While there are several PPC strategies for Amazon sellers to try and optimize, it pays to know and avoid budget-draining Google Ad mistakes along the way!
Since Google Ads provide legit, high-quality traffic, Amazon business owners can’t ignore using them to attract more leads and sales. Unfortunately, however, Google Ads have become increasingly complex, and you risk exhausting your budget and hurting the sales performance if you don’t identify and avoid these common mistakes.
5 Costly Google Ad Mistakes Amazon Sellers Should Avoid
Avoid using negative keywords
Negative keywords are crucial in making the most out of your PPC campaigns. They exclude irrelevant search terms from your campaigns. In other words, these keywords stop your ads from being found by these search terms which are not related to your products.
Yet, many people are not confident in using this keyword type, so they avoid them altogether, which can prevent you from reaching the target leads, draw unwanted clicks and exhaust your ad budgets.
It is advisable to start with a standard list of negative keywords that you can find on several paid tools. We recommend using around 50 to 100 keywords. After incorporating these keywords into your negative list, you will likely drive more qualified traffic and filter out searches that are likely to convert.
Once establishing the list, turn to the Search Terms Report to review the search terms that work and which ones don’t. Add the latter to your negative list and keep refining it regularly.
Despite the crucial role of the negative match in optimizing ROI and your campaigns, building a good list of negative keywords can be time-consuming. If you don’t have time for this task, you can turn to a Google ads agency for a helping hand.
Create only one ad variation
It’s surprising to see many advertisers don’t take advantage of the Google Ads Variations feature and stick to only a variation. Even when the ads have the same headline or description, it pays to test different ad variations to determine which one converts better.
If you launch your campaign with one single ad, there’s no way to know how effective it is and how to optimize it. Test at least 3 ad variations for every ad group until you find the top-performing variation.
When there are many ad variations per group, remove low-performing variations and base on the high-performing ads to create new variations by adding subtle changes.
Does not pay close attention to keyword match type
There are five keyword match types that you should be aware of:
- Broad match
- Broad match modified
- Phrase match
- Exact match
- Negative match
Any keywords you add will fall into the broad match type by default. While broad match might help identify keywords to bid on, it can eat up your budget while driving leads or sales.
The problem is that broad matches are significantly broader than you either desire or are aware of. As a result, they will attract irrelevant clicks and drain your money if not properly managed.
Here are some solutions:
Do not entirely rely on broad matches, especially when your products are general, as it could bring in a lot of unfavorable traffic for you. Instead, do your diligence and compile a list of effective negative keywords.
Use broad match modified: This newest member in the Match type family is the happy medium between broad match and phrase match. You can get more reach than Phrase and more targeted keywords than Broad.
To create a modified broad match, add “+” between before each key in the keyword phrase. For example, +running +shoes is a modified broad match of the original phrase “running shoes.”
Once you know the top-performing keywords, you can utilize phrase match and exact match. Which ones should be used depends on the situation, and the best practice is to run these matches on a split test to know which one converts better. Otherwise, whenever broad match and modified match are being used, you’d better be heavy-handed with negative keywords.
Drive traffic straight to the product listings
Once all the keywords are in place, you need to find a traffic destination, and many marketers often drive the traffic directly to the Amazon list. However, that might end up hurting your page’s conversion rate. While you might get a lot of traffic, that traffic might not convert as high as your Amazon traffic.
The solution is building a bridge between your Amazon page and Google Ads, which is Landing Page. People coming from the Google Ads reach the landing page, get warmed up by seeing the product images, reviews, etc., and click on the Amazon page.
Using Landing pages also allows you to do email capture to ask for later reviews (if they buy your products) or retargeting and following up. Below are a few key considerations to keep in mind when building your landing pages:
- The message on the landing page should align with your Google Ads
- Keep the design simple without any distraction
- Concentrate on convincing the surfer to take a specific action
Overlook regional trends
Your ads can perform exceptionally well in some locations but generate a low conversion rate in others. Several factors can affect your conversion rate in a specific city, and sorting them out is another story.
All you need to do at the moment is to analyze the location and distance report and adjust your bids and campaigns accordingly. If you ignore it, you risk wasting your spent ad budget on locations where your products are not doing well.
The same principle applies to the device’s performance, which should not be overlooked either. Periodically check Google Analytics to know how the campaigns are converting on different devices. Lower the bids or turn a device off altogether if the conversion rate is low or zero. Conversely, increasing the bids for those platforms displays a high conversion rate.
Conclusion
Google Ads is a highly effective source of leads and sales if they are correctly executed. The common mistake starts at the keyword building level since different match types can be confusing, and creating them takes effort.
In addition, testing different ads variations help you refine the campaign while landing pages will prevent your Amazon sales or conversion rate from getting hurt. Know these common mistakes, and you won’t waste money and impair sales performance!
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