Ways You Could Be Wasting Your Google Ads Spend

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Sabah Noor

date icon Apr 13, 2022

date icon 10 min read

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It's so easy to sign up and get started with Google, and your business could benefit significantly from the exposure. You may have received a coupon for, say, a hundred free clicks somewhere along the line. In addition, Google Ads appears to be user-friendly at first glance. When it comes to setting up an advertising campaign, it can take as little as twenty or thirty minutes if you just breeze through the process. According to Statista, Google's ad revenue in 2021 was around $209.49 billion. Google enables advertisers to run ads through various sources such as product listings, service offerings, display ads, remarketing ads, etc.

No one can deny that Google Ads is an exceedingly complicated tool. Setting up an effective marketing campaign that targets the right people at the right time and in the right place takes more than a few minutes. We have examined multiple Google Ads accounts spending from $1,000 per month to over $100k per month. The desire to save money on clicks while getting the same or more conversions is present in every firm, no matter how small. That is the ultimate goal for every company we speak with.

Google Ads Spend Source: Pexels

Google Ads account managers have a difficult time dealing with squandered money. According to studies, about a quarter of all paid search dollars go to waste for small businesses. One can frequently patch up your most significant account leaks by modifying your settings or organizational structure.

To better understand your wasted Google Ads money, we've put up a list of six of the most common factors.

1. Unsuccessful Conversion Tracking And Attribution

You're optimising in the dark if you don't precisely track conversions and attribute conversions to campaigns/ads. For example, you may use Google Ads' conversion monitoring feature to determine which keywords, ad groups, and campaigns lead users to complete specific actions. Conversions might be anything from product purchases to phone calls to an email sign-up, and you can optimize your campaigns to make the most of these many types of actions.

When it comes to crediting keywords, campaigns, advertising, and ad groups, conversion monitoring doesn't help. In most cases, a customer will interact with many ads before purchasing. Because it's not directly converting, you risk removing an ad critical to the customer's journey. That's why attribution is so critical. You can use any of the six attribution models available in Google Ads to determine how much impact a particular ad has had on a user's behaviour.

Since the Last Click Attribution Model is the standard in Google Ads, you need to modify it here. Our recommendation is to use the Data-driven attribution approach if you have sufficient account information to distribute credit for the conversion based on your historical data for a specific conversion action. Alternatively, you can use Time decay to give more weight to the most recent and recent exchanges.

2. Providing A Poor User Experience On The Website

Why bother spending money trying to bring traffic to your website if they experience, once people arrive, doesn't produce engagement and conversions. A poorly functioning website can't be fixed even if you spend all your Google ad money.

If you're using pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, you'll need to ensure that each click on your specified landing page generates enough profit to justify your ad expenditure. One of the three factors that Google considers when determining the quality score of your ads is the experience your visitors have on your landing page. ( Projected click-through rate and Ad relevancy are the other two components.)

Providing A Poor User Experience On The Website Source: Pexels

Ensure that your landing page is valuable and relevant compared to other advertisers using the same keyword. Make sure you provide your visitors with exactly what they're looking for to increase your website's quality. In addition, it is beneficial to have a mobile-friendly website that loads quickly.

3. The "How Can We Save Cash?" Mindset

Overemphasis on cost-cutting rather than return optimization is frequently the root of much more severe issues. Yes, it's a good thing to save money on CPC and CPA by reducing the amount of money spent on advertising.

There is, however, a limit.

Your paid search account will shrink, tighten, and maybe disappear if you only care about saving money rather than getting results. Creating and expanding an effective sponsored search campaign without a reasonable budget is more challenging.

However, this does not imply pouring money down the drain. It's still possible to keep an eye on the bottom line while releasing your purse strings. The irony is that customers may want to pay more because they realize they need to keep the flames burning brighter and brighter in the long run. While this is going on, the agency's primary focus is reducing expenses. You can avoid this kind of misunderstanding with effective communication.

4. Overusing The Broad Match Type

Setting all of your keywords to a broad match might significantly negatively influence your PPC campaign's performance. Keep in mind that using a broad match type allows Google to show your ad whenever it is connected to or contains a portion of your term. Even though many people search for broad keywords, just a tiny percentage of them turn out to be qualified leads. New advertisers make this common mistake because a broad match is Google's default match type. Analyse and alter match type settings if you have all of your keywords set as broad. It will all be worth it in the end!

However, we don't want to discourage you from occasionally utilizing broad matches. When conducting keyword research or trying to reach a wider audience, this match type comes in handy. It's up to you:

  • You don't want to pay more for low-quality traffic; therefore, cut your bids on broad match keywords.
  • Be on the lookout for new and negative keywords related to your broad match keywords in your search query report.

5. Going By The Brand Name Of Your Competitor

Be aware of the benefits and pitfalls of placing advertising on your competitors' brand names if you consider this strategy. For the most part, you can advertise in the name of your competitors. However, it's a great way to blow over your Google Ads budget quickly. It's important to Google that your keywords relate to YOUR company. These keywords will have a lower quality score because your competition isn't in the same industry as you, which will increase the cost of a click.

Going By The Brand Name Of Your Competitor Source: Pexels

6. A Scarcity Of Negative Keywords

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising aims to bring targeted, high-quality visitors to your website. You can use negative keywords to prevent your ad from being seen by people searching for something you don't have. If you don't include negative keywords in your account, it might devastate your results.

You may be able to foresee some of your company's most serious problems. Negative keywords such as "used" are unnecessary when you offer new cars; thus, you should not include them in your keyword list. However, it is difficult to predict the most crucial negatives in other cases. The best way to find these terms is to search your query report actively.

Conclusion

You can squander your Google Ads budget in countless ways. These issues can be fixed or avoided once you know their existence. And you'll have the extra money in your Google Ads budget as a result. Get in touch with our Google Ads experts to know more.

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