5 Common PPC Mistakes New Businesses Make (And How to Avoid Them!)

Pay-Per-Click (or PPC as most know it) advertising can feel like magic when it works. On a good day, you put money in and leads/sales come out. It’s not quite that simple unfortunately, but when you’ve got it running perfectly it can feel like that.

Having said that, getting to that point can take a lot of practice, learnings, and trial and error. If it feels like you’re throwing coins into a wishing well and hoping Google is in a good mood, there are probably some tweaks you need to make.

If you or your business is new to PPC, you’re not alone. We’ve seen the same PPC mistakes crop up time and again with businesses we’ve connected with, whether it’s a single marketing pro running the operation or an entire team. However, there’s some good news. Most of these mistakes are very fixable once you know what to look for.

Let’s take a walk with five of the most common PPC slip-ups and discuss how best to avoid them.

1. Targeting everyone (and reaching no-one)

One of the biggest PPC mistakes new businesses make is trying to appeal to everyone. Admittedly, it’s very tempting – more people equals more clicks, right?

Not quite. Your business isn’t meant to serve every person on the planet, so why should they all see your ads?

Broad targeting usually means a few things:

• Poor click-through-rates – if it’s not right for them, they probably won’t click
• Irrelevant clicks – if they do click, they’ll likely bounce off pretty quickly or offer no useable data for you
• Low-quality leads – irrelevant traffic can still sometimes result in a conversion, but it’s unlikely to be very qualified if you’re casting a super wide net
• Wasted spend – if you’re driving users to your site and they’re jumping off without taking any kind of action, you’re still paying for that click

To put it plainly, if you sell bespoke accounting software for small UK businesses, you probably don’t need clicks from students in Canada searching at 2am.

How to avoid it

Start by putting some clear information together on who your ideal customer actually is, then implement this profile through location targeting, demographics, and audience segments. Refine further by being very specific with the keywords you choose to target – especially if you’re working with a smaller budget.

Think ‘who’s most likely to buy?’ rather than ‘who might click?’ – precision matters in PPC.

2. Misreading keyword intent

Speaking of keywords, not all of them are created equal. Some are ready to buy, others are just browsing, researching, or floating somewhere in the middle.

New advertisers sometimes bid on keywords without thinking about intent. This can result in plenty of clicks (maybe a win in some cases) but very few conversions (usually a loss in almost every case).

For example – look at these two keywords:

• ‘What is marine paint?’ = learning and browsing – informational intent
• ‘marine paint pricing’ = shopping and ready to pull the trigger – purchase intent

Both are valid searches, but only one is likely to turn into an immediate sale.

How to avoid it

When you’re setting up for some new PPC activity, keyword research should take up a good chunk of your time. Separate informational and commercial keywords, focus your budget on the keywords with clear intent and match your ad copy to what the searcher actually wants.

This is one of those PPC marketing tips that sounds obvious once you hear it, but it makes a huge difference.

3. Making generic ads

If your ad could belong to any business in your industry, it’s probably not doing you any favours. People see a lot of ads these days, even if it isn’t the 10,000 ads once reported, so generic ads blend into the background, even if they might be a great fit.

Every business has the ‘best service’, ‘high quality products’ and ‘trusted experts’, or at least that’s how customers feel. Show them what makes you different!

How to avoid it

When writing your ad copy, call out your audience directly, highlight what actually makes you different from the competition and state clear benefits, not fluffy claims.

Be careful of going over the top, though. You don’t need to be wildly funny or clever, just be real and interesting.

4. Sending traffic to the wrong landing page

As an agency, this is one which really hurts – especially because we see it happen to businesses so often.

Imagine your ad is driving plenty of clicks and you’re just waiting for the conversions to start rolling in, but they never do. Then you take a look at your setup and spot the URL you’re sending these users to is a broken page, a poorly optimised one, or maybe most terrifyingly, the homepage…

Sending PPC traffic to your homepage is like dropping someone in Costco when they’re looking for one specific thing and then making them wander down every aisle to find it. They’ll probably just turn around and leave – wouldn’t you?

How to avoid it

Don’t force yourself to work around your existing landing pages, create some new PPC-specific ones which match the ad message (you can hide these pages from search results so they don’t impact your SEO efforts).

Keep the page focused on one goal. If you’re running ads for product X, make sure product X is the first thing they see when they land on your site and place the call-to-action in a very visible spot. In an ideal world, the user wouldn’t have to scroll or navigate to buy the product they’re searching for.

In a nutshell, good PPC is about continuity. The keyword, ad and landing page should feel like parts of the same journey.

5. Setting it live and walking away

PPC isn’t a slow cooker, you can’t just set it up, leave it for a month and hope for the best. Well, I suppose you could, but we wouldn’t recommend it.

Another common PPC mistake is assuming the work is done once the campaign is live and spending. In reality, that’s when the bulk of the work starts. Without regular optimisation, performance can drift and costs can creep up.

How to avoid it

One of the most common tasks on our to-do lists is to check search terms daily or at least a couple of times a week. With Google’s expansive keyword matching algorithms, your ads can end up showing for some quite unsuitable terms if you’re not keeping on top of it.

When you spot irrelevant search terms coming through, add negative keywords to prevent wasting your money on them in the future. In terms of optimisations, you can also test different ad copy and asset variations (images, videos, extensions etc) to keep things fresh and help Google find the most effective variations.

That’s without even mentioning the financial aspects. Make sure to keep an eye on CPCs and budgets to make sure you’re not throwing money away on super expensive keywords – you might be best off putting your resources into some lower volume, less competitive terms.

In general, Google doesn’t love big, wholesale changes. Making smaller changes on a regular basis is the best way to optimise your campaigns and set yourself up for long term success.

The mistakes you don’t need to make

Although it can seem it, PPC doesn’t have to be scary, expensive or mysterious. Most of the problems we see come down to a handful of common issues which are easy enough to fix, with the right approach.

If you take one thing away from this list, let it be this – PPC works best when you’re intentional and moving with consistency. Whether it’s your audience targeting, your messaging or your objectives, be deliberate and consistent.

Avoid these common PPC mistakes, apply a few of these solid PPC marketing tips, and you’ll be in a much stronger position to make paid advertising actually pay off for your business.

If you’ve done all this and it still feels like a wishing well that’s just swallowing your budget, that’s usually a sign it’s time for a second pair of eyes. If you’re looking for a helping hand, get in touch with our expert team today for a free audit.