Nowadays, paid marketing strategies can have veteran marketers spending more than planned without realizing it because factors in the ad world change over time. Here are common ways many companies’ ad budgets could unknowingly be going to waste.
Google AdWords: Wasteful Practices to Watch
Directing Part of the Budget Towards Bad Search Terms
Misdirecting funds arise when marketers fail to see the difference between search terms and keywords. If you fail to understand keyword match types or misapply them accidentally, you might end up spending more of your ad budget than you intended.
What you can do: You want to avoid this scenario by running a search term report to identify the search terms that are not relevant, then filter those keywords out of your list.
Accidentally Spending on Wrong Locations
There are two main types of geographical ad categories: physical and location of interest. Physical location means that your ads appear to people who reside in that particular area, while “location of interest” implies ads appear to people who have searched for that location. If you want the first category but end up with the second or both, you will spend more money than intended.
What you can do: Employ the strategies of User Locations Report in Google AdWords to help you know the type of location that your ads triggered. Then, after gathering information about the unintended areas, change the setting to the one you desire.
Not Choosing the Correct Network
If you are not careful, your ads will go with the network target in the default settings. Therefore, it is essential to choose the right setting to avoid targeting accidental networks. Unfortunately, this can result in you spending up to 50 percent of your budget on traffic, resulting in zero conversions for your business—what a waste.
What you can do: Check if you have accidentally targeted the wrong network. You can segment your ads for specific networks. Once the segmentation is achieved, identify the correct settings and the best way for optimization. If you notice that some traffic is emanating from unintended networks, change the default settings.
StickyLeads
Do you need help optimizing the results from your Google AdWords? Contact StickyLeads. Our experts will review your settings and recommend changes to get the best results. Call us at 757-390-0748 and see what we can do for you.
