As the New Year approaches, everyone loves to talk about what they are going to do differently, things they want to try, and new habits they want to have. This is what I call; Resolution Vomit. What people don’t talk about as much are the things you shouldn’t be doing as the new year starts, so today I am going to cover some common PPC mistakes you will want to avoid making.
1. Don’t Launch on Friday
Launching new campaigns, ad groups, or rules on Friday is never a good idea. Unless you want to spend your weekend logging onto your computer and compulsively checking performance, which I can’t imagine most of us wanting to do, don’t launch on Friday. This will prevent things from overspending or being live with spelling or grammatical mistakes and not being able to catch it for a few days.
2. Don’t Set and Forget
Another mistake commonly made is to set things live and forget to check how they are doing. This is easy to do when you launch something and check it off your to-do list, but make sure to go back and check performance, that everything is approved, and that it is not overspending. This rule can be worth its weight in gold when you are dealing with campaigns that spend thousands in a few days.
3. Don’t Assume Automated Bidding Won’t Overspend
When using automated bidding strategies such as Maximize Clicks or Maximize Conversions, you can set a daily budget but that does not mean that Google will not spend more than that budget if they think they can get the conversions and evenly distribute the rest of your budget over the rest of the month so you don’t exceed your monthly budget. While this might be true, it is still not a good idea to set an automated strategy and not check back within the next 24 hours. For more info about common automated bidding mistakes, check here.
4. Don’t Be Afraid to Test Automated Bidding
Don’t let the tip above scare you away from trying automated bidding, as a whole, it is a great thing to implement in your accounts. Making the switch from manual bidding to automated bidding can save you the hassle of having to constantly change bids, and can save you a lot of time. Also, Google uses its’ algorithms to find the users that will be most likely to convert or click on your ad, which can be extremely helpful.
5. Don’t Be Scared to Stray Out of the “Google, Facebook, Bing” Box
While running search and display for your clients or your own business in Google, Facebook, and Bing can result in great traffic, don’t limit performance by only using those channels. Channels like LinkedIn, Instagram, AdRoll, Yahoo, Quora, and YouTube all have tremendous potential and advantages depending on the industry and type of business you are running advertisements for. Here are some more ideas for great channels to try in 2020.
