SEM Punch

Here the continuation to the common AdWords mistakes made by beginners from part 1…

1. Bids are too low at the beginning
   If the bids are too low, keywords will hardly receive impressions due to low positions. If you start out with a new account, this can be particularly bad because Google attempts to evaluate your “quality” relative to that of your competitors. That means, if your bids are too low, you will likely have a fair amount of inactive keywords, since as a new advertiser you are at a disadvantage - your minimum CPC set by Google is relatively high. In order to gain impressions and for Google to quickly assess your “quality,” I would set the bids high for about a week, sacrificing some dough for the greater good of the campaign.
2. Keywords are too broad
   Often new advertisers start out shooting for the big gun keywords - the high volume drivers that are ultra competitive. Sure, buying “mortgage” may sound appealing, but the secret of this keyword’s traffic showers have already been discovered by the LendingTrees, eLoans & even Ditechs of this world. Unless you truly believe your backend economics are stronger than those of the big spenders, leave this keyword (at least at the beginning) and try finding some hidden gems. Too many advertisers, large or small, are focused on the volume drivers, but they lose out on a whole universe of keywords. But keyword generation is a topic for a whole new post…
3. No ROI tracking
   Newbies sometimes seem to underestimate the value of proper tracking. In the past this was mainly caused due to high prices of tracking programs. But there are plenty of companies that offer decent low-cost conversion tracking, although some are also of poor quality…but free You want to make sure you track revenue & cost properly because almost every keyword portfolio has a few black sheep - keywords that lose money, sometimes a lot of money. Don’t assume that cost & revenue are equally distributed across your portfolio. But optimization is also a stuff for independent posts…
4. No action
   Some marketers throw up their keywords and then don’t really keep an eye on them. If you setup your conversion tracking, you have no excuse not to watch and take action when you see bad keywords!

Alrighty, I hope this helps - go forth and prosper!

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