Paid media can be a beast. There are so many variables for what makes or breaks a campaign. Semrush gave a list of 12 common mistakes made when it comes to paid advertising. We can’t fit them all, so we wanted to list the top 6 big fudges that we see in paid ad campaigns that aren’t doing it for clients.
- One and done ad sets: Two big variables in ads are creative and copy. If you aren’t testing out different ad sets with different words or visuals, you could be throwing money at something that isn’t working over and over again.
- Leaning too much on search engine settings: Smart campaigns and default settings are great to try, but they might not be in your campaign’s best interest. While they are easy, automatic settings aren’t always going to help your goals.
- Ignoring competitors: If you aren’t seeing what competitors are doing, how are you standing apart? See what keywords they are bidding on and if they are worth exploring your brand as well.
- Not knowing what to bid on: Now, bidding strategies are a whole world of their own. Determine your goals and then find your best bidding strategy to support them.
- Driving traffic to irrelevant (or icky) content: Listen, your ads are going to be wasted if you’re landing page is bad. And if you aren’t directing traffic to content that aligns with the intentions of a user, they’re gonna bounce.
- Not enough testing!: Unfortunately, paid ads are rarely a 100% hit. There’s going to be some misses, or some slow burns, along the way. You have to continuously test to see how you can influence ad performance.
Read Semrush’s full blog post for the rest of the goofs you could be making with your paid advertising.
