5 Common SEM Mistakes And How To Avoid Them

Many businesses dive headfirst into Search Engine Marketing (SEM) with the hopes of increasing the visibility of their business and driving huge amounts of sales.

But successful SEM campaigns don’t come from simply turning an ad on and wishing for results. It comes from understanding how to plan a campaign and how to avoid common mistakes effectively.

Let’s take a look at five of the most common SEM pitfalls we see businesses make, and how to correct them.

MISTAKE #1: POOR KEYWORD STRATEGY

One of the biggest mistakes we see is in choosing keywords that are too broad and generic to be beneficial.

While you may get clicks from broad keywords like “flooring” and “mortgage,” they often fail to convert because the audience is rarely ready to take action when they see them. Additionally, these terms are often highly competitive and have a higher cost associated with them.

Along the same lines, businesses often neglect using long-tail keywords — phrases that show that a consumer is further along in the purchasing process — in their SEM campaigns. Targeting a long-tail keyword can lead to a 2.5 times higher conversion rate than its generic counterparts.

Businesses also often fail to include negative keywords as part of their strategy. Negative keywords help keep your ads from showing up in irrelevant searches that have nothing to do with your products or services. Including them is essential to maximize your campaign performance and ROI!

MISTAKE #2: LANDING PAGE DISCONNECTS

Have you ever clicked on a digital ad expecting to be redirected to a page with a special offer or a specific service, only to be sent to a completely unrelated landing page? Talk about frustrating!

You may be doing this without even realizing it — your ad copy may be too generic, filled with unrelated information, or have a missing or unclear call-to-action. When your messages don’t align, your audience can become confused or feel misled, leading to a high bounce rate, low conversions, and potentially a higher cost per click (CPC).

MISTAKE #3: A “SET IT AND FORGET IT” MENTALITY

Imagine setting your thermostat to a nice, comfortable temperature in January, forgetting about it for seven months, and wondering why everyone is sweltering in the house by the Fourth of July. It may have been working great in the beginning, but that doesn’t mean it won’t need your attention!

The same is true for SEM campaigns — they are dynamic and often require testing, tweaks, and regular check-ins to be effective. Without checking in regularly, you could be wasting ad dollars on underperforming keywords or missing out on trends.

Checking in on your campaigns weekly can give you ample time to make adjustments like reallocating budget, pausing low-performing campaigns, and A/B testing copy and headlines.

MIKSTAKE #4: INADEQUATE BUDGET PLANNING

Whether it’s seasonality, a pop-up trend, rising CPC, or some other external factor, digital marketing is a dynamic space. Setting a flat, monthly budget with no room to make adjustments or spreading costs evenly across all campaigns, regardless of their performance, will land you in hot water.

When planning your budget, include a spot for discretionary spending. When combined with weekly check-ins of your campaigns, this small step can help you allocate money to campaigns with exceptional performance and capitalize on trends!

Remember, if you want to maximize your ROI with SEM campaigns, it isn’t about how much you’re spending, it’s about where and when you’re spending it.

MISTAKE #5: UNNECESSARY BRAND NAME BIDDING

On the surface, it seems like a good idea to bid on your own business name, right? Why not protect your home turf and keep the competition from getting a leg up? Better yet, why not bid on your competitors’ names and pull traffic from them?

The reality is that more often than not, you’re going to confuse and frustrate your customers. Not only that, bidding on a competitor’s brand has a 78% higher CPC, which means you’re going to end up burning through your SEM budget without any payoff. Worse still is that search engines like Google and Bing don’t like it when your ad content and your keywords don’t match, meaning your quality score is going to take a hit, making your relevancy score drop and your CPC rise.

At Federated Digital Solutions, we take a hands-on approach to managing SEM campaigns. We understand that checking in weekly on campaigns can be a lot of work for small owners, so let us do the work for you!

Our team of campaign specialists have the expertise and analytical skills to help you identify and alert you to campaigns that are performing well, trends that they notice and keywords you should be using! Contact us today if you’re ready to take the next step toward maximizing the ROI of your SEM campaigns.

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