Paid advertising, when implemented correctly, can be a highly effective strategy for growing your business. And being able to lay your paid advertising campaign on the autopsy table and look at it for what it is can be a huge eye-opener for many businesses. So, if you are keen to know why your ads aren’t performing as well as they should, keep reading to avoid common advertising pitfalls.
1. Too many keywords
The first thing businesses need to realize about paid advertising is that you have to pick the right keywords for it to succeed. Otherwise, you will be spending your money on people searching for the wrong things.
There are so many keyword options for every term that it is quite easy to go overboard. And the problem is that the more keywords you use, the more you have to pay. Since only 12% of all your keywords help with conversions, having too many keywords will prevent you from making your ads specific to only the best potential leads.
2. Poor ad copies
Advertising copywriting is an art that requires you to master hooking the reader with words so that they stay on your site long enough to buy something. If your ads are getting impressions but no clicks, it could be because your ad copy isn’t working its magic.
So, how do you write an effective ad?
Well, for one thing, you need to avoid clichés and anything that sounds too obvious. It should consider its target audience smart. But with that, your copy must be designed to outsmart the audience by answering questions before they pop into your potential customers’ minds.
You must also avoid being overly pushy. The copy should be able to suggest a solution to your prospect’s problem without sounding too eager to make a sale.
3. Poor landing pages
Landing pages are a powerful sales tool made for making sales. But if you are experiencing low conversions but a high click-through rate, it could be because your landing pages aren’t optimized for the right user experience.
Begin by auditing the flow of the content on the landing page. It should be conversational – almost in a way that makes you address a key problem and offer a solution before the customer asks for it.
You can also analyze the layout of the page and how user-friendly the check-out process is to know how easily the prospects are able to buy from you. These insights can help you design a better landing page.
4. Unmeasurable results
It doesn’t matter how good you are at advertising, if you don’t measure the results, you will never know how you are performing in the market.
Yet, countless businesses never measure or track the performance of their campaign. They have some vague notions of reach and awareness and work on guesstimates. They assume that if they run enough ads, they will sell a lot of products.
But the truth is that there is no magic number of ads. In fact, the more money you spend on ads, the less money you are making at the end of the day. So, if you are struggling to succeed at running paid ads, start utilizing a data-driven approach to get better results.
5. Not optimizing ads
If you are not looking to unlock the true potential of paid ads, simply set and forget your goals. Your advertising tool will do the rest and give you mediocre results for your investment. But if you really want to take advantage of your budget, you need to keep making changes to your ads based on the data you receive every day. This will not only allow you to get the best ROI but also ensure that your ads are as relevant for your target audience as they can be.
6. Working without goals
Advertising works when the goal is clear. Without well-defined goals, advertising is irrelevant and nothing more than a waste of money. Moreover, once you have goals, you can strategize how to achieve them.
For instance, if you want to increase your brand exposure, you will have to configure your ads to utilize as many keywords as possible to reach as many people as you can. But if your campaign’s goal is to make more sales, you can optimize your keyword list to reach only those customers who have the highest potential for getting converted.
7. Unclear CTA
Your call to action should literally tell people what action you want them to take on your website. A well-defined CTA always performs better than a poorly crafted one. So, your CTA shouldn’t be vague like “learn more” or “click here.” You must ensure that they are something specific like “get a free demo” or “start your 7-day trial now” or even “buy now at 50% off.”
8. Limited budget
There is a reason why the internet is not considered an equal-opportunities platform. Businesses with more money regularly triumph over those with limited resources. If your business cannot afford to run the minimum required amount of ads, you will never see the desired results.
With that in mind, you should know that optimizing the budget is key to any successful ad campaign. So, if you do possess the kind of investment needed to run a basic ad campaign, ensure that you work with a qualified ad agency that knows how to get you your penny’s worth.
9. Insufficient advertising duration
Advertising doesn’t work the way most businesses think it does. It doesn’t exist to make sales. The primary purpose of ads is to remind your ideal customer segment about your existence frequently.
An average ad converts after it has been seen at least seven times by a customer. That means you have to keep exposing your target audience to the campaign for a few weeks before getting a response from them. But countless businesses still take down their ads before even allowing them to establish a connection with the target buyer, and therefore, end up failing at paid advertising.
10. Not diversifying ad channels
Just like a good crypto portfolio, ads also require diversification. You can’t rely on one channel to generate all the results for you. Spreading your budget over various channels with a different set of pros will help you reduce the risk of failure as well as help you yield more for your buck.
If you are still curious to know why your paid ad campaigns aren’t working, ring us up and let one of our expert ad people take a look at your ad strategies and improve them.
