The B2B SaaS Marketing Blog

What to Do When You’re Wasting Your Adwords Budget and Getting a Low ROI

by 

Ryan LeClaire

Last updated: July 6th, 2017

Are you getting sucky results from your AdWords campaigns?

You’re not alone. It’s been estimated that 98% of all PPC campaigns are wasting money. So what is that other 2% doing that you’re not? What separates the successful campaigns from the sucky ones?

Most often, the failure is an event, not a “bad” company. In most cases, it’s not their fault, it’s because they don’t have a system in place. And they’re making mistakes that nearly everyone makes.

Here’s a look at some of the most common mistakes PPC marketers make, and how to fix them.

Mistake: Not Knowing Your Buyer’s Intent

This disconnect kills every form of digital marketing out there today.

You probably don’t really know what your customers want or how they want to interact with you online. Most companies think they know, but they don’t. And it hurts everything they do online. From their e-commerce site, to their PPC campaigns, to social media.

Solution:

Show up for the keywords that are relevant to your buyer’s intent. Stop showing up for keywords your customers don’t search for.

Most companies are currently doing this wrong. That’s why we developed our intent engine, to lock into exactly what your customers want, without any wasted campaigns or guess work.

Mistake: Choosing the Wrong Match Type

Is the match type you choose allowing your ads to show up for irrelevant searches? Probably.

This wastes your time, money and puts your ads in front of the wrong people.

Solution:

Again, knowing your customer’s true intent locks you in on the exact words and phrases that your customers are actually searching for.

You also need to track everything. Hubspot’s State of Inbound report revealed that companies tracking their inbound marketing are 17x more likely to see an ROI. But, sadly, only 57.7% of AdWords accounts actually have tracking set up.

Mistake: Leaving a Bad SCENT Between Your Ad and Landing Page

Your quality score is too low, so you’re overpaying on cost-per-clicks. AdWords is essentially punishing you for providing a bad experience for your audience. And when you have a bad user experience, you have a bad SCENT, which stands for:

Solution:

Go all-in on investing on your user’s experience. Maintain the SCENT from the intent of the user, into the actual paid search experience, into the ad, to the landing page, to the post landing page experience. A flaw in any of these phases will drill a giant hole in your sales funnel.

What you need to remember is the SCENT needs to match the INTENT.

Mistake: Funding Failing Adwords Campaigns

Simply put, if a campaign isn’t working, put that money where it is.

Solution:

Allocate your budget to your best campaigns, by siphoning funds from your worst ones. Don’t treat them all as one lump. There are some winning campaigns and a lot of losing campaigns. Reward the winners and siphon your budget away from the losers.

This will start to pay off almost immediately!

How This Can Help My Business Today

Take a close look at what your conversion rate, cost-per-click, and overall Adwords ROI numbers are today. In a few weeks, compare it to where you are after implementing the above changes. You’re now setting yourself up to win and see your sales funnel fill, with no leaks along the way.

Key Takeaways:

• Show up for the keywords that are relevant to your buyers’ intent
• Stay on top of your campaigns and track everything
• Maintain the SCENT from the intent of the user, to every step along the way
• Allocate your budget to your best campaigns, by siphoning funds from your worst ones

Now, these are just 4 of 80 things that can make or break your AdWords campaigns. This is why we invite you to download (for free) our AdWords 80-Point Checklist.