How avoiding the simple mistakes can make your ads more effective

Using the wrong keyword match types

One of the most critical areas of Google Ads is keywords. There are three sub-categories of keyword match types: ‘broad’, ‘phrase’ and ‘exact’.

Many marketers or their strategists only use broad match keywords, which means your ads will show up on searches that relate to your keyword in any order. This is an easy way for your ad to garner a lot of impressions, but it doesn’t guarantee conversion — because how likely is it that each person searching that keyword is a potential customer?

Ensure you’re also utilising phrase and exact match keywords, which are progressively more specific. Though your overall impressions will be lower, you’ll have a better chance at customer conversion.

Running ad copy without testing it first

Whether you’ve got one set of copy per ad group or dozens of variations, it’s crucial to compare what copy works and what doesn’t. Google Ads allows you to do this directly in a campaign’s ‘Experiments’ section. You can quickly run numerous variations of an ad simultaneously for several weeks and then compare the results.

Over time, you’ll know what phrases and setups provide the best results and you can replicate this for future campaigns.

Ignoring negative keywords

Just as it’s essential to add relevant keywords to your ads, you also want to add negative keywords to your campaigns. These are words or phrases that, when searched, will exclude your ad from showing up in the results — a crucial way of protecting your brand reputation and curating customer conversions.

Expanding your negative keyword list will help filter out customers you know aren’t a match for your product, giving you a better return on the ads you run.

Read the full Entrepreneur article here.