As a small business owner, you may be wearing many hats and have to juggle a lot of different tasks on a daily basis. One area that you can’t afford to neglect is your online presence, and more specifically, your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.

PPC can be a highly successful method of driving visitors to your website and generating leads or sales. However, it is all too simple to make mistakes that cost you a lot of money with little to show for it.

To help you avoid making these mistakes, we’ve compiled a list of the 8 most common PPC management mistakes small businesses make.

1. Not Defining Your Goals

Before you even start setting up your PPC campaigns, you need to take a step back and define what your goals are. What do you want to achieve with your PPC campaigns?

Do you want to produce leads or sales? How can you increase traffic to your website? Boost brand awareness?

Your goals will determine the type of campaigns you run, the keywords you target, and the ad copy you use. Without clearly defined goals, it will be very difficult to measure the success of your PPC campaigns.

2. Not Checking Your Keyword Quality Score

Your keyword quality score is an important metric that can have a big impact on your campaign’s performance.  Quality Score is composed of several factors, including click-through rate (CTR), relevance, and landing page quality.

A high-quality Score means that your ads are relevant to the keywords you’re targeting and that you’re providing a good user experience. This, in turn, will lead to lower costs-per-click (CPCs) and better ad positioning.

On the other hand, a low-quality Score can result in higher CPCs and poor ad positioning. It’s important to regularly check your Quality Scores and make adjustments to your campaigns accordingly.

3. Not Targeting The Right Keywords

In order for your PPC campaigns to be successful, you need to make sure you’re targeting the right keywords. This means choosing keywords that are relevant to your business and have a high enough search volume to justify the investment.

You also need to make sure you’re using the right match type for your keywords. The three main match types are phrase match, broad match, and exact match.

Broad match is the most general and will show your ad for any search that includes your keyword, even if it’s not an exact match. Phrase match is more specific and will only show your ad for searches that include your keyword phrase in the same order. Exact match is the most specific and will only show your ad for searches that exactly match your keyword phrase.

4. Not Creating Separate Campaigns For Desktop & Mobile

With more and more people searching on mobile devices, it’s important that you create separate campaigns for desktop and mobile. This allows you to bid differently for each device and show different ad copy that’s optimized for each platform.

Not creating separate campaigns can lead to a poor user experience, as your ads may not be properly optimized for mobile devices. This can result in lower CTRs and conversions, as well as higher CPCs.

5. Not Excluding Irrelevant Keywords

Even if you’ve carefully selected the right keywords to target, there will inevitably be some searches that are completely irrelevant to your business. If you’re not excluding these irrelevant keywords from your campaigns, you’re wasting money on clicks that will never convert.

To make sure you’re only targeting relevant keywords, use negative keywords in your campaigns. Negative keywords allow you to exclude certain words or phrases from your targeting. This ensures that your ads are only shown for searches that are relevant to your business.

6. Not Optimizing Your Landing Pages

Your landing pages play a critical role in the success of your PPC campaigns. Once a user clicks on your ad, they’re taken to your landing page where they should be able to easily find what they’re looking for.

If your landing pages aren’t optimized, you’re likely losing a lot of potential customers. Make sure your landing pages are relevant to the keywords you’re targeting and include a clear call-to-action (CTA).

7. Not Testing & Tweaking Your Ads Regularly

It’s important to regularly test and tweak your ads in order to improve their performance. Try different ad copy, call-to-actions, and landing pages to see what works best for your business.

8. Not Tracking Your Results

Finally, it’s important that you track your results so that you can see what’s working and what isn’t. Look at your CTRs, conversion rates, and CPCs on a regular basis and make changes to your campaigns accordingly.

By following these tips, you can avoid making common small business PPC management mistakes and create a campaign that is much more likely to generate a positive ROI.