We live in a world where everything is technology-driven; digital marketing has taken over and surpassed traditional forms of marketing. Consumers go to the internet for just about anything. If the online presence of your business is created the right way, consumers will choose you over your competitors.

Digital marketing has become so powerful that it can make or break your business. Not only is it essential to have the best strategies, but it is crucial to avoid commonly made mistakes that can derail the success of your business.

Simple mistakes can be costly. Why? You could be spending more time and money trying to correct errors when you can avoid them in the first place. Luckily internet marketing experts are what many businesses turn to for help and advice for the best practices in the industry.

We’ve asked a few Marketing Professionals who specialize in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) analysis for their advice on how to avoid common mistakes.

1. Larry, What Is One of The Most Common Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Mistake?

“The most serious mistake is the complete and total lack of effort most marketers put into their PPC accounts. We ran a study of about 400 merchant accounts and found that over half did nothing at all every week, while only around 1% of advertisers worked on their accounts consistently over 90 days. There’s a lot of opportunities for Profession Marketers to surpass the competition by simply trying harder.”

“A second immense mistake is settling for below than ordinary click-through rates, which drag down your Quality Scores and increase the cost of your clicks. People might think they’re doing okay if they’re making basic optimizations, but if you’re stuck at 2% and think it’s good enough, you’re mistaken. Ordinary CTRs are usually much higher than that.”

Larry Kim– Founder and CTO of Wordstream and a top contributor to publications like Inc.com, Search Engine Land, and more.

2. Shirish, What Are A Few of The Most Common Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Mistakes?

“So, you think you have set up the perfect Google Ads campaign? If so, bravo. However, I am ready to bet that there is at least one of the mistakes listed below might sound familiar to you:

Poor Keyword Research – It’s not as easy as selecting just any keywords based on what you think people will search for. Doing thorough keyword research with variations will bring you the best outcome in addition to using Google’s Keyword Planner tool.

Not Testing Bidding Strategies – Don’t commit to trying only one type of bid strategy, whether it is automated or manual. There is no universal bid strategy, its best to test different options to find what works best for you.

Creating Only One Ad Variation – Having one ad per group with the same variation isn’t the best thing to do since you won’t have another ad to compare stats to. We recommend creating several ad variations (2-3) to see which one performs better.

Not Adding Extensions – Not using ad extensions could be limiting your traffic. Ad extensions add extra snippets of information, making it stand out more to drive qualified traffic to your site. ”

Shirish Agarwal – Founder of Flow20 Digital Marketing, London. Obsessed with analyzing data and finding ways to convert traffic into revenue. Been doing PPC and SEO since 2005

3. Armen, In Your Opinion What Are the Most Common Online Marketing Mistakes?

“Trying to make each report/analysis actionable.”

“It’s not necessary to take action after each report/analysis. As long as things are going well, there is not enough sample size data or statistical significance from each report that requires action.”

“Underestimating the CTR and Quality Score”

“Google’s inventory is the impressions, and Google is charging everyone per impressions. CPC, CPA is the well-merchandised CPM model.”

Armen Sargsyan. – Data analyst at 405Ads with a driven passion working with all acquisition marketing channels (SEO, SEM, Shopping, Media Buying, Lead Generation) to promote profitable growth and customer acquisition.

4. Elizabeth, What Common Mistakes Do You Often See with PPC and SEM?

“It all simmers down to this: If you’re giving poor character traffic to your alighting page, then your exchange rates will allow. Just as you can not take back the fact that you just misunderstood your new girlfriend’s mom for her grandma, it’s pretty important to get it right on the first reaction. (Yeah, that’s a PPC nerd joke.)”

“Here are four general PPC mistakes that prevent you from running successful campaigns – and how you might go about solving them.”

You’re not ditching poor-performing keywords – Especially on larger accounts where you have less visibility, it’s easy to fall into the habit of adding new keywords to test but neglecting to clean out poor-performing keywords periodically.

You’re not being strategic about using your daily allowance – Is traffic to your landing page getting cut off in the middle of the day? AdWords resources running out before you even get to 10 am? You could have the most beautiful landing page in the universe, but if your budget is low, don’t expect the best response. You have to pay to play. That’s a PPC issue around mass and value.

Your ad doesn’t match your landing page – Some of the biggest companies have made this mistake. Because they would use forceful keyword insertion in their ads and bid on every keyword in the universe, attempting to drive traffic to search results pages for items they may or may not have. No one likes a less-than-accurate ad and landing page combination.

Your ads send the wrong message – PPC keyword lists should be bucketed not just by a type or theme but also thought of in the context of the buying cycle (awareness, information gathering, or ready to buy). In other words, when selecting keywords, you need to be mindful of user intent.

You want to create sure that you’ve responded to the question that someone searched for.
If you’re not paying attention to user intent and start buying terms accordingly, you’ll see a low CTR because of the mismatch in what appeals to them versus what you’re proposing to them.

5. Elizabeth Marsten

– Elizabeth Marsten, is the Vice President of Search Marketing at Portent, Inc., a full-service internet marketing agency in Seattle, WA. She oversees the paid search, SEO, social, analytics, and content teams have spoken at Search Marketing Expo and MozCon and is an author on lynda.com.

6. How do consumers find your business online? Do you have the best online presence?

After all, your online presence is the face of your company since more than half of online consumers will research a business before buying. Make sure you aren’t repeating any of the mistakes we’ve uncovered to be the most common.

Work with a professional Online Marketing team to get the online presence and advertisements of your business on the right path.

• Google gets about 40 thousand searches every second, which sums up to over 1.2 Trillion searches per year.
• There are roughly two billion websites on the internet.
• Currently, there are about 4.5 Billion People Online, Searching, and Shopping.
• The world’s population is currently over 7.5 Billion people; more than half of the entire world is online!