Google Adwords is an invaluable tool for any company trying to generate interest and leads through digital advertising. The online tool let’s anyone add, track, and customize online advertising campaigns, but it’s complexities sometimes leave marketers and business owners confused and longing for better results.

Here are 6 common mistakes businesses run into when creating and managing an AdWords campaign.

1. Location and Geo-Targeting

A simple misunderstanding about how Google’s location specific searches work can cause AdWords campaign issues: Google will identify your location and consider it whether you include your location in your search or not. That means whether you look up “grocery store Providence, RI” or just “grocery store”, you will still see local results that are nearest to you.

2. Non-specific keywords

Targeting ads for broad keyword searches is one of the most common and damaging mistakes you can make in your AdWords campaign. Let’s say you run a lemonade stand. If your AdWords campaign targets the keyword “lemonade”, people searching for Beyonce’s critically acclaimed album “Lemonade” might see your ad… Even worse, if they happen to click on it, you pay for it! Similarly, if you’re managing an Adwords campaign for a record store and you target the keyword “records”, you’ll end up wasting money on clicks from searchers looking for Guinness World Record, and so on. You’d be better off targeting longtail keyword phrases such as “fresh local lemonade” or “vintage record store”. That way, you minimize the amount of money spent on clicks from completely irrelevant searches.

3. Sending conversions to the wrong place

Many AdWords campaigns advertise a specific product, service, or offer, but still send the viewer to the company’s homepage. Let’s say you run a landscaping business and you want to advertise your snow removal services for an upcoming storm. Your AdWords ad says “Don’t get stuck shoveling this storm, XYZ Landscaping is offering snow removal at a 10% discount for new customers!” You’re sure to get tons of clicks, but if the clickers get sent to your homepage rather than your separate page for snow removal services or a landing page to redeem that special offer, they’ll most likely exit your website immediately because it doesn’t match the ad.

4. Not using negative keywords

Finding out which keywords are not leading to conversions is almost as important as finding out which ones do, because you can end up wasting a lot of money on an AdWords PPC campaign if you don’t exclude the keywords that never convert. You can use Google Analytics to find out more about which search clicks aren’t converting and then add those words to your negative keywords list to exclude them in the future.

5. Not tracking/optimizing enough

AdWords is not a set-it-and-forget-it marketing solution. It takes constant monitoring, tweaking, and maintenance to make a PPC campaign successful. Consistently check on and analyze your results to see which campaigns are working and which aren’t so that you can optimize your online advertising. Focus on perfecting your campaigns to get the most clicks and conversions as well as lowering your cost-per-click.

6. Expecting too much

Pay-per-click advertising isn’t the end all be all solution for getting leads. However, it can be an effective supplement to the other marketing strategies you should be using to drive leads.

How many of these common AdWords mistakes are you making in your PPC campaigns? If you need professional help creating, managing, or optimizing your AdWords campaigns, visit our website and find out how our expert PPC account managers can get you quality leads with digital advertising.