There are many articles and books about the contextual advertising, as well as training videos and webinars. But our observations show that there are still some casual mistakes that most beginners make when creating the campaign.
Let’s analyze them together, so to avoid making the same mistakes in future.
1. Never turn the ads off at night
Many advertisers are afraid to spend money for nothing and therefore, they sometimes cut off part of the campaign settings to save the budget. Sometimes it is justified, but not in the case going off with ads during nights. The great advantage of the night ads is that after 23:00 the price for clicking can go 2-3 times down, even among the competitive subjects.
Please note: you should mention working hours of the company, which would mean that you will be able to respond to the application the next morning.
2. You do not keep an eye on the competitors
Forewarned is forearmed. We encourage you to learn as much as possible about the advertising campaigns of your competitors. There are many "spy" services that can help you find out what keywords your competitors are using, see the ad text, and snippets of their position in the search results, evaluate their traffic and budget. For instance, Seopult, SaytReport, SpyWords, Advse and many others spy services that can be used for this purpose.
You can also use queries to find the competitors. This little trick will allow you to save the budget, even among highly competitive niches.
3. You set up either Yandex.Direct or Google AdWords
On the campaign planning stage, it is impossible to practically say which platform will give the most traffic. A common mistake is that an advertiser adjusts only Yandex.Direct, because he/she believes it to be a cheaper and conversional platform. This way you can miss up to 50% of your potential orders. You should test campaign to see which platform will be more conversional. After the test, it is likely that you would like to have both of them.
4. You do it manually
There are very few people who do not use automated services for marketing campaigns. Its main purpose to save time and resources of the advertiser.
There are many services that can make life easier for advertisers available on the market: ad management system, automatic control services rates, keyword selection and negative keywords, etc.
5. You do not control the rates
Experienced advertisers check the rates at least once an hour, which allows them to be at the correct position in the search results, along with that they can save enough money. Even if the initial setting went excellent, after some time, unfortunately, some of the parameters will become obsolete and will need to be updated. It will be useful to download special tools, such as Bid Manager.
Many new advertisers use automatic budget rate control offered by the platform. On the one hand, it helps to save some time, but on the other hand using automatic control the campaign budget run out quickly.
6. You do not use analytics
Without having a constant analysis of the results of an advertising campaign it is impossible to achieve some success. First of all, adjust your Google.Analytics and Yandex.Metrix; they are free and allow you to evaluate the performance of the website: the number of visitors, the analysis of traffic sources, user behavior on the website and other features.
Also, don’t forget to use the UTM-marks, which is a reliable tool for monitoring the effectiveness of any advertising campaign on the Internet. If this is what you need for your business, set call tracking: a system that allows to connect incoming calls with content sources.
7. You set the irrelevant landing page
When creating ads, most of the new advertisers provide a link to the home page. Sometimes it is justified, but in most cases you can lose customers by doing this. For example, you are promoting some service from a medical clinic, and in this case it would be better to link it directly to the service page, because not all customers are willing to study the website searching the option.
Conversions and sales are more important than transitions, so you should better only those product services that are on the website. If you write that you have a 40% discount, put this information on the website as well.
8. You are using one ad for multiple requests
The problem is that it is almost impossible to create a general ad. It will not match a user-entered keywords that lead to a low CTR and traffic diversion, and hence to the ineffective campaign. For example, when searching for "beige shoes," a user sees the boots advertisement because online store linked almost all inquiries relating to footwear.
9. You forgot to set up geo targeting
Let's say your store selling TVs is located in Voronezh, and ads are applied for the whole country. The click price in Voronezh for a request "to buy a TV LG» would probably cost 1 ruble, whereas in Moscow it makes 5 rubles. But it is unlikely that someone will go that far to buy the equipment, is it? Thus, in addition to non-target traffic, you still lose money on useless advertising. Show ads only in those cities where your company is located, or where exactly you can offer the delivery service.
If you work in a large number of regions, it makes sense to set up separate campaigns for each region.
10. You did not include negative keywords in your ad campaign
Another mistake, which leads to traffic diversion and inefficient budget spending. For example, your ad says "TV LG 43LH570V». However, you missed the minus keyword "reviews", therefore, even if the users will click on your ad it is likely that no action will be performed from their side. You should makes the negative keywords together with the keywords when editing a campaign.
Let’s analyze them together, so to avoid making the same mistakes in future.
1. Never turn the ads off at night
Many advertisers are afraid to spend money for nothing and therefore, they sometimes cut off part of the campaign settings to save the budget. Sometimes it is justified, but not in the case going off with ads during nights. The great advantage of the night ads is that after 23:00 the price for clicking can go 2-3 times down, even among the competitive subjects.
Please note: you should mention working hours of the company, which would mean that you will be able to respond to the application the next morning.
2. You do not keep an eye on the competitors
Forewarned is forearmed. We encourage you to learn as much as possible about the advertising campaigns of your competitors. There are many "spy" services that can help you find out what keywords your competitors are using, see the ad text, and snippets of their position in the search results, evaluate their traffic and budget. For instance, Seopult, SaytReport, SpyWords, Advse and many others spy services that can be used for this purpose.
You can also use queries to find the competitors. This little trick will allow you to save the budget, even among highly competitive niches.
3. You set up either Yandex.Direct or Google AdWords
On the campaign planning stage, it is impossible to practically say which platform will give the most traffic. A common mistake is that an advertiser adjusts only Yandex.Direct, because he/she believes it to be a cheaper and conversional platform. This way you can miss up to 50% of your potential orders. You should test campaign to see which platform will be more conversional. After the test, it is likely that you would like to have both of them.
4. You do it manually
There are very few people who do not use automated services for marketing campaigns. Its main purpose to save time and resources of the advertiser.
There are many services that can make life easier for advertisers available on the market: ad management system, automatic control services rates, keyword selection and negative keywords, etc.
5. You do not control the rates
Experienced advertisers check the rates at least once an hour, which allows them to be at the correct position in the search results, along with that they can save enough money. Even if the initial setting went excellent, after some time, unfortunately, some of the parameters will become obsolete and will need to be updated. It will be useful to download special tools, such as Bid Manager.
Many new advertisers use automatic budget rate control offered by the platform. On the one hand, it helps to save some time, but on the other hand using automatic control the campaign budget run out quickly.
6. You do not use analytics
Without having a constant analysis of the results of an advertising campaign it is impossible to achieve some success. First of all, adjust your Google.Analytics and Yandex.Metrix; they are free and allow you to evaluate the performance of the website: the number of visitors, the analysis of traffic sources, user behavior on the website and other features.
Also, don’t forget to use the UTM-marks, which is a reliable tool for monitoring the effectiveness of any advertising campaign on the Internet. If this is what you need for your business, set call tracking: a system that allows to connect incoming calls with content sources.
7. You set the irrelevant landing page
When creating ads, most of the new advertisers provide a link to the home page. Sometimes it is justified, but in most cases you can lose customers by doing this. For example, you are promoting some service from a medical clinic, and in this case it would be better to link it directly to the service page, because not all customers are willing to study the website searching the option.
Conversions and sales are more important than transitions, so you should better only those product services that are on the website. If you write that you have a 40% discount, put this information on the website as well.
8. You are using one ad for multiple requests
The problem is that it is almost impossible to create a general ad. It will not match a user-entered keywords that lead to a low CTR and traffic diversion, and hence to the ineffective campaign. For example, when searching for "beige shoes," a user sees the boots advertisement because online store linked almost all inquiries relating to footwear.
9. You forgot to set up geo targeting
Let's say your store selling TVs is located in Voronezh, and ads are applied for the whole country. The click price in Voronezh for a request "to buy a TV LG» would probably cost 1 ruble, whereas in Moscow it makes 5 rubles. But it is unlikely that someone will go that far to buy the equipment, is it? Thus, in addition to non-target traffic, you still lose money on useless advertising. Show ads only in those cities where your company is located, or where exactly you can offer the delivery service.
If you work in a large number of regions, it makes sense to set up separate campaigns for each region.
10. You did not include negative keywords in your ad campaign
Another mistake, which leads to traffic diversion and inefficient budget spending. For example, your ad says "TV LG 43LH570V». However, you missed the minus keyword "reviews", therefore, even if the users will click on your ad it is likely that no action will be performed from their side. You should makes the negative keywords together with the keywords when editing a campaign.
