It’s a fact of life that there will always be people who oversell their skills in order to get ahead. We see this happen a lot when it comes to marketing, especially AdWords. One of the services we offer at Anvil is auditing AdWords accounts to determine if they are setup properly and if they can be improved. Unfortunately, we find major mistakes in the majority of those accounts. Mistakes that a supposed “AdWords expert” would never make. Below are 10 mistakes we’ve seen in actual accounts. If you see any of these in your account, it’s time to have a serious talk with your account manager.

1. Your keywords are only one word. If you’re bidding on the keyword “car” instead of a key phrase like, “car dealerships Portland” or “used cars with warranties” you are wasting money by appearing in unrelated queries.
2. You don’t have any negative keywords. Unless you’re hiring (and using your SEM campaign to advertise the positions), you should have “careers”, “jobs”, “hiring”, and “salary” as account level negative keywords. Other ones to consider are “free”, “pictures”, “images”, or “DIY” (unless you’re a home improvement store).
3. Your Search Terms report is full of unrelated and nonsense terms. The Search Terms report is located under the Keywords tab in AdWords and it shows the actual query someone used that caused your ad to show. If those queries are unrelated to your services, you’ve got a keyword problem.
4. You click on the Ad Extensions tab and see…nothing. Ad Extensions are free ways to expand your ad’s size and include far more relevant information than you could possibly fit into 95 characters. There is no excuse for not using them!
5. You offer three distinct services but have only one campaign. Ad Groups can only do so much if you offer three different services; you need at least three different campaigns. The campaign level is where budgets, geo-targets, ad scheduling, and conversions are setup; you need to be able to separate out that data for each service.
6. Your services are divided into Campaigns and each have distinct Ad Groups (yay!), but the ad copy is the same across the board. The entire point of having different Campaigns and Ad Groups is to be able to target the needs of the searcher. If you sell shoes and jackets, but the ad for both is along the lines of, “At Joe’s Outdoor Shop, We Sell Everything You Need To Go Outside”, you’re wasting your money.
7. Your landing page is always your homepage. Your ads should be advertising something specific (see #6), and your landing page should be one that expounds upon that topic. Very rarely does a homepage accomplish this.
8. You’re not advertising on mobile. As of late 2015, there are more mobile searches performed in the United States than there are desktop searches. Your AdWords campaign needs to reflect this change and have an actual Mobile Bid strategy and be using a couple of Call Only Ads.
9. You’re not bidding on the name of your business. The majority of AdWords campaigns bid on competitors’ names. If you’re not bidding on your brand, someone else is. In addition, Google search results can contain (1) 3-4 ads at the top, (2) shopping ads, (3) image results, (4) knowledge panels, and (5) map results; THEN organic results. Even if you rank first for your brand organically, your listing can appear below the fold.
10. You’re not bidding on non-branded terms. 45% of all searches are for unbranded terms. If you’re only bidding on your brand, you’re missing out on a lot of potential business.

There are plenty of other signs that your campaign wasn’t set up by an expert, but these are the 10 most detrimental to your business’s success. If you suspect your account needs an overhaul or are just curious if it can be improved, Anvil is here to help. Just contact us and we’ll customize a way to help!