The #1 Reason Paid Ads Fail

We are sharing a video that Moz released a couple of weeks ago titled “The #1 Reason Paid Ads (On Search, Social, and Display) Fail”.

Click the image below to watch the video:

The reason we think it's important is that it touches on something we have personally seen over, and over again.

It’s a cycle that repeats itself, leads to failed campaigns, ruined relationships, and can potentially cost people their jobs.

I would add to the video that the way I have seen this fail the most spectacularly is when people invest heavily in display (banner ads) expecting them to work a certain way.

People tend to think that users will see a banner ad, click on that banner ad, land on a website and make a purchase.

The banner ad reality is:

• The average viewability (an industry term meaning the banner was actually visible on a webpage) is around 50%. Yes, only 50% of the banner ads that are paid for are actually seen by a human being.

• The average CTR on a banner ad is 0.10%. That’s 10 people clicking out of 10,000 ads served.

• Display ads whether purchased programmatically, or directly are heavily affected by bots. Bots effectively eat up the impressions that are being served - using up budget for no real return.

• Display ads can show up on all kinds of low-quality websites unless you are diligent about excluding them.

A few ideas on what to do about it:

• Make paid and organic search your marketing foundation (note that this doesn’t always apply… especially in extremely expensive and competitive areas).

• Think about your marketing as more of of a journey than a single interaction. Setup your marketing efforts to be sustainable over the long-run and don’t ‘hail mary’ your marketing budget on unproven advertising strategies.

• Add value for your audience to get their attention first, sell to them second.

• Start small and test. Scale up on what’s working and stop what’s not working.

• Use tracking and attribution tools as much as possible.

We hope you find this useful, as always please send us any questions or feedback that you have.

5 Reasons Why Your Marketing Director Should Not Manage Your AdWords Campaigns

We often come across AdWords accounts that are managed ‘in-house’ by a Marketing Director with very little experience or time on their hands to dedicate to their account. Managing AdWords campaigns is something that should be handled by a specialist, and in companies without huge marketing teams that means finding an agency to partner with.

Here are 5 reasons why your Marketing Director should not manage your AdWords campaigns:

1.  Lack of resources - This is a big one. Managing any digital marketing campaign, especially AdWords will require at least several hours a week of oversight, and that increases depending on the amount of budget under management. It’s easy to underestimate the demand that managing a campaign requires. Sure you might start off highly motivated and interested, but that will wane quickly as you realize how much work is required. All of a sudden you realize you haven’t looked at your campaigns in 6 months and Google has suspended your account.

2.  Wrong skillset - Most Marketing Directors have a generalized marketing skill set (as they should). It is more important that they are managing from a macro level than at a micro level. It can take years to become an expert at AdWords and most AdWords experts are not looking for Marketing Director roles (i.e transitioning from PPC Strategist to Marketing Director).

3.  The need to stay up to date with industry changes - Google is constantly changing the rules for marketing through their platform. Without knowing exactly how to pivot and react to changes, you will find yourself losing money and falling behind competitors.

4.  Specialized software - Agencies usually pay for software to do research and competitive analysis before launching campaigns. They also usually pay for software to manage, optimize and report on campaigns. This can get expensive, but agencies find it worthwhile because they are usually managing several accounts.

5.  Easy to waste money - Google makes it very easy for anyone to set up an account and be spending on ads in a matter of hours. The downside is that without the right know-how you will waste all of your budget on the wrong things. Something as simple as using the wrong keyword match type, campaign setting, or bid in AdWords can cost you big time.

Potential customers are going to Google and searching all of the time. Whether your business is there to capture the traffic depends on you being set up for success with an experienced team managing your campaigns.

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