

Have you ever forgotten to log into Adwords for a period of time only to find your entire budget has been spent on just a few underperforming keywords? The nasty surprise you receive when payments to Google far outweigh the revenues you have generated off the back of those ads? Not good is it?

Put simply, there are people, agencies and businesses, just like myself, managing 1000′s of business accounts on Google in the UK for a reason…. it’s an industry within itself. As a Google Adwords Consultant I have a tremendous level of accountability. Put simply, if my client does not see the necessary Return On Investment in return for my own costs and those of the campaign… they won’t be my client for very long! We exist for a reason. That reason is to generate your business revenue. Revenue you would not necessarily have seen if you kept your Adwords ads close to your chest and managed them inhouse.

5.) Adwords? “Ahh, yes, we have someone who does one of those for us…”

It may sound slightly crass, but if you’re running a full page ad in your industry press, do you give your daughter a box of crayons and ask her to design one for you?

I’m hoping the answer to that question is a resounding “no”! … seriously, I’m really hoping that is the case!!

With your answer in mind, and no disrespect to your junior staff, but why would you filter the management of your Adwords to a member of staff with little prior knowledge… and more importantly, little care of how your business’ money is spent? A common answer… “we only spend £5 a day….” which equates to around £150 a month, or £1800 a year… that, to any business is a fair chunk of cash….

Whichever industry you compete in, the chances are highly likely that Search Marketing offers the greatest opportunity to gain new clients, and generate new leads. It’s certainly not an area of any business which should be treated likely… especially when you can find yourself gambling away your business’ marketing budget to build what may, or may not be, a successful Adwords campaign.

If you find yourself relating to any of these common mistakes, now is the time to find out how an experienced Search Marketing Consultant can help you grow your business through a carefully managed Adwords campaign.

..I'm the one on the left.

About The Author;

Ian’s career within the Search Marketing industry spans longer than Google’s! Since 1996 Ian Rhodes has worked with a wide range of UK and International businesses developing strategic online marketing campaigns that deliver winning results.

Prior to his consulting career, Ian worked for one of the UK’s first online retail businesses delivering cost-effective online campaigns centred around SEO and Affiliate Marketing. His success led to him being recruited as the European Marketing Director for the world’s largest online travel company. In 2004 he practiced what he preached setting up, from scratch, his own highly successful online retail business turning over £2mill in the first 4 years of trading…purely through a mixture of SEO and Paid Search Advertising.

If you’re looking to build your online revenue or lead generation techniques simply click Contact Ian and see how you can work together to start building your online business today.