Common PPC Errors and Strategies to Overcome Them

PPC is more competitive than ever according to Optimizer, search CPCs are up 22% year on year because it is getting more expensive. If advertisers want to generate ROI from search advertising, they need to be better than the other advertisers. The most common mistake seen repeatedly, even today, is not bidding on one's own brand. This is a huge mistake and is even more important in the machine learning age because it is essential to give Google that data as to who is the customer and who is actually buying the product. This is something that is easy and quick to fix. If this is not done and the desired results are not being achieved from the brand campaign, it is advised to reconsider other search advertising strategies. A simple way to understand this is to observe companies like Amazon, which bid on their own brand throughout the year. Amazon is the number one customer of Google Ads and runs its own attribution model, so it understands the importance of bidding on its brand term. The second most important reason is competition. If the brand is not being protected with PPC bids, competitors, affiliates, or resellers might start bidding on it. This could lead to losing high-intent traffic to other advertisers.

Machine learning in Google Ads works best when it receives strong, relevant data. Brand traffic provides the most valuable signals since it comes from the highest click-through and conversion rates, and often represents the most valuable customers. If advertisers are running other marketing channels such as out-of-home campaigns or direct mail, it is crucial to ensure that those users find the business through branded PPC ads so Google can use this data to optimize non-brand campaigns more effectively.

Quality Score, introduced by Google in 2005, remains fundamental. It subsidizes advertising costs and can make a significant impact on the cost per click. Advertisers with high Quality Scores may pay substantially less per click than those with lower scores. Quality Score includes three main factors:

Improving each area, including the use of negative keywords, targeted ad copy, and high-relevance landing pages, leads to cheaper and more effective advertising.

There is no excuse for spelling or grammar errors in advertising. Errors in ads can run unnoticed and waste marketing budgets. Exporting ads for spell checks is an easy fix. Such errors can indicate broader neglect within the account. Even large brands have made serious language mistakes, such as serving ads with incorrect language site links due to poor oversight.

Ads leading users to 404 error pages result in wasted spend and lost customers. Google Ads does not automatically check for 404 errors, so it is recommended to use scripts or automation to regularly check for broken URLs. Spot-check best-performing campaigns regularly and investigate any sudden drops in performance.

Running ads for expired promotions or outdated offers frustrates users and lowers trust. Advertisers should regularly audit live ads to ensure that offers are current, relevant, and competitive. If a competitor offers a better deal, users will choose them. Running without any offer at all is also a missed opportunity.

Google Ads allows for sophisticated audience targeting beyond just keywords. Audiences include in-market, affinity, demographic, and first-party customer match segments. Combining these can significantly improve campaign performance. Customer match, where advertisers upload customer data for Google to find similar users, is particularly effective. For those new to the platform without first-party data, using affinity and competitor segments can help inform targeting.

Broad match used to be risky but is now being rebuilt by Google to work in partnership with smart bidding and machine learning. The future may see exact and phrase match types phased out, with broad match as the default. Advertisers should begin testing broad match with smart bidding, while monitoring closely with negative keywords to ensure only relevant traffic is captured.

Performance Max (PMax) campaigns can yield fantastic or unpredictable results. For e-commerce brands with enough creative assets and a product feed, PMax can be highly effective, but it is important to separate brand traffic from PMax to avoid inflated results from branded conversions. Google’s reporting makes it challenging to distinguish these, so using scripts and careful campaign structure is essential.