We get to analyze a lot of eCommerce PPC account and here are the 3 main pitfalls that a lot of PPC advertisers are missing out or ignoring on Google Ads PPC platform.
Ad Schedule
Many folks are not utilizing this feature and apple the same CPC or automated bidding strategy throughout the day. Are your shopper really need shop hard at 4 am in the morning? Do you really need to be competitive very early in the morning or late at night? To answer these question, the PPC performance and KPIs must be reviewed and an appropriate schedule should be applied with the right bid adjustments for each time section of the day.
Geo-Fencing/Location
Another feature that often is not optimized is the location targeting of the ads. Each location has a different CPC. If someone targets the USA as a whole – then the same bid is applied, when the actual CPC could be much lower in various locations. The end result is ad-spend waste and overall inefficiency. If you target Los Angeles – make sure to break down this location to smaller cities – and apply individual bid adjustment to each city.
Solid rule of thumb would be to break down the location to states and cities. It consumes time – but perfects the overall eCommerce PPC strategy as a whole and reduces operational costs and CPA.
Adjustment to Mobile Devices
Too many of our eCommerce clients burned thousands of dollars on ad-spend without realizing what is eating their budget. They too listened to various “experts” who missed out on that basic adjustment.
Often, mobile traffic consumes most of the daily spend. For that matter, we need to consider dropping the mobile bids, especially if we are utilizing an automated or semi-automated bidding strategy. If mobile consumes 75-85% of the budget, we should lower the bids by about 10-20% and see and that allows better or longer performance. Other KPIs, like CPA and ROI/ROAS could very likely to improve.
Stay On Top of Your PPC!
Review these settings on your Google Ads platform and make sure to optimize and adjust the bids according to the metrics. Analyze the data – and put a stop to the PPC ad-spend waste!
