The 3 Fatal Mistakes of Pay Per Click Campaigns

In this article, I will talk about the 3 most frequent and fatal mistakes done by Pay Per Click (PPC) advertisers. I will also give you some directions for better campaign management. After reading this article, you should have enough knowledge to transform your poor performers or non profitable campaigns to super performers.

I remember when I started my first AdWords Campaign. I was very excited! I read so many things about Pay Per Click that I thought I knew everything and I was sure to make easy profits!

So I picked a product to promote as an affiliate, I used a Keyword software to find keywords with huge monthly search count and I started to bid on them and sent the purchased traffic directly to the merchant's page.

How stupid I was! And I lost a nice amount of money.

Well this is exactly how many beginners proceed and their results are terrible! So terrible that several of them think that this internet marketing thing is a scam and that it doesn't work.

They are right and wrong at the same time. It's not as easy as many gurus tell it is, and this is where the scam is. But if you know how to do it, it does work, and it works pretty well.

1. Having too many different keywords in one adgroup. When you do this you can't have an ad which is relevant to your keywords AND to the destination page at the same time. Relevance is crucial. If you are relevant you will experience high CTR (click through rate), high conversion rate and low priced bids.
   
2. Ignoring the many long tail keywords. You see, Pay per click engines are now very competitive because thousands of marketers bid on the same keywords as you. Cost per click has dramatically increased these last years and it's not rare to have to bid $5 for 1 click. This is why it is crucial to find the long tail keywords. For example if you are promoting a weight loss product, don't bid on the keyword "weight loss"! You would pay a lot if you were to bid on this keyword and you would not make many sales because this keyword is not very targeted. You don't know if the searcher is looking for "weight loss scams", or "weight loss pills" or "weight loss books" or "weight loss natural methods" etc... Bidding on long tail keywords will allow you to pay less per click and to target people looking for what you are promoting.
   
3. But the biggest mistake is without any doubt not tracking to the keyword level. What does it mean? Let's say that you have a break even campaign, ie a campaign where you spend as much money as what you are earning from your sales. Did you know that in general about 90% of your keywords make you lose money? Only 10% are profitable. If you could remove the non converting keywords you would end up with a super profitable campaign.

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