The Mistakes to Avoid When You’re Starting with Google Ads or Facebook Ads

The most common mistakes to avoid when it comes to planning and strategy include:

Not Having an Effective Strategy in Place

It's important to have a strategy in place before you start spending money on Google Ads or Facebook Ads. To avoid this mistake, the Genie Crawl team recommend:

• Have a clear and measurable goal
• Know your audience for effective targeting
• Have a desired action in mind, whether it's boosting sales, awareness, or lead generation

Ineffective Tracking

It's impossible to improve your Google Ads or Facebook Ads without measuring their performance. If you are not tracking your success, then you are running your adverts blind, paying for clicks that don't convert. To avoid this mistake, we recommend tracking:

• Click Through Rate (CTR)
• Cost Per Click (CPC)
• Conversion rate
• Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
• Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

Tracking your campaign effectively, enabling you to make immediate adjustments to boost performance, while identifying non-performing ads so you can allocate your budget effectively.

Keywords and Targeting

Google and Facebook have large audiences with broad interests and ineffective targeting along with inaccurate or non-relevant keywords can lead to wasted spending. To avoid this mistake, we recommend:

• Target your audience based in behaviours, locations, and interests
• Make use of negative keywords and long-tail keywords
• Improve call to actions with action driven text

Adverts and Landing Pages

Low quality landing pages with inconsistent landing pages and ads can have a negative impact on your performance. The focus should be to provide visitors with a seamless and great user experience to improve conversions. To avoid this mistake, we recommend:

• Improve the technical SEO of your website to boost speed and navigation
• Ensure your landing page matches your advert to improve user experience
• Conduct A/B testing to test your creative, finding the advert that will resonate with your audience effectively

Campaign Management

Many business owners set their Google Ads or Facebook Ads and then let them run, forgetting about them. When you rely solely on automated tools without insight, it can be a major mistake, negatively impacting your campaign. As a result, to avoid this mistake, we recommend:

• Monitoring your ad performance regularly, making necessary adjustments as required
• Ensure your ads and website are optimised for mobile, helping you reach your audience that is searching while on the move
• Use ad extensions to gather additional insights to improve your advert performance
• Re-engage with your audience using retargeting campaigns

Conclusion

While Google Ads and Facebook Ads can drive immediate results, you do need to have some knowledge of how the PPC platform runs and how to make the most of your budget, ensuring the best return on investment. The Genie Crawl team have listed the most common mistakes to avoid when you're starting with Google Ads or Facebook Ads. We are also here to help you achieve the best from your campaigns. Genie Crawl is the Number 1 rated SEO and Google Ads marketing agency, backed by over ten years experience. Contact us now to find out more.