#optimising app

Google Ads is one of the best tools to expand visibility, traffic, and conversions for any business. However, even the most solid businesses sometimes make mistakes in their Google Ads campaigns, and a massive ad spend gets wasted along with an unsatisfying performance. Being a beginner in Google Ads or a professional who has been running campaigns for some time, you should definitely avoid common mistakes, which means optimizing your campaigns towards better performance.

In this blog, the most common mistakes committed in Google Ads, how to avoid them, and therefore how to improve your campaign's performance, will be discussed. Once some of these issues are corrected, you can surely get cost-effective Google Ads campaigns that result in the intended outcome.

Mistake 1: Ignoring Keyword Match Types

You will have to decide which one of the keywords is to be used for your Google Ads campaign. Most businesses commit the mistake of using broad-match keywords only. This will invite irrelevant clicks on your ad, which will in turn increase the costs too. With broad match keywords, Google will trigger your ad for any search term that it deems related. Your ad would thus be shown for relevant, yet possibly irrelevant queries.

Thus, in order to avoid this, one needs to know various kinds of match types available for keywords.

Broad Match: Your ad is shown to users related to what you are looking for, though there is also the possibility of accidentally clicking on your ads.

Phrase Match: The search term contains the exact phrase or close variant.

Exact Match: Your ad will be shown to the searcher only if their search term exactly matches your keyword.

Mix up your match types and frequently check your search term reports for keywords that are irrelevant and might need to be disallowed. Negative keywords in general are critical to include to stop your ads from appearing for irrelevant searches.

Error 2: Poor Tracking of Conversions

Conversion tracking is one of the most crucial parts of any winning campaign in Google Ads. Without this setting, you'll have no idea how your ads are actually working or where they need to be improved to yield better results. Many businesses either don't activate conversion tracking or set it up wrong, leaving them with incomplete data and missed opportunities.

Avoid it by:

Make sure that you set up conversion tracking correctly for your campaigns. To do this, follow these specific steps.

Determine Your Conversions: Determine what kind of conversion would be taking place for your business. It might be a sale, lead submission, or a call.

Setup Conversion Tracking: Add the Google Ads conversion tracking code to your site so that you ensure it is put on the "thank you" or confirmation page when the conversion takes place.

Test the setup: After installing the tracking code, you must test to ensure it's working correctly.

You'll get a real insight into which ads are generating the most value for your website by accurately tracking conversions. You can then make any necessary adjustments to your campaigns.

Mistake 3: Not Using Ad Extensions

Ad extensions are one of the most accessible ways to enhance your Google Ads performance. Unfortunately, only a few use them. The more ad extensions you use with your ad, the more information about your business is probably going to appear for users—for example, your phone number, your location, or specific products or services. This way, you are more likely to have more people like it enough to click on it. The thing is, if you are not using ad extensions, then you are missing out on an opportunity to expand the click-through rate and then increase ad relevance.

How to Avoid It

In addition to these, Google offers several ad extensions to help in improving the performance of the ads. These include:

Sitelink Extensions: This sends people directly to pages on your website.

Call extensions: Gives your business a number so that potential customers can reach you easily.

Location Extensions: Gives your business address to searchers in your locality

Callout Extensions: Draws more attention to the special features or offers of your business; for instance, "Free Shipping" or "24/7 Support."

Install ad extensions that will help you align your campaigns with your business goals. They will not only stretch the size of your ad but also enhance your CTR and quality score.

Mistake 4: Set and forget campaigns

You begin your campaign on Google Ads and fail to keep track of performance on a regular basis. Google Ads is not a "set and forget" kind of platform. Without daily attention, over time your ads typically become less effective and burn your money performing poorly.

How to Avoid It:

To avoid this, you need to monitor your campaign performance quite often. Here are some of the essential things you should monitor on a regular basis:

Search Terms Report: It would detail which queries trigger your ads, hence refining your keyword list and adding negative keywords.

Ad Performance: Review the CTR, conversion rate, and cost per conversion of your ads to determine which ones are performing well and which areas need to be improved.

Budget and Bids: Also, ensure your budget and bids are properly optimized for your goals. Elevate bids for good-performing keywords and reduce spends on lower-performing keywords.

Campaigns could be optimized regularly to provide better performance and return on the advertisement expenses.

Mistake 5: Not Targeting the Right Audience

Another common mistake in Google Ads is that it often fails to define and target the right audience. Otherwise, without proper targeting of the right audience, the reach of your ads might be receiving clicks from people who are not interested in what you have, hence leading to wasted clicks and minimal conversions.

How to Avoid Mistakes:

To avoid this mistake, one can maximize the audience-targeting features of Google Ads. Some options include:

Demographic Targeting: Target people according to the age group, gender, and income of the household.

Location Targeting: Target the users where your business is geographically located.

Remarketing: Target users who have visited your website but have not yet converted. Advertise to the right audience to improve the efficiency of your campaign, thereby increasing relevant traffic to your website.

Conclusion

Google Ads can be an extremely powerful marketing tool only if campaigns are set up and managed properly. Therefore, it is advisable to avoid common mistakes like ignoring keyword match types, failing to track conversions, underutilizing ad extensions, failing to regularly manage campaigns, and wrong targeting towards the audience, which can significantly improve campaign performance.

Monitoring and using more strategic approaches in your Google Ads campaigns will help you optimize your ads to give you the very best-performing results, cost reduction, and ROI.

Visit TechoSquare for more optimization tips from your digital marketing campaign and discover our range of services that can enable you to take your online presence to the next level!