Top 5 Most Common Mistakes in Google Ad Accounts

I’ve been in the search engine marketing space for just over six years, and I that time I’ve had the opportunity to perform account audits based on my knowledge & experience in the field. As you can imagine, there are common mistakes I’ve noticed across many of these accounts. To preface, I’d like to say that every account is different and that none of these are absolutes. They are common situations that I’ve noticed that may hampered your ability to drive revenue for your client. Without further ado, let’s get to it:

Lack of Smart Bidding Automation

What it is

Automation utilizes more than 200 signals to serve your ad to your ideal customer. 

Why its important

Because of this, and because the search engine marketing world is moving into a fully automated world, using automation is more important than ever. There are a variety of unique opportunities for automation, but the most common I’ve seen and experienced include:

• Enhanced Cost Per Click
• Maximize Conversions
• Maximize Clicks
• Target Cost Per Acquisition
• Target Impression Share
  

I won’t go into the details of each, as I’m sure there are many articles online that go into specifics, but I want to share the specific things I’ve learned with each bucket:

Enhanced Cost Per Click:

1. This is perfect for lower budget client because there is KPI threshold (target CPA, for example, needs each campaign to have 15 conversions the last 30 days to opt in).
2. It’s a hybrid of manual cost per click bidding and smart bidding, so you still control the centerpiece of the price that you’re willing to pay. Because of this, I’ve found this is a great first step for any clients that may be hesitant to dive right into automation.
3. It’s low risk; you may see performance fluctuate a bit, but in general my experience is that performance is similar to manual bidding.

Maximize Conversions & Maximize Clicks:

1. In my experience, these two methods give free rein to Google’s smart bidding automation which can be risky. While I believe each of these accomplish what they are set out to do, they often lead to extreme increases in costs per click that can derail account performance if proper precautions are not on place (campaign budget caps & max bid limits, specifically). The increase in cost makes me believe that smart bidding is very confident that this click will be worthwhile, but if these expensive are not so, it can hurt performance. it will be important to think about all the pros & cons before opting into these bid strategies. 

Target Cost Per Acquisition & Target Impression Share:

1. These are more refined versions of maximize conversions & maximize clicks. These bid strategies allow you to set your cost per acquisition target or impression share target, then smart bidding will do the rest. There are a couple things to be careful of; setting the target too low will hinder your ability to serve ads and setting the target too high may impact performance. My recommendation would be to set an aggressive, albeit realistic, target (whether higher or lower) and then analyze performance and make changes accordingly. 

Keyword Parity & Tiered Spending

1. I recommend every account utilizes unique versions of the same keyword (I prefer an exact, broad match modified, and broad variation of each keyword). I believe it is important to use these variations to maximize your keyword coverage to ensure that you don’t miss out ad serving to potentially valuable user. I know this may seem like overkill, but I think it is best to be safe than sorry.
2. In terms of spending, this setup can help ensure you are spending in within the highest intent keyword groups (exact & broad match modified) before expanding into lower intent keyword groups like broad. I recommend spending in exact match first, then in broad match modified or phrase, and lastly in broad match though this may vary by client. 

Low use of Negative Keywords:

1. Negatives will limit your keywords from matching to irrelevant queries. You can add as exact, phrase, or broad. To be honest, this is the most frustrating mistake I see. I have seen many clients have little to no use of negative keywords which allows broad & broad match modified keywords to match to irrelevant queries including other companies, queries in a different vertical (for example if a client has a similar brand name as another company in a different vertical), long-tailed queries looking for information looking for the wrong thing (for example, your client a takeout restaurant trying to drive orders and your ad matches to “how to order takeout from a restaurant”.

Ad Copy That Does Not Follow Best Practices:

1. Ad copy that adheres to Google Ads best practices will help give Google’s algorithm the best opportunity to serve the ideal ad to each user. As a quick overview, here are the three main ad copy best practices:

1. Optimize your ad rotation. Optimizing your ad rotation will allow the system to serve the ideal ad for the specific circumstances of each auction.
2. Implement 3-5 ads with one responsive search ad per ad group. The more relevant ads that are present in an ad group, the more options you’ll have for success in an auction. You’ll also be more likely to match what somebody’s searching for.
3. Implement at least 3 extensions for each campaign/ad group. At the time of each auction, your ad unit will be assembled with the most appealing extensions. More eligible extensions give your ads more opportunity to meet users’ specific needs.

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It can be difficult to truly identify the effectiveness of ads because each ad will perform differently based on the ad group, and not every ad group has enough volume behind it to determine if they ad is effective. Since that can be a challenge, I believe it is critical to follow those top three rules to set your accounts up for success.

Limited Use of Extensions

Ad Extensions are a great way to provide the user additional context into your client’s offerings, what makes you different, & how you can be beneficial to them. In addition, the more prominent your ad extensions, the more real estate your ad will take up on the results page, thus driving down competitor advertisers so the user is more likely to click on your ad. Here are some of the ad extensions available that I’ve used:

1. Location Extensions
2. Call Extensions
3. Callout Extensions
4. Sitelink Extensions
5. Structured Snippets Extensions
6. Image Extensions

If your client is able to use all of these ad extensions, I recommend using as many as you can. It is possible that an ad extension will not perform as you would like, but you can adjust, pause, or delete, based on your client’s needs.

Hopefully these insights were helpful to you and for driving client performance!