Many small businesses often spend thousands of dollars on creating and running Google AdWords campaigns, albeit little to show for it in terms of visibility and actual sales. They must be wondering where it all has gone wrong. In this post, I shall narrate more practical experiences of certain companies – both online and offline – to understand the probable mistakes.

In the previous post, we checked how two ambitious entrepreneurs found it difficult to promote their new product. Another common mistake, we went through another problem area; not setting a realistic budget and then running out of resources during Google AdWords campaigns.

Lack of localization

One of the key aspects of running a Google AdWords campaign is to narrow your focus. Instead of casting your net wide, it makes sense to target local markets. Here is a practical example: When the iPhone was first introduced by Apple, a small-time phone-repairer Matt McCormick sensed an opportunity there. He ran a business venture called Jet City Devices.

Realizing that screen of the new iPhone device was prone to damage, he started bidding on keywords, such as ‘iphone repairs’ and awaited business orders to pour in. However, a problem soon crept in. It became apparent that though his website was flooded with traffic, not many visitors were mailing in their devices to have them repaired. He evaluated the clicks and accordingly changed his campaign.

What was the change that he made? He opted to run on searches only initiated within 50 miles or so of Chicago & Seattle – the two cities where he had shops where his customers could leave their phones in person. The conversion rate noticeably jumped. His advice to budding businesses bases on personal experience: If you are in business in only a couple of cities, Google’s localization feature is handy to save your precious results and great results. It also reduces AdWords competition, and helps bring meaningful traffic.

Not narrowing the keyword net

Another mistake that businesses make is not to narrow their keyword net. Just as one might employ quotation marks so as to limit a Google search scope, it is also possible to make use of quotes and brackets to focus AdWords campaigns.

In fact, this particular element is quite critical, albeit often ignored. If, for instance, one chooses the term ‘widgets for sale’ in quotes, the ad will get displayed anytime users search for this cluster of words – even if they happen to search for, say, ‘red or blue widgets for sale’. Whereas if brackets are used to select the keyword [widgets for sale], only those who search precisely on that phrase will notice the ad.

In essence, if you fail to do proper planning and are not careful enough in your execution of the strategy, you won’t get the desired results with your Google AdWords campaign.