Hi all, thanks to Joel Runyon who runs Impossible: Agency – an online marketing agency specialising in holistic online marketing strategy. I see these Adwords mistakes being made all the time by people so hopefully you can learn from someone who has worked with Billion (B) dollar companies and spent over half a million dollars a month on pay per click campaigns. Also if you are unsure what PPC or Adwords is we have a post for that too – Intro to pay per click with Google Adwords.

I look at a lot of campaigns from people new to Adwords. The common complaint is that they tried it, but it didn’t work and they don’t know why. They’re burned and want to give up on it. As I look through the accounts, it’s usually not a case of the advertising medium being a problem, but rather they jumped into it without knowing what pitfalls could come their way.

These are the top 5 mistakes I see people doing in Adwords.

Pay attention and you’ll save a lot of money and have a much better experience in Adwords.

1.  Not knowing what you want people to do

Every time you send someone to your website, you’re paying for it (PPC literally stands for pay-per-click) so you better have a goal for them once they get to your site. Do you want them to buy a product via your online store? Do you want them to pick up the phone and call? Do you want them to fill out a form? Download some marketing materials? What do you want them to do? Until you know this, and you have a site built around this goal, don’t spend a penny on Adwords – you’ll be wasting your money.

2.  Not having a target CPA (cost per action)

Once you’ve figured out what you want someone to do, you need to figure out how much you’re willing to pay for them to do it. How much is that action worth to you?

Know your numbers!

I’m constantly amazed at how little people actually know about their numbers. They’re not quite sure what they want someone to do and they’re not quite sure what they’d pay for it. I know, I know, these first two points aren’t even Adwords specific information, but anytime you do any sort of marketing, these are the first two questions you need to ask and answer before you start spending money.

3.  Combining search & display campaigns

Google’s Search and Display networks are completely different animals. Click & impression volumes are completely different and expected click-through-rates on each network vary wildly. Google automatically opts your campaigns into both when you first start advertising. Know which network you want to advertise on and uncheck the other box.

If you’re advertising on the Search network, make sure your settings look like this:

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