PPC Management - Pay per click advertising can be a very profitable place to invest your advertising budget, but it can be risky. There is a fine line between success and failure with PPC advertising…. and, if you manage it poorly, you can spend a fortune and walk away thinking that pay per click doesn't work, where as a matter of fact it has the potential to help your business make a lot of money.

1. Not Filtering Countries

Countries that produce the most clicks quite often do not produce the most sales and filtering these countries will help to keep costs down for a better ROI on clicks.

Alternatively setup a separate campaign and reduce your bid prices.

2. PPC Management - Bidding Excessive Amounts

Pay per click can cost you a lot of money, especially if you get caught up in a bidding war over a particular keyword phrase as this could lead to a negative ROI.

Adwords advertisers make the mistake to pay almost anything to get to the number one position for a keyword. This so-called 'vanity bidding' is a huge waste of money.

Sometimes the difference between being number one or two can often be several rands per click. So why would you pay such a high premium for being first, when being second is almost just as good and your net profits will be much higher?

3. Not Understanding the Difference Between Search & Content Sites

Conversion rates for content sites will be much lower than the search networks and the most common mistake that new Adwords advertisers make is not to adjust their bid prices. It's recommended that you set up separate campaigns for search and content sites.

4. Not Understanding Matching Options – Bidding On Broad Match Only

It is not the best strategy in the world to bid on only the broad match, since it is less targeted than 'exact' and 'phrase' matches. As the name suggests, broad matches are usually less targeted than ‘exact’ and ‘phrase’ matches because your ads will appear for expanded combinations of the keyword. For instance, if you bid on broad match term such as 'golf balls', you ad will appear when someone searches for golf and balls, in any order, and perhaps along with other terms.

Although this match type is the default option, it is recommended to start bidding on all three match types.

5. Not Adjusting Bids

Keywords are not created equal and it is important to know which keywords and ads are the most profitable and produced the most sales. If you want to be successful with PPC advertising your have to track absolutely everything. You must examine your ad spend and your conversions for every keyword and adjust the bids individually for each keyword

6. Not Using Negatives in Keywords

It’s important to use negatives in your keyword lists, especially if your ad campaign is based on broad match phrases. If you use negative keywords it will cause an ad not to be shown if any of the keywords are in the search phrase. For example, if you want to exclude freebie seekers from visiting your site, then you should, at the end of your keyword list, type in the word '- free' and your ad will not appear under any searches that the contain the word 'free'

For a more detailed discussion be sure to download a copy of 'Adwords Survival Tips' when subscribing to our newsletter.

Check out our plan on How to dominate your market to see what we advise. If you are looking for ppc management services you can email us at: office@worthoverdoing.co.za