We are all looking for ways to get the highest ROI when advertising, that means getting back more than we invested. While there is no universal recipe to achieve this, there are a few settings that should not be overlooked so your advertising does not waste your money. Let’s have a look at them.
Setting up strategies for ad campaigns is often a question of A / B testing. What works for others may not work for you. On the other hand, there are settings for which the resulting data speak generally. And the data says that using these settings can unnecessarily put you in a difficult situation. To avoid unnecessary spending of your budget, we’ve put together a list of the most common advertising mistakes in Google Ads.
Targeting people who are or have shown interest in your location
It’s certainly appealing to target your ad to people who are nearby or have shown interest in your location. Until you are on vacation or business trip and your location changes within minutes. If you are in a place where you do not normally ship your goods, you may obtain dozens of orders that you won’t be able to sort out.
Frequency capping
The frequency with which ads will be shown to a particular user is one of the often-overlooked settings. However, if you leave it unlimited, your ad can become counterproductive and dissuasive in a couple of days, as it can display to the user at any place at any time. We recommend setting this limit.
Accelerated delivery of ads
When you run an ad campaign, you can choose whether you want your ads to be shown evenly throughout the day or if they should be accelerated. The second option means that your ads will run quickly in order to reach your daily budget as soon as possible. Only rarely does this setting brings benefits, so it is better to follow the even delivery path.
Smart bidding with not enough data
Smart bids work by machine learning, which analyzes historical data and automatically sets the optimal bids for your ads. This bidding saves a lot of time. However, if you don’t have enough historical data in your Google Ads account, they can easily hurt you. Google recommends having at least 30 conversions in the last 30 days for smart offers to be effective.
Bad keyword match settings
Keywords are the way you bring your ad to people who are searching for it. Correct match settings prevent unnecessary waste of your budgets. There are four match types – exact match, phrase match, broad match, and broad match modifier. Each of these match types means different behavior for your ad. Learn more about keyword matches in our older blog and find the right setting for your campaign!
Not using negative keywords
Define negative keywords to avoid showing your ad for irrelevant search queries. If you sell exclusively women’s clothing, include keywords like “for men”, “male”, “boys”, and so on. When setting negative keywords, you can also build on a search query analysis to see what queries led the users to click your ad. Not using negative keywords is a mistake that can cost you unnecessary budget spending in addition to unnecessary ad displays.
Of course, as mentioned at the beginning, Google Ads is mostly about testing and optimizing various settings. Therefore, there is no one-size-fits-all way to achieve your defined goals. However, if you follow the advice from this article, you will at least avoid unnecessary waste of your budget, that can be used for something else.
