How to Avoid the Main Mistakes When Optimizing Advertising Campaigns in 2024

Beginner marketers and entrepreneurs just starting to promote their online businesses often make common ad mistakes that drain their budgets. Indeed, learning from your own mistakes is OK. But let's agree that learning from others’ failures is much more efficient. To avoid the pitfalls most beginners make, let’s discover the most common mistakes шт optimizing and running Google Ads campaigns.

Mistake 1: Not tracking your conversions accurately

Your conversion goal might not matter a lot here. Instead, figuring out if your Google Ad spend is paying off is crucial. To achieve this, track your conversion. But ensure to avoid two of the most common mistakes:

• Incorrectly tracking multiple conversion settings
• Tracking non-conversion events as if they were conversions

Let’s focus on these pitfalls in more detail.

Incorrectly tracking multiple conversion settings

While some businesses can do it efficiently, others (like B2B and SaaS) shouldn’t view many calls or form submissions from one client as multiple conversions. It’s especially true for businesses that work with high-paying clients and must ensure the conversion tracking reflects their performance as accurately as possible.

Tracking non-conversion events as if they were conversions

Things like the time users spend on your page, page views, button clicks, downloads of the ungated content, and submissions of support forms don’t lead to conversions. So tracking them this way doesn’t bring the desired result. Moreover, it messes up budgets for ad spending.

However, it doesn’t work in cases when the goal of your conversions is brand awareness. In this situation, track page views and time spent on page metrics as conversions.

Mistake 2: Ignoring negative words

Some keywords are similar to yours but unsuitable for promoting your business. For example, suppose you sell leather sofas. In this case, you should add “buy a pallet sofa” to the list of negative words. Although this keyword fits the general category, people are looking for a specific product that you don't have. Create a list of “minus words” and avoid showing ads to a non-target audience to reduce the cost of advertising. Consider what requests you can add to this list, but don’t turn off ads for actual leads.

Carefully study the relevance of your keywords. Each phrase should match the potential query accurately. Regularly analyze the campaign and update the list of negative keywords, especially if you keep receiving the message, “Your ad group has a keyword that’s a better match for this search.”

Before the promotion, collect a semantic core — a list of keywords suitable for your business. Start collecting keywords from a competitor analysis. This way, you will understand their number and hierarchy.

Mistake 3: Using the default geo-targeting settings for your ads

These settings are in the expanding menu under the Location preferences. Most likely, if you don’t adjust them manually, the default option would be“Presence of interest.” In this case, you will target ads for those interested in them.

However, it doesn’t mean these people will visit your shop, restaurant, or another venue. Therefore, your ads might not reach customers genuinely interested in your products or services.

If you want to avoid it or keep getting a message saying, “The search location doesn't match this campaign's location targeting settings,” change your geo-targeting to “Presence.” This way, your ads will be visible to people in the targeted locations.

Mistake 4: Running ads for irrelevant landing pages

This error occurs when the content of the site a person lands on from an ad doesn’t match the offer in the advertisement. It happens when a person looking for pallet sofas sees them in the ad with a tempting offer to buy a “Quality sofa with a 50% discount.” However, when they get to the store, they only see a catalog of leather furniture. It’s critical to show the same offer in the advertisement and on the website to avoid submitting a Google Ads complaint form.

Mistake 5: Not protecting your branded keywords by trademark

It’s disappointing to see your Google Ads not converting just because your competitors decided to explore your branded keywords and bid on them. Sadly, there’s nothing you can do about bidding. However, you can make it more challenging for them by protecting your keywords with the trademark. Once done, your competitors can’t add your branded keywords to their ads. Also, the Quality Score of such ads decreases due to the irrelevant keywords.

Mistake 6: Avoiding ad campaign automation

If you don’t want to struggle thinking about how to cancel Google Ads account, consider automating your campaigns. It will save you time on tasks requiring precise human investment and attention. Try one of many ad automation tools on the market to see how it can improve your ad campaign efficiency.

How to conduct a website audit with Netpeak Spider

Successful ad campaigns lead new visitors to your website. However, these visitors won’t stay there long if you don’t optimize your platform. To avoid this outcome, conduct regular website audits. Luckily, that’s easy with Netpeak Spider.

Netpeak Spider is a tool for quick and efficient website audits. With its help, you can spot broken links, duplicate pages, faulty meta tags, and other issues. Set your fixing priorities straight as the tool categorizes errors by severity and provides color codes for your convenience.

Try Netpeak Spider to see how easy and efficient a website audit can be!

Check URLs for SEO parameters with Netpeak Checker

Netpeak Checker is another valuable tool for checking all your website links for hundreds of critical parameters. Use it to conduct in-depth and quick website checks. Gain insights to improve your SEO strategy thanks to detailed reports.

Conclusion

With all the recommendations and tools mentioned in this article, you won’t need to close Google Ads account after an unsuccessful campaign. These six tips are a must-have in 2024.

Businesses that ignore the need for such actions may not profit from contextual advertising or spend too much money on their campaigns. Follow these best practices to get new customers from search engines every day. Let's agree: it's better to search for things like “Ads by provider won't go away” than to drain the budget for weeks, struggling to figure out what went wrong.