As a small business owner, you’re busy.  It really goes without saying. You’re likely to be juggling website updates, marketing launches, client meetings and the books.  Hectic.  I get it.

It’s hard to find the time for lunch let alone 15 mins per week to review your Google Ads campaign performance.  But, understanding the traps below and setting some time aside could make all the difference.  And there’s a fab little mobile app which makes it all much easier – I’ll get to that.

MISTAKE #1: STRETCHING A SMALL BUDGET TOO THIN

More often than not, small businesses don’t have a large marketing budget to spend on Google Ads and unfortunately a small budget is easy to quickly burn through without hitting your campaign goals and getting any meaningful insights.

Because of this when working with a limited budget, I recommend building a localised campaign.

Focus on targeting a small radius around your business e.g. 10km.  And include an Ad Schedule.  If your main conversion is phone calls, make sure your campaign is only turned on while your business is open.

Finally, include a small number of keywords. Exact match keywords are often expensive because they’re competitive.  Stay away from these.  Focus on broad match modified keywords because you can benefit from being flexible about where your individual term appears in a matched query.

MISTAKE #2: NOT USING THE RIGHT MATCH TYPES

If the comments above about keyword match types meant nothing to you, you won’t be alone.  Not all businesses are aware that there are different keyword match types.  Match types can make a huge difference to whether or not your ads show up for the right search queries. Understanding the different match type keywords is important to make sure you’re not broadcasting your ads on irrelevant search terms which can turn costly if people start clicking on them.

MISTAKE #3: NOT USING NEGATIVE KEYWORDS

Negative keywords are gold dust!

They save you money by making sure your ads are not being triggered by words or phrases which aren’t relevant to your business.

An example being if you own a small graphic design studio, there’s a chance people could find you by searching “graphic design class” unless you specify otherwise.  Assuming you don’t want people going to your site thinking they can find out about graphic design classes, you would need to add ‘class’ to your negative keyword list.

In the campaign set-up stage, I recommend starting off with around 30-50 negative keywords.  Standard negative keywords that are appropriate to almost every campaign include:

Hire, Hiring, Employment, Employer, Employers, Job, Jobs, Occupation, Occupations, Career, Full-time, Part-time, Resume, Salaries, Recruiter, Pay, Hiring, Training, Learn, Class, Course, Text Book, University, Books, Review, Ratings, Opinions, Information, Articles, Picture, Photos, How to become, How do I, Magazines, Associations, Marketing, Ideas, YouTube.

Post launch, it’s really important to continue to check out the Search Term Report and add negative keywords directly from the report.  All you need to do is select the queries that you don’t want people to find you with and click the ‘add negative keyword button’.  Depending how much traffic you’re getting, I’d recommend doing this every few days as it’ll help you get a better return on investment.

MISTAKE #4: NO CONVERSION TRACKING

Conversion Tracking is crucial.

As a marketer, I love data and results and I’m surprised to see and hear about campaigns set-up without conversion tracking.  Without conversion tracking you’re running blind.  You’re unable to work out which keywords and ads are driving conversions at low costs and optimise around them.

Conversion tracking should be set-up prior to launching a campaign to track sign ups, online enquiries, sales, phone calls or whatever else you need. 

MISTAKE #5: SETTING AND FORGETTING CAMPAIGNS

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. 

-Aristotle

Running is one of my favourite things. I think about Google Ads management like marathon running.  You’re unlikely to be able to register for a marathon, turn up on race day and get a personal best without putting in hours of training.  Google Ads management is the same.  Your campaigns will deliver stronger results if you put in the time to regularly review performance and optimise activity.

Spend at least 15 minutes every week reviewing your campaign performance.  For a busy small business owner, I know finding time to do this can be difficult.  To make it easier, I recommend downloading the Google Ads App on your phone.

You can easily monitor campaign performance like impressions, clicks, click through rate and cost per click; update campaign bids and budgets and pause campaigns from your phone while you’re out and about.

Just be warned, it’s a little addictive.  Before long you’ll be checking it every few hours! These are common mistakes I see but no doubt there are others.  

If you have any comments, thoughts or other topics you’d like me to write about let me know in the section below.