Fundamental Misunderstandings
While the results were overwhelmingly negative regarding the benefits that small businesses are able to reap from using the Adwords platform, the cause for the poor results was a little less cut and dried. Some studies pointed to the high cost to run an effective Adwords campaign, while others blamed a lack of knowledgeable management of a campaign rather than the actual campaign itself.
A distillation of all of the different results has culminated in a determination that the failure of any PPC advertising campaign had a direct relationship to the level of effort campaign managers put into running the campaign. It was determined that running an effective PPC campaign had less to do with the amount of money that was pumped into the effort and everything to do with the level of effort that was put into running it.
Here are a few things that you need to know in order to maximize the effectiveness of your Adwords campaign.
Mistake #1: Infrequent Logins
PPC is one advertising campaign that does not fare well when left to its own devices. Many small business owners launch a campaign, only to forget about it, logging in as infrequently as once per quarter, which is simply not an effective way to run any advertising campaign, let alone a PPC campaign.
In order to be successful with Adwords, you will need to log in and manage your campaigns at least every month, if not more often. You need to see which campaigns are working and tweak the ones that are not.
Mistake #2: Not Enough Activity
After taking a look at the results of your PPC campaign, it's time to re-evaluate your keyword strategy, adding words that appear to have traction and eliminating those that don't. It is important to add new campaigns after an audit and continue to fine tune every month in order to get the maximum benefit.
Mistake #3: No Negative Keywords
Most small business owners have been primed to fear any negative advertising. However, this is actually contradictory in PPC advertising. Adding negative keywords to your campaigns will help you cover more ground and will result in a boost of successful click throughs.
How You Can Beat The Odds (Whatever Your Budget)
So, what is your takeaway when it comes to your own Adwords campaign? Set your bar high. If you have high expectations for your campaign, you are more likely to put in more effort to realize those goals. Log in and audit your results regularly. This means at a bare minimum of once per month, but once a week is actually preferred. When you do log in, take a look at how your keywords are doing. Remove those that aren't faring so well and add new ones to help you hone in on potential new business. And lastly, don't be afraid to use negative keywords to help you find new customers.
By tweaking how you manage your campaign, you can significantly increase the success of your campaign.
