What Is The Downside To PPC?

There are some downsides to PPC advertising on a platform like Google Ads. This is especially true if the campaigns are not setup correctly and are driving searches that are not relevant.

And that could be due to a lack of experience with things like keyword research, writing targeted ads, choosing a bid strategy, setting up a campaign and so on.

So, some new advertisers go through a difficult launch phase as they learn the features and run their ads. This can be costly of course and some give up early because it is not working as expected.

There are some causes to many of these downsides to PPC and they include:

 

1. Lack of in-house expertise

There can be a bit of a learning curve with PPC and if you don’t have in-house expertise then it can be a challenge to setup good campaigns.

However, there is always the option to hire a PPC expert or agency. They’ll help you with many of the issues you face setting up new campaigns and provide Google Ads training if needed.

So, this one is not too much of an issue and many businesses that do not have the expertise in PPC, easily and affordably hire outside expertise.

 

2. Not having a sufficient budget

An insufficient budget is one of the downsides of PPC advertising. What do I mean by insufficient budget? It’s basically a budget that does not allow you to get sufficient traffic volumes from searches that are more likely to convert.

Many searches that are profitable are usually more competitive, and many advertisers will be bidding on them. So, the average cost per click (CPC) tends to be higher too and so requires a good budget.

That means you will have to carry out some keyword research to find out what the average CPCs are for your keywords and then do some forecasting with the Keyword Planner tool in your Google Ads account to get an idea of what budget to set.

 

3. No conversion tracking

Sometimes tracking of leads and sales can be difficult. And that’s true for certain website platforms which are harder to track.

That can be a challenge because tracking conversions like sales or leads is very important to achieving good success with your campaigns.

Without this tracking it will be difficult to see which ads and keywords are driving your sales or leads. And you won’t manage your campaigns effectively.

So, if possible, try switching or using platforms like WordPress and Shopify which have all the features and plugins to track conversions easily.

 

4. Not giving enough time to management

Another factor that some people see as a downside of PPC advertising is the time required to make campaigns successful.

The truth is most business owners, entrepreneurs and marketers would rather spend their time doing something else than monitoring and managing their ads.

The good thing is that Google Ads now requires much less time than previous years. Now, many advertisers spend one or two hours per month checking that all is working well and that tends to be sufficient.

But to get to that you’ll need to make sure you create highly targeted campaigns. And then spend the first few weeks tweaking the targeting and the searches until they are highly targeted. From there you’ll spend less time from month to month managing the ads.

However, working with a PPC expert will help you achieve greater results, quicker, especially if you need to continue adding campaigns and keywords.

 

5. Not doing enough research

Doing research can be one of the harder parts of PPC advertising. This includes doing research into your keywords and competitors.

There are tools that will help you with this and they will provide guides and support to use them. For example, you can use the Keyword Planner tool in your Google Ads account for keyword research.

And you can check the Auction Insights report to see who your current competitors are and also use a platform like SERanking to do competitor research.

But getting help from a PPC consultant will make this a lot easier and there will be fewer challenges you’ll face.

 

Conclusion

There are a few downsides to PPC advertising as described above and many of them have do with not setting up campaigns properly and budget limitations. So, these can be easily resolved as described above.

 

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Want to know more about Google Ads PPC advertising and how I can help you setup and manage effective campaigns? I’m a Google Ads expert and PPC specialist and I’ll be happy to help. Please use the form below to contact me.