Clean Informer Magazine Autumn 2015 | Page 19

MARKETING PITFALL #1. Spending too much money at the beginning of your campaign. At first, test out your campaign. You need to find the sweet spot. Monitor how your campaign did and then spend more over the next several weeks. Set your budget for $5-8 per day until you know the campaign is profitable. Then bump it up to what you feel comfortable with spending. PITFALL #2. Putting all your ads in one campaign. Use as many campaigns as you need. I normally suggest using a separate campaign for each city. This will allow you to bid different prices for different cities and services. For example, you’ll want to bid much less to target “Tile Cleaning Marietta” and much more to target “Carpet Cleaning Atlanta.” Additionally, when your campaign is centered on a specific city, you can put the city name in your headline and create a more personalized ad. PITFALL #3. Bidding too much per click. At first, bid a little lower than Google suggests. You should monitor how your ad did and then bid more later on. Start the cost per click at $2-5 per click. The worst that can happen is you won’t get any clicks and therefore you won’t spend any money. PITFALL #4. Advertising on the Display Network. Uncheck the “Display Network” under the campaign settings area in the “Network and devices” section. The Display network will put your ad on other websites and blogs. But you should only advertise on the Google search engine because that’s where your prospects are actively searching for a cleaning business. PITFALL #5. Not refining your keywords. Use the Keyword Planner tool to find your best keywords (Google it to find it). When you’re first starting, put quotes around your keyword phrases. For example, “carpet cleaning atlanta.” The quotes will require that all the keywords be present for your ad to show up. Even if more words are added, your ad will show up, but it’s required that at least those words be entered in the search. Also, don’t use all the keywords recommended by Google as some of their suggestions will waste your money. PITFALL #6. Not including your city name in the ad. Your prospect doesn’t assume your company is in Atlanta just because they Google “carpet cleaning Atlanta”. So make sure your city name is toward the top of the ad. It helps to reassure them that they’ve found a company in your city and it draws attention to your ad. PITFALL #7. Not testing different ads. You can test ads against each other to see how each ad pulls. Test different headlines, offers, and body copy. See what works best and which offer gets the best response. PITFALL #8. Forgetting to monitor your Adwords account. This is NOT a set it and forget it type of ad campaign…especially in the beginning. Make sure you check it every couple of days at first. Monitor how the ad is doing regularly and see if it gains you new clients. PITFALL #9. The landing page doesn’t