5 most common mistakes when setting up Google Ads

Setting up Google Ads correctly is key to a successful ad campaign, but many advertisers make basic mistakes that cost them time and money. Poor audience targeting, ineffective keywords, inappropriate budgets, and poorly optimized landing pages can lead to a significant drop in campaign effectiveness. In this article, you'll learn how to identify and eliminate these mistakes, and get practical tips for optimizing your ad campaigns.

1. Poor audience targeting

One of the biggest mistakes when setting up Google Ads is poor audience targeting. When you set up your ads incorrectly, you may be reaching people who are not your target audience and wasting money.

How to solve this?

Analyzing your ideal customer is important. With features in Google Ads such as demographic targeting and interest groups, target an audience that is genuinely interested in your products or services. We recommend not underestimating remarketing, which allows you to reach visitors who have previously expressed interest in your offer.

2. Under-use of keywords

Keywords are the matching mechanism between the query a user has entered into a search engine. A common mistake is not including enough relevant keywords or working poorly with basic match types.

What keywords to choose?

Conduct ongoing keyword research and use keyword search tools: the Google keyword planner, Collabim (for the Czech market) or Google trends. Focus on specific and long-tail keyword phrases (long-tail keywords) with lower search volume convert better because searchers are more specific when searching. Think about what match you choose. There are three types of matches:

• Exact match: Your ad will only be visible if the search term matches the keyword exactly.
• Phrase match: your ad will appear when the search term contains the exact phrase with any additional words before or after it.
• Free Match: The ad may also appear when you search for similar or related phrases.

3. Incorrect budget and bid settings

Another recurring mistake is setting the budget and bid price per click (CPC) incorrectly. Too low a budget limits campaign performance, while a very high budget can lead to unnecessary waste of money.

How to do it?

• Use automated Google Ads bidding strategies that optimize bids based on campaign goals, such as maximizing conversions.
• Regularly monitor your campaign spend and performance and optimize your budget accordingly.

4. Poorly optimised landing pages

The landing page is an important aspect of any campaign. Even if you attract relevant visitors to your site, if the page is poorly optimized, it can lead to low conversion rates.

The ideal page optimization?

Optimize landing pages for loading speed and user experience (UX). The page needs to be clear, uncluttered and relevant to the advertising message. By A/B testing different versions of landing pages, you can find out what works best.

5. Not tracking campaign performance and lack of optimization

Many companies set up ads, then "forget" about them and don't track their ongoing performance. Without regular monitoring and optimization, it's easy to let ads start to lose effectiveness.

What to do?

Regularly monitor the performance of your campaigns through Google Ads and analytics platforms such as Google Analytics. Check key metrics such as CTR (click-through rate), CPC (cost per click) and conversion rate.Then, adjust and optimize your ads based on the data.

Conclusion

Setting up Google Ads can be a complicated process, but if you avoid the mistakes above, you can achieve much better results. At Tanganica, we specialize in automating ad campaigns and can help you get the most out of your Google Ads.

‍