PPC advertising is one of the most effective tools for attracting customers, but its effectiveness directly depends on the correct setup. Even small mistakes can significantly affect the results, reduce the profitability of campaigns, and lead to wasted budget.
Anastasia Chmil, PPC specialist at Forward Media, shared her expert opinion on the top 5 most common mistakes in PPC advertising that even experienced professionals make and told how to avoid them.
1. Lack of a proper campaign structure
❌ Mistake.
One of the key problems faced by PPC specialists is the chaotic organization of campaigns when:
- All keywords are combined into one group without categorization
- Brand, category and competitive queries are chaotically mixed in the campaign
- All ads lead to the same landing page, even if there are relevant sections or categories on the site
✅ How to avoid it?
For a campaign to work effectively, you need to create a clear structure of your ad account:
- Category campaigns – divide groups of ads into separate categories of goods or services
- Brand campaigns – allocate them separately to avoid mixing them with other types of requests
- Competitive campaigns – customize for competitive queries, taking into account the specifics of targeting
- Different landing pages – use a different link for each category, instead of driving all traffic to the main page
This strategy allows you to clearly control costs, increase the relevance of ads, improve CTR, and reduce the cost of customer acquisition.
2. Ignoring negative keywords
❌ Mistake.
If you don’t work with negative keywords, ads will be shown for irrelevant queries, which
- Drains the budget for unnecessary impressions
- Reduces CTR and worsens the quality of campaigns
- Leads to uncontrollable costs in Performance Max
✅ How to avoid it?
Before launching, you need to create two lists of negative keywords:
- General (includes the words “free”, “reviews”, “used” and other irrelevant queries)
- Competitive (to avoid showing the names of competitors if it is not provided for by the strategy)
IMPORTANT! If you have a branded campaign, you should add the brand name to the negative keywords of all other campaigns.
📌 Life hack: Now you can add up to 100 negative keywords in Performance Max, which greatly improves control over impressions.
3. Incorrect conversion settings
Error.
If conversion tracking is not set up correctly, campaigns cannot learn and performance data will be distorted. Common problems:
- No conversions in the settings
- Using a button click as a conversion
- Duplication of the same conversion
✅ How to avoid it?
- Define clear conversion goals (order placement, form filling, call)
- Set up tracking through Google Tag Manager (GTM) or GA4
- Check the correctness of conversions before launching to avoid duplication or failures
📌 Recommendation: Periodically test conversions, especially after changes on the site, as even minor updates can affect the correctness of their tracking.
4. Ignoring ad testing
Mistake.
Many specialists run only one ad, which significantly reduces the effectiveness of advertising. Or they change several elements at once, which makes it impossible to understand which change affected the result.
✅ How to avoid it?
- Always test at least 2-3 ads in each group, changing only one element (title, description, or CTA)
- Test for at least 7-10 days to get reliable data
- Use dynamic ads in Google Ads and Meta Ads so that the system automatically selects the best combinations of titles and descriptions
📌 What to analyze?
- CTR (Click-Through Rate) – which ad variant attracts more clicks
- Conversion Rate – which ad leads to more conversions
- CPC (Cost per Click) – how profitable is the price per click
5. Lack of double-check before launch
❌ Mistake.
Even experienced professionals can miss important settings if they don’t double-check their campaigns before launch. This leads to:
- Spending budget on irrelevant requests
- Incorrect targeting and bidding
- Incorrect conversion performance
✅ How to avoid it?
Before launching a campaign, you need to check all the key parameters:
- Target audience, locations, devices
- Minus words
- Budget and bid strategy
- Conversion tracking
- Correctness of the URL in advertising
📌 Life hack: Create a double-checklist that will help you not to miss important details before launching a campaign.
Conclusions.
To ensure that PPC campaigns bring maximum results and do not drain your budget, you need to avoid these mistakes:
- Build the right campaign structure
- Use negative keywords to clean up search queries
- Set up conversion tracking correctly
- Test your ads regularly and analyze the results
- Do double-check before launching
Tips for beginners in PPC
About the labor market
The labor market for juniors is not easy, and it can be difficult to find a first job in an agency. Often, vacancies have high requirements for beginners, which makes it difficult to start a career.
Training.
It is important to understand that quick courses in 2-4 weeks are unlikely to provide the necessary base. The minimum training period to understand PPC algorithms should be at least three months.
The best resources to get started
YouTube is one of the best tools for learning. Here are two proven sources that Anastasia recommends for beginners:
- Google Ads Fundamentals by Google
- Channel of the Marketing Guild
📌 Recommendation: Start by learning the basic settings and principles of optimization on your own, and only then choose courses or mentoring. This way you can better understand what knowledge you still need.
Starting a career
Freelancing is a good way to start. If it’s hard to find a job in an agency, you can start with small projects to build a portfolio and gain real experience with advertising campaigns.
By following these tips, you can get deeper into PPC and build a successful career much faster!
