Having an advertising budget is essential for most businesses, but how can you be sure that all your money is well spent? Websites and online businesses could end up paying more for competitive keywords in their PPC campaigns or for widespread social media ads.
What’s more, the rules for some of these digital campaigns can change overnight, incurring additional costs without you even realising it. Advertising on the internet can be quite costly if you’re not on the ball, and the results can be unpredictable sometimes.
There are two types of traffic that stem from your advertising campaigns; intended traffic and actual traffic. Intended traffic is the audience you wanted to target according to your strategy. Actual traffic is the audience you get from your ad campaigns, whether you planned to target them or not.
The disparity between intended and actual traffic is a waste of your advertising budget. If your intended audience isn’t showing up, the chances of making sales are greatly reduced. Here’s how you can spot this gap and make changes to your advertising strategy.
Spending money on bad keywords
Paying Google to rank your website for the wrong keywords is more common than you may think. Broad keywords (such as “cars”) tend to be expensive and actually don’t perform well for the advertiser.
Remember, keywords are not the same thing as search terms. A search term is what the user will type into Google, whereas a keyword is what you use to target those search terms. For example, a search term like “men’s shoe shop Cape Town” could have the following keywords: shoes, shoe shop, Cape Town etc.
You need to make sure that your keywords will not trigger the wrong search terms and bring in traffic who are searching for something else. If you have a gap between your keywords and the search terms, you’ll be spending more on your PPC campaign for a disinterested audience.
Spending money on wrong locations
You are able to target audiences in specific regions or countries through Google AdWords. If you have the wrong location settings, you will be wasting budget to trigger adverts in other countries.
Sometimes your keywords can trigger ads to users in far away places. Using the example above for “men’s shoe shop Cape Town”, someone searching for a Cape Town backpacking holiday could see your link in the search results. This is an example of actual traffic that is not intended.
You can check your location settings to see in which regions your ads will appear. Here, you’ll be able to turn off the ads to people searching for your location, rather than those who actually live there. This can be a waste of your budget if your traffic comes from countries where you do not operate.
Targeting the wrong networks
Like location settings, your network targeting settings can be incorrect (the default settings often lead to bad targeting for your website). Go through your network targeting settings thoroughly and pay attention to the details. Make sure you are targeting only the intended networks.
In Google AdWords, you can click on the Segment dropdown list to reveal the Network option. This will show you what networks your campaigns will be shown to, and you can adjust the settings accordingly.
To conclude, a large portion of your advertising (PPC) budget could be sending you the wrong traffic. This means the money spent is unlikely to result in any conversions. Don’t overspend unknowingly because of some minor details in the settings.
Remember, not only do you have to optimise your content and your website to attract the right audience, you also have to optimise your campaigns to exclude the wrong audience. Keep an eye on your data and analytics for clues as to where your audience is coming from and if they are your indented target market.
___
Discover the latest trends and tips that shape an ever-evolving digital world.
___
Mobimeme offers content marketing, SEO, analytics, social media management and expert direction in the digital sphere. Building and growing an online audience for your business is what we do best. Get in touch with us to find out more about our package offerings and how you can improve your website and following.
___
Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Google+ for more articles, videos and content to keep you inspired.