PPC ads are a great way to generate qualified leads for your business.

It is true that SEO is a long-term traffic solution that is more reliable and cost-effective. However, at the same time, you can’t deny the power and positive impact of Google AdWords. Many online entrepreneurs and webmasters recommend forming a combination of SEO and PPC to kickstart your online business.

However, PPC isn’t cheap. And if you do it wrong, there is every chance it will hurt your marketing budget. Moreover, there are many important aspects of PPC that you will have to pay attention to. 

In this post, we are going to discuss several Google AdWords tips to help you achieve better success. Furthermore, I’ll also mention a few very common Google AdWords mistakes that you can easily avoid.

Let’s see what these tips are.

1. Understand the Customer Buying Cycle


We start with the most important tip.

Understand the customer buying cycle. Without it, you will never be able to optimize your Google AdWords results.

You see, one of the main concepts of PPC ads is to show the right information to the right audience at the right time. You can give yourself an edge by understanding how your customers are shopping.

Generally, there are five phases of your funnel or customer buying cycle. The important part is that in each of the different stages, your customers ask different questions and, therefore, seek different answers. Your PPC ads should be able to provide the relevant answers for each different phase.

The following image will help you understand these five different phases of a customer buying cycle.

So, for instance, if your customer is still in the first phase of the buying cycle, a hard sales pitch would be a bad idea. Similarly, if you start comparing your products with those of your competitors, it won’t work in the first two phases. You need to take it step by step.

2. Focus on Retargeting

According to Baymard, 70% of buyers will abandon a shopping cart.

This is a huge percentage of potential buyers who will not buy from your right away. Now, the problem with most online marketers is that they just let them go. It is a huge mistake. You simply can’t let go 70% of your prospective buyers. You need to work something out to bring them back.

This is where “retargeting” comes in.

In simple words, retargeting is when you show your ads repeatedly to the audience who once visited your website but didn’t buy anything from you.

The trick here is to customize your ads — in accordance with the buying cycle I described earlier — and make your audience rethink their decision of not buying from you.

First, you will have to identify the reason why they didn’t buy. You can easily do that by tracking their behavior or simply by studying your own business plan.

Is your price too high? Do you not offer a free trial like your competitors? What is it that your target audience is saying about it?

Don’t be afraid to take a brief survey and then optimize your Google Ads accordingly.

For example, you can run a normal PPC ad for your general target audience. However, you can customize your ad for “retargeting” and offer a limited-time 50% discount if they act within 24 hours.

This is an excellent technique for at least three reasons:

  • You know that the people who later abandoned their carts had already made up their mind for buying from you. They just didn’t do it for some reason. Cost is often the #1 reason.

  • You are specifically targeting that particular group of people. This means that you are not offering a discount to everyone. That would be useless.

  • By saying the right things at the right time, you are bringing back a group of buyers that was lost otherwise.

Retargeting works. It is as simple as that. There are many case studies that prove the effectiveness of retargeting in PPC ads. 

3. Outsmart Your Competitors

A significant part of your Google AdWords’ success depends on much you perform better than your competitors.

It is a simple trick about outsmarting most of your competitors and gain a definitive edge over them.

Go to SpyFu.com. It is an excellent tool that helps you analyze your competitors’ top-performing keywords in the organic listings as well as the paid listings.

  • Insert your competitor’s website URL in the search box and hit search.

  • Next, you will see an overview of their keyword performance and estimated monthly PPC clicks, right next to the segment that says “Paid Keywords”.

  • Click on the “Paid Keywords” section to see the exact keywords that are generating the most clicks for them.

In theory, you now know which keywords have been the most profitable for them.

Now, you need to improve on it.

I would suggest studying those keywords and — more importantly — their AdWord copies to get a sense of why they have been working for them. Since they are your direct competitors, both of you would be targeting the same audience.

Find ways to improve your ad copy in comparison with your competitors’, and your ads will have an excellent chance to perform better for the same keywords and target audience.

3 Mistakes to Avoid

While these tips will definitely give you an almost unfair advantage over your competitors, you will have to still be wary of any possible mistakes.

There are 3 very common mistakes that you can easily avoid. Here they are:

Mistake #1: Making it Too Complicated

Keep your ads short, concise, and simple.

If you make it too complicated for your readers, it may not appeal to them. Furthermore, when you are targeting a specific buying phase, you automatically need to be concise with it. Short and simple messages are conveyed better.

Here is an example.

It’s simple and conveys all the necessary information that it should do to its target audience.

Mistake #2: Neglecting Your USP

Every business has its own USP (Unique Selling Point). In paid ads, it becomes all the more important.

There would be hundreds of businesses competing with you to grab your potential buyers’ attention. You will have to stand out from the rest of them by doing something special.

One of the most important ways you can do that is by promoting the USP of your business.

Ask yourself, “Why should anyone choose your business over any of your competitors?”.

For instance, if you compare MailChimp with any other email marketing service, you will know that they have their USP clearly defined. They allow you to start with a completely free-forever plan until you have 2,000 email subscribers. This is one of the main reasons why so many startups decide to go with them instead of, say, Aweber or GetResponse.

Determine your USP and promote it on your Google Ads. It will also help you identify the specific group of target audience that you should be targeting.

Mistake #3: Not Paying Attention to the Landing Page

It does not matter how good your Google ads are, if your landing page isn’t optimized, they won’t perform as well as they could have.

This is one of the main reasons why so many Google AdWords campaigns fail — because website owners focus exclusively on ads without paying any attention to the landing pages.

What happens when someone clicks on a paid ad?

They are redirected to a landing page where — supposedly — they purchase your product or service and complete the transaction.

However, if your landing page isn’t optimized, they will stop right there. And since they have clicked on your ad, you will have to pay for it. As a result, you will run out of your marketing budget very soon.

This is why you should optimize your landing page in accordance with your paid ads.

Here are a few tips for you:

  • The ads are there to reel the visitors in. The job of your landing page is to build on it further.

  • Make sure to use the same keywords in the landing page as you did in the ad. Familiarity breeds confidence.

  • The landing page should have a good, strong headline.

  • Ideally, that headline should focus on the USP of your business.

  • The landing page must have a clear goal, and there should be no distractions. Determine your goal — whether it is selling a product, filling out a form, or downloading something — and eliminate all the other distractions.

Here is an example.

As you can see, this landing page doesn’t have any distractions or multiple calls-to-action.

The visitor can only do two things, i.e., either hit the close button to close the window or download the offer you want her to download. The landing page doesn’t have any external link to take off the page either.

For more details on how to create a better landing page to increase conversions, read this article.

Final Words

Running paid search ads can be daunting. However, if you do it the right way, it can be a very lucrative venture. Follow the tips I discussed above and avoid the mistakes I mentioned, and you should be fine.