A good PPC campaign can be a great way to generate leads, likes, and sales. However, many people are left disappointed when their PPC campaign doesn’t quite work out as they hoped.
In fact, people often complain that there is no return on investment at all!
Here’s the thing. Most of the time, when PPC campaigns don’t work properly, it’s not because PPC doesn’t work. Instead, it’s because the campaign has not been set up correctly.
So let’s look at five reasons why your PPC campaign is not working.
5 Reasons Why Your PPC Campaign Isn’t Working + How to Fix Them
Not everybody can get their PPC campaign right the first time. If you don’t know what you’re doing or where your campaign is failing, here are a few reasons to analyze and fix the issues.
1. Your Keywords Are Too Broad
Keywords are the foundation of every PPC campaign, so you need to make sure that you do it right from the start.
If you select a broad keyword, you will receive higher traffic because the search volume of broad keywords is high. However, the drawback here is that you will get more irrelevant traffic because they are generally not looking for what you are offering — therefore, there will be more click-throughs but fewer conversions.
For example, if you are a real estate company running a PPC campaign for selling apartments in Houston, using broad keywords like ‘Real Estate Agent in Houston’ will increase the number of irrelevant clicks on your ads — thereby increasing the cost per click (CPC) and decreasing your click-through rate (CTR).
How to Fix This Issue?
To avoid this situation, you need to ensure that the keywords you’re bidding on will only trigger an ad when someone is searching for something related to your product or service.
So how do you find the right keywords? It’s pretty easy. First off, you have to know the goal for your campaign and the target audience you’re planning to land. Based on these two criteria, you can narrow down your ad copy to a specific product and specific group of people — that allows you to reduce your CPC and increase ROI.
From the previous example of a real estate agency, the keywords should be specific and related to the target audience and the product, like Apartments in Houston, 2 BHK for Sale in Houston Montrose, etc.
2. Your Keywords Aren’t Matching with Your Landing Page
You need to remember that PPC ads are just like any other form of advertising. So you need a consistent experience when moving from the ad to your landing page.
The problem is that most people assume that their homepage is the best landing page for their business when in reality, it isn’t.
If a potential customer clicks on your ad, they want more information about the product or service you offer. And if the keywords don’t match your landing page, it creates a divide between what you promised in the ad and what you deliver on the landing page.
Also, when your landing page does not match the search term, you will get high click-through rates but low conversions. Ultimately this will hurt your Quality Score and your ad rank as well.
How to Fix This Issue?
Make sure to link to the exact product or service pages you’re mentioning in the ad. Even a slight mismatch in the color, feature, or model of the product may lead to a loss in conversions. You can also try to include all the keywords you bid on within your landing page content.
3. You Don’t Have Negative Keywords
Negative keywords are important for the success of a PPC campaign. Negative keywords ensure that your ads aren’t triggered by keywords unrelated to your advertised product. These are essential to keep your ad budget from getting blown on clicks that aren’t relevant to your business.
How to Fix This Issue?
The key to finding negative keywords is to review your search terms regularly, especially when you first launch a campaign or add new keywords. You can usually find these by reviewing the Search Terms report in AdWords and adding irrelevant terms as negatives.
For example, if you’re selling blue and white striped t-shirts, you may want to use the keyword “blue and white striped men t-shirt” in your campaign. If you don’t have negative keywords, you may waste money on people searching for “blue and white striped t-shirt kits” or “blue and white striped t-shirt fabric.”
You can get the help of your PPC agency to find these negative keywords and make the most of them.
4. You Have Missing Ad Extensions
Ad extensions are additional information that appears with your ad that informs searchers about products and services. What makes ad extensions so great is that they can help advertisers increase click-through rates by providing more detail and information about the advertised product.
In Google AdWords, the extensions allow you to show additional information about your business and your ads like location, phone number, reviews, and more.
Not having the right ad extensions in place can be detrimental to your PPC efforts. In other words, if you’re not using ad extensions with your PPC advertising campaign, you’re leaving money on the table.
How to Fix This Issue?
Make use of all available extensions in your ad. Always check if there are missing extensions in your account, like:
- Site links: make it easier for people to navigate your website by adding additional links to your ad.
- Call extensions: add a phone number that will be visible on your ad.
- Review extensions: show off any positive reviews about you or your business.
- Callout extensions: highlight your business features or promotions in short sentences.
- Sitelink extensions: give people more options for where they’ll land on your site when they click your ad.
- Structured snippet extensions: use these to showcase a specific aspect of your business, product, or service (e.g., “Locations,” “Brands,” etc.).
You can get the help of a PPC advertising agency to fill out all of the necessary extensions.
5. You Follow the Same Set of Ad Strategies From Years Ago
Many make the mistake of sticking to the same ad campaign format and strategy that worked many years ago. This is a wise move if you’re targeting the same audience with the same product and following the strategy used only a few weeks ago. But for any other scenario, it rarely works.
How to Fix This Issue?
Remember that the same ad may perform great for one audience but poorly for another.
The best solution for this issue is to run A/B tests on multiple ads and determine which ones perform the best. This way, you can create ads that get a higher click-through rate and lower bounce rate. You can also analyze your metrics of the last few campaigns, analyze the user behavior, and craft a PPC campaign relevant to the current situation.
Wrapping Up
Are you planning to run a PPC campaign for your business? Reach out to our Houston PPC agency to strategize and create a strong ad campaign that increases CTR as well as ROI.
