Tips from a Top Google AdWords Management Service

Starting a Google AdWords account can be a daunting task. Many business and websites owner simply do not know where to begin. As Google AdWords consultants, we hear the fears of many business owners. The central theme is wasting their marketing budget by making mistakes. Since Google AdWords is highly customizable, you can tailor it to fit your exact business goals. But with all these levers to pull, comes an increased risk of wasting your advertising budget. If you are unfamiliar with Google AdWords or PPC in general, it can be all too easy to waste money on unnecessary campaigns or channels. A Google AdWords management service can be of great help here. They can use their expertise to target the correct keywords or audiences, putting your marketing budget to the best use.

If you are just starting a campaign and not working with a Google AdWords consultant, I will do my best to go over the common pitfalls. Keep in mind this does not cover all possible mistakes, but merely the most common ones we see.

Common mistakes I’ve seen as a Google Adwords Consultant

Giving up too much control to Google

Google is making it easier and easier to get started with AdWords. With the implementation of their smart campaigns, you can have a campaign up and running quicker than ever. These are now available on the Search, Shopping, and Display networks. But with this ease of use comes a lack of control. Don’t get me wrong; these campaigns can work wonders for individual accounts, but can also waste your ad spend. Using these campaigns, you will have no control over your audiences, keywords, device adjustments, demographics, and other factors. Basically, you are hoping that Google finds the perfect traffic for you. Unfortunately, this isn’t often the case.

Using Pure Broad Match ( without knowing how to control it)

A pure broad match is a broad match type keyword without a “+” to modify the exact words. This means that Google will match whatever it thinks is relevant to the terms. (we have a more in-depth article on match types here: Different Match Types in Google AdWords Explained)

This sounds good in theory, but Google will match you to terms that are not remotely relevant. If you are not mining the search terms report daily, you might find you wasted all of your ad spend on unrelated words! For this reason, we recommended sticking with Exact match, Phrase match, and Broad Match Modified keywords. If you are working with a Google Adwords consultant, then you can test out pure broad terms to find new search queries and keywords. But this must be used sparingly.

Setting High Campaign Budgets

With billions of searches a day, Google makes it very easy to lose money. Many advertisers set their campaign budgets way too high at first. Then come back to their account a day to a few days later and find the spending to be much higher than anticipated. What you must understand is that the campaigns are daily, not monthly budgets. Google can also spend up to double this budget in one day. For this reason, we prefer to set low campaign budgets. Then let the campaigns hit budget caps and slowly bring the spend up.

These three mistakes are the most common we see with new or even old accounts. Please review these items if you are just starting on Google Adwords. And proceed with caution if you are not using a Google Adwords management service.