PPC mistake

One PPC Mistake That Wastes Millions of Dollars

If someone clicks on your ppc ad, they need a perfectly planned landing page. Just ask Oli Gardner. He did an excellent expert session on landing page optimization for our Stukent professors and students.

Recently we had Sunday dinner with my mother-in-law. Bless her heart. She makes us dinner quite often on Sundays. Last time I noticed that she didn’t have a steak knife set. Like any smart, brave, charismatic, and loyal son-in-law would do, I shopped online for a knife set that I could give her as a thank you for all of the meals she has shared.

Bing gave me these helpful results:

Every internet marketer should occasionally switch things up and try Bing.

Every internet marketer should occasionally switch things up and do searches on Bing.

I found just what I was looking for, first try. So, I clicked to proceed with the purchase.

THE PPC MISTAKE THAT COSTS MILLIONS

The landing page was well done for ecommerce purposes. It had a strong, unique value proposition, decent design. It was compelling enough for a non-knife-connoisseur like myself to decide to buy.  But, then I witnessed one of the many PPC mistakes that is costing advertisers millions.

Knife Set Landing Page

If a product is sold out, it is time to pause the ads for that product landing page. Why pay for clicks to drive traffic if people can’t buy what they expect to buy?  Sure, some may argue that site visitors may at least go buy another product, but most likely, they will bounce.

#PPCCHAT ALWAYS KNOWS BEST

Most brands monitor this stuff manually, but you will be less prone to error by automating the shutoff of the ads. I had never personally set up an automatic shutoff like this before, so I asked the #ppcchat community on Twitter, and they pointed me to an Adwords Script for disabling / pausing keywords and ads for products that are out of stock.

ADWORDS SCRIPTS FOR THE WIN

You may, or may not, be familiar with Google Adwords Scripts. Go take a minute and learn more about them. See how they can help you automate your ad management processes.  Even if you aren’t a developer, familiarize yourself so that when you need to, you can point your programmer / developer friends in the right direction when you need their help implementing your ideas for automation.

UPDATE – 2 PM on 7/20/15

BingAds doesn’t currently have a way to automagically pause ads and keywords that send traffic to a “sold out” product page that I am aware of.

Bryant Garvin tweeted that the best solution for all of these problems is updating your inventory status in your shopping feeds for all online ad platforms.

SHARE YOUR WISDOM IN THE COMMENTS

Have you seen other PPC mistakes that cost millions?

Know of a way to automate this process of pausing keywords and ads for out of stock / sold out products?

Any recommendations for a knife set?

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