You have seen it happen way too many times to count. A client comes to you with an ad campaign horror story. They feel PPC marketing services are money grabbing schemes and never want to talk about paid advertising ever again. But then, they want your agency to start generating traffic overnight for them.

How do you tell them they NEED PPC marketing services?

Well, the best way to deal with this is to find out why their PPC strategy failed. After years of hearing their tear-jerking tales of woe, we finally figured out what the most common PPC marketing mistakes are:

Skimping on Bids

This is a classic. You hire a PPC marketing agency, and they show you a pile of charts on how paying less for keywords will help you save money and ultimately give you the best ROI for your campaign.

However, if you low-ball your keyword bids, your ads will not rank quickly enough to yield the vital information you need to properly adjust your PPC campaign (CTR´s, conversion rates, targeting accuracy, and keyword appropriateness). By the time you realize which keywords are performing better, or what landing pages are converting, you would have thrown thousands of dollars down the drain by spending too much on bad keywords (or not enough on good keywords) for months.

You need to OUTBID the average keyword cost right at the beginning of your campaign to quickly determine which keywords yield the most conversions, and which ads must be ditched immediately before it is too late.

CPL Fixation

While keeping an eye on numbers is unavoidable when offering PPC marketing services, there are some metrics that can be deceptive. Focusing solely on Cost-Per-Lead is pretty much like focusing only on your rearview mirror while driving without ever looking at the road ahead.

If your PPC agency is making constant boasts about their cost-per-lead metrics, that should immediately raise red flags for you. Why? Because CPL is a vanity feel-good metric that means nothing if your landing page is working like a bouncy castle.

You can have excellent CPL metrics and still drive your campaign into a ditch. Your ads need to CONVERT. If you want to take that PPC-death star down, you need to turn off the CPL targeting computer NOW.

Terrible Targeting

This goes hand in hand with conversion rates, and the common cause is a poorly or hastily researched buyer persona. Some PPC management services are afraid of billing their customers for research time, so they just whip out a list of keywords and seemingly related industries. Bad idea.

The true power of PPC advertising is the ability to surgically target your intended audience so no clicks go to waste. PPC marketing services MUST include buyer persona research, and provide hard data about it. Ads cost money, and targeting people who are not interested in your products or services will cause tons of clicks (and dollars) to end up in the trash bin.

That takes us to the next two points.

Even Worse Ad Copy

Look, there is a limited amount of characters you can use on your ads. In fact, you have a tiny window of 180 characters and ALL of them must lead users to want to learn more about your offer. Stuffing that space with keywords will make your users feel your ads are generated by bots.

A good ad copy is all about stimulating your customer´s curiosity without interrupting their browsing experience. That’s what makes people stay up late learning about power tools or dentistry equipment while telling themselves “just one more click.” Ad copy must be an experience in itself, and attract audiences ready to fill up forms or subscribe to your newsletter just to stay informed.

Incomplete Sales Funnel

So, you got a ton of clicks but your bounce rates are stuck in the 90%-100% range. Why? Is it because Pay-Per-Click campaigns are not good for your particular niche?

Nope. I assure you that the problem lies in how your landing page is designed. There is a reason landing page design and copy are so expensive (sometimes around a couple of grand per page). When a person enters your page, you have precisely 15 seconds (possibly less, depending on the user) to convince them they need to fill out a form or give you a call, and this can only be achieved by having a carefully crafted landing page or website.

I routinely click on many attractive Google or Facebook ads just to see where they lead me. It is not uncommon to end up on landing pages with so many buttons and options and confusing text that I end up closing the tab in less than 30 seconds.

Understand one thing: if a potential lead clicks on your ad, they might already be holding their credit card information in their hands, and just want to know where to enter it. If they cannot find the way to the checkout, or if they have to take too many steps to convert, they will soon feel like being stuck at the top of a broken roller coaster ride.

These are the most common reasons for failed PPC campaigns. Customers who have had bad experiences with lousy marketing agencies will always be reluctant to try your PPC marketing services. It is our mission to help them understand two things: PPC ads are an incredible way to boost sales and revenue. And that they need to perform a thorough PPC audit before committing to any long-term marketing strategy.