While there are a lot of mistakes that you can make when it comes to PPC Mistakes, most of them can be easily fixed. This is especially the case when it comes to the most common. With time, effort, and a certain amount of awareness you can optimise your strategy and get a higher ROI. You can also attract higher-quality conversions. Below, we discuss five of the most common mistakes that Singapore marketers make when it comes to PPC Mistakes as well as how you can fix them.
1. Remarketing that is too general
A big mistake that Singapore marketers make is not being specific with their remarketing lists. In many cases, they create lists that are too general and not properly segmented. For instance, it’s not a good idea to remarket your brand ad to all the users who visited your site within the last 20 days. This is too broad to make a meaningful impact.
If you happen to notice that visitors have read a certain article on your website, then you should focus on giving these particular readers some added value in your campaign for retargeting. These readers are clearly show interest in that page. So rather than retargeting these individuals with general ads, show them ads that are specific to the article.
In other words, you shouldn’t put all of your focus on quantity. Instead, you should think about quality and segment your audience. This way, your value propositions will be tailored specifically to their needs.
2. Optimising for hard conversions instead of soft ones
PPC marketers sometimes make the mistake of optimising for actions that are at the bottom of the funnel. This often happens when their campaign does not have enough traffic or a large enough budget to create conversions. The better strategy is to optimise for the soft conversions. This means that you need to encourage people to take actions that are at the top or middle of your funnel. You can then gather enough data to create predictions and a strategy based on which individuals are the most likely to move further down your funnel.
For example, if your goal is to generate leads for demo sessions with a sales expert, then you will have the challenge of scaling your bottom-of-funnel conversion. One approach would be to optimise your landing page for certain events. In this case, you would focus on the individuals who take high engagement action on your page–perhaps they watch your video, show high scroll rates or spend a long time on your site. This soft conversion gives you the ability to identify each high-intent user and send higher-qualified customers down your funnel.
3. Ignoring the value of your late conversions
There may be times in which your run campaigns that result in a low CVR. What a lot of Singapore marketers do in this case if close the campaign and consider it as a fail. The problem with this logic is that it does not consider the fact that not every user will convert instantly. In some instances, they may not convert for months.
The process of converting people can be very slow, depending on the type of conversion that you are interested in. So you should avoid focusing on immediate value. You need to take your late conversions into account and avoid closing your campaigns prematurely. Try testing your data with larger conversion windows.
4. Avoiding the bigger picture
If you’re a PPC marketer who is running their campaigns on several different platforms, then its likely that you are analysing each separately. And that’s because there are no single trackers that cover every channel. This means that you will never know where each impression view happens. In this regard, every PPC platform has its own ecosystem but you should never lose sight of the bigger picture.
If you’re running a campaign on Instagram and your CTR is low don’t completely discount the impact that it could be having on your Google brand campaign. The user may not have clicked on your Instagram link, but the exposure that Instagram users had to the post may have helped when they saw your ads in Google search.
So never underestimate cross-channel effects. Optimise your campaigns apart from each but always consider the bigger picture. Closely monitor your video impressions and pay attention to what effect they are having on your other campaigns. You can also add native advertising to cross-channel efforts so that you can increase your ROI.
5. Mismanaging your exclusion lists
Exclusion lists are extremely important. What’s so great about exclusion lists is that they allow you to focus on new acquisitions. However, it can be challenging for PPC marketers when it comes to moving away from exclusion that is cookies-based to an exclusion strategy that is more dynamic.
If you are in the B2B world and your sales department has already closed a deal with a certain client, then you need to exclude the client’s employees from the retargeting list. Linkedin makes it easy to exclude employees from certain companies either by its out-of-the-box targeting or by uploading ABM exclusion lists to the platform. However, it’s not so easy on other platforms. But still, there are ways that you can do this. For instance, you can create an exclusion list that is IP-based and then upload it to your Google display or search campaign. This makes it easy to exclude employees who work at the company that’s already your client.
If you own an e-commerce store, every time someone purchases a product, you can add them to your database of existing customers. You already have their most important data, such as their name, email address and phone number. Use all of this data in your exclusion lists. If the purchase is a one-time deal, such as a yearly subscription, then create an exclude list of customers who have already made a purchase. You can then focus on your new acquisitions and retarget others with customised offers.
Takeaway
If you are able to properly launch your SEO PPC campaign, then it can result in an astounding amount of success and revenue. However, there are a few things that can act as a roadblock in this process. Luckily, in many cases, these things are easy to fix.
Instead of making your remarketing lists too general, you need to segment your audience so that you can create offers that are tailor made specifically for them. Instead of optimising for hard conversion, take the easier route and focus on getting your audience to take actions at the top and middle of your funnel. Instead of closing a campaign because people aren’t converting instantly, create a bigger conversion window so that your campaign has time to take effect. Rather than focusing on each platform on its own, consider how each affects the success of the other. And finally, make sure that your exclusion lists are set up in a way that makes room for good retargeting practices.
