How Dubai Advertisers waste money on Google Adwords.
Hope you are not one of them
Here is a Kicker – Cost Per Click rates – are highest in UAE than anywhere else in the world!
Dubai is a place built on small to medium size businesses. Over the past years Leads Dubai has come across some small businesses with dreams and visions to make their venture successful. We noticed that in the hurry of growing faster, proper in-depth research and planning are overlooked. This is one of the reasons they end up taking wrong decisions.
One example is doing multiple things on their own even if they have little experience in that field. This post talks about how some Dubai Advertisers waste money on Google Adwords. This could be Search Ads or display ads or youtube ads in order to get new business leads.
Google Adwords is like a casino, if you dont know the rules, you will lose. —> It is a Money Burner.
Through this post, we want to highlight & educate the top 5 ways how Dubai advertisers waste money on Google Adwords and what they can do to stop wasting money on Google Ads & use it to their advantage & increase profits.
Top 5 ways how Dubai Advertisers waste money on Google Adwords
1. Admit you’re doing it wrong
It’s ok to be overwhelmed by so many settings in the adwords platform. This year alone, adwords released more than 100 new features of which I am aware of 50. Seek help early on, if your adwords campaign isn’t getting you good results. As you are probably bleeding money every day. We have come across many SMEs who have little experience to run their adwords campaign. Few succeed due to the complex nature of this platform. Sometimes I feel, it’s purposefully complex, settings are defaulted in favor of google to extract more money from inexperienced advertisers. This turns off newbies who don’t have the time and patience to learn it through & this reason alone keeps us in business 🙂
2. Keyword Selection & Negative Match Types
As a rule of thumb, never – ever have only 1 keyword as your keyword to show ads. Always use 2 – 3 keywords to target your ads.
For example, if you have a law firm in Dubai & you show ads on keywords like a lawyer. It is a recipe for disaster. Google will match your keywords & show your ads when a user type keywords like –
- lawyer jobs
- lawyer vacancies
- study business law
- the irrelevant list goes on my friend…
So how do you safeguard your cost and make sure google is showing your ads on the right keywords? Simple add negative – to the above-unwanted keywords as -jobs, – vacancies, – study. etc. Think of all the keywords which you don’t want to show in your ads for. We have seen that more than half of advertisers do not use negative keywords & continue to use single keywords to show ads and lose money as you read this.
Often see your search query report to see which keywords, google is actually showing your ads. So you can add more negatives and add good keywords back in the campaign. (The keywords google shows your ads are different than those you selected!)
Remember, by selecting a keyword to a broad match type, you are opening the door for Google to show your ad anytime a query is related to or contains a part of your keyword. Watch this 4 minutes video which talks about how to carefully select your keywords
3. Bidding Strategies
Google Keyword Planner Tool gives us the average bidding rate when you’re doing the keyword research. With this you can estimate your average cost per click, so you don’t overbid. Sometimes overbidding helps to rank on the top ad position but if your keyword quality, ad copy, campaign structure & landing page experience is not aligned – then you showing on the top – right! but you’re losing more money too as these clicks or the best ad position won’t convert. Result? – your losing money faster. Google released over 10 new bidding features in the last 1 year.
Imagine if you’re paying AED 10 per click and as days go by, you got 200 clicks on the top position. You will notice that all you got was 200 traffic on the website. at the cost of AED 2000 spent on wrong clicks. You paid higher already. The worst part? you don’t even know it and continue to do so. There are some great resources from google help center which can help you do effective bidding, but if you ask me, improve your quality score. It has helped our clients pay lesser & get more bang for their bucks. See our Client testimonial link to learn more
4. Poor Targeting & Settings
One should make sure to check if the settings are properly defined. Few notes;
Location settings – advance settings. to show your ads where users are. Some of these settings are hidden and more than 50% of SME campaigns we have noticed are wasting their hard-earned Dirhams. This alone is a money guzzler which shows your ads out of your desired location and the clicks just add up like the years gone by.
With the launch of Enhance campaign more than a year ago, location, ad scheduling ( show ads at what times of the day ), devices ( mobile or desktops) – site link extensions like a call extension, site link extensions + mobile-optimized ads, and more.
We have seen that many do not have a Google Analytics account set up and connected to adwords. This gives you half the click picture only. At leads, Dubai believe in data-driven decision & the above is necessary in order to optimize the campaigns
Competition – Did you know you can check which competitor is bidding on the same keywords you are? Google Auction Insights tells you that. + You can also know their most profitable keywords and ad copies & what is working.
Google Reporting – Make good use of the reporting tools which help you understand what’s working and what’s not.
5. Landing Pages.
Ok, assuming you have done all of the above, what next? It’s the landing page that should be the next focus. A Landing page is a page where your traffic comes. Never have the Home page as your landing page as it has too many links and details. It is important to structure your account and bring traffic to the right landing page. Leads Dubai presented at DM3 institute earlier this year on how best to optimize your landing page experience. You can view the Landing page slides here
Bonus Google Adwords Tips:
These are some useful videos that can help you understand the basics further for a DIY gig. If still not able to get it – we give you a first-hour free consultation and training on how to optimize your campaigns. Leads Dubai Mission is to help you optimize your marketing activities. See some of the adwords management tips which can also help
So here is the question;
Either you want to be one of Dubai Advertisers waste money on Google Adwords and waste your time managing your adwords account and bringing it up by trial and error ( error means losing money & time)
OR
You want to have your account reviewed by a professional company to optimize and save back on time. Which is more important?
Oh & by the time you finish reading this post, Dubai Advertisers already lost at least AED 100,000 of wrong clicks. We hope you are not among them. Reach us at +971 55 526 8284 so we can do a free Adwords Audit & help you get more ROI. Talk to Google Ads Consultant in Dubai, UAE about your Google Ads Campaign Today.
