Four Ways to Ruin Your PPC Campaign

If you're contemplating entering the world of pay per click advertising to boost your business, no doubt you've read a number of articles explaining how to get the most out of your budget and how to optimize your ads for maximum exposure. You might find the advice is similar across the board, but not every column or article focuses on the major mistakes that could cost you money and turn your campaigns into an ineffective waste of time. PPC advertising may prove cheaper than other avenues of paid promotion, but if you don't do it correctly you'll find the money isn't well spent.

So how can you really mess up your PPC program? If you know what not to do to succeed, it's quite easy.

Use one ad for the entire campaign - Especially for multi-faceted businesses, keeping one ad to sustain a PPC campaign is a killer. You're forced to squeeze the whole scope of your company into three short lines, thereby risking the loss of click-throughs by people searching for something specific.

Target only one demographic - If you're business caters to more than one geographic target, putting all your PPC eggs in one region alienates would-be customers from other places you serve.

Don't create landing pages for ads - Let's say you do use multiple ads in your campaign. Sending all ads to the same Web page, whether relevant or not, could result in a drop in visitors. People click on ads and expect to be taken right where they want to be, without having to mine through pages. Forcing people to search further only irritates, it doesn't convert.

Don't use proper keywords in the title - Assuming a person uses "baseball cards" in search, he's likely to click on an ad that uses that phrase in the title. Placing irrelevant keywords in the title - especially your company's name, if it doesn't appear to have anything to do with your line of business - will probably cause people to scroll past your ad.

So pay attention to these tips, and do the exact opposite to ensure you don't fall into any traps.