More Adwords traffic doesn't always mean more sales

More Adwords traffic doesn't always mean more sales

I've been running adwords for my websites over the last 15 years and have done countless campaigns.  I've followed all the updates, algorithm changes, and policy changes over the years, and one thing is always the same.  More traffic from adwords doesn't always mean you're going to make more money.  It doesn't matter if you're getting 100 clicks, and your competitor is getting 1,000 because you might be making more money than them since your campaigns are super optimized, and they're targeting everyone they possibly can.

You should never think your campaigns are done being tweaked, because they're not, so you should always be watching and editing them slightly, so they have the best performance possible.

Below are a few things you should always be thinking of when it comes to running a successful Adwords campaign.


Your targeting could be wrong
Whenever you're starting a campaign, you could think that every click coming in is super targeted and going to turn into a lead.  The problem with this is that you can set up a general campaign, target everyone in the world, and get thousands of clicks for very cheap and never get a sale.  I've done testing in the past and spent $450 on two different campaigns.  One campaign was set to produce as much traffic from around the world as possible, and the other was super optimized and only targeting people I knew would love my services. 

The campaign that targeted everyone ran out of the $450 within the week since I was getting clicks all day and night while the optimized one ran for a month and brought in a 600% ROI because of the targeting.

You could be bidding on the wrong keywords
You don't want to add every single keyword to your campaign that is suggested to you.  If you did this, you would start targeting so many random keywords barely related to your website that you'll then get odd clicks and conversations coming through your website. 

Only bid on some specific keywords and see where that takes you.  You can bid on broad match keywords, but be sure they are exactly what people that will use your services are searching for.  If you sell SEO and are targeting a Wordpress related keyword, you're not going to sell much, but if you target [backlink] or backlink, then you're going to be safer than most other keywords.  Be sure to go through your lists and take out anything that is bringing in a lot of clicks with zero conversions.

You're not using negative keywords
One of the biggest things that go unwatched with an Adwords campaign are the negative keywords.  People think, "I'm targeting specific keywords, so I should show up for those, and that's why I'm not adding negative keywords!" but that's the wrong way to think.  I have close to 500 negative keywords for my campaigns, and I'm adding new ones every week. 

In the past, my SEO agency would rank for porn and gaming related keywords because I hadn't added negative keywords.  As soon as I added the negative keywords to my Adwords campaigns, I saw a drastic drop in traffic and my budget wasn't being wasted on pointless clicks.  I had a better ROI, and that's never a bad thing at the end of the month lol.

Your website isn't optimized for conversions
You could have the best PPC campaign up and running, but if your website isn't optimized to push people towards your "buy now" or checkout pages, then you're going to lose a lot of customers.  You don't have to be aggressive with this; a simple shopping cart reminder will do, so let people know they can still checkout whenever they want, and you will notice people buying more from you.

You can't have a poorly designed site and think you're going to strike it rich; it simply doesn't happen.


Final Thoughts,
Setting up an Adwords campaign used to be easy; you would select your keywords and run your campaign; then, you would watch the money roll in!  Now, you have to take weeks of optimizing your campaign and make sure you're not wasting money on pointless clicks to break even.  Having a super-profitable PPC campaign is rarer than wasting money on clicks, but it's possible if you stick with it and watch your conversions


Thanks for reading


Tommy Carey
https://www.seocheckout.com/user/TommyCarey