Before you read this, please understand that that PPC is a science that take years to master. 

I have been marketing on the internet since 1993 and I have worked with PPC campaigns for about 8 years.

There are MANY more reasons (I could write a book on it) that you can fail at PPC but these are what I think are the Top 5.

I have been running my current campaign for almost a year, it has been so successful that I have had to hire another loan officer to handle all of the leads for me (I take all of the phone calls).

It keeps us so busy that we only run the campaign for two weeks a months.

In fact I turned it off three weeks ago, and don't plan on starting up again until after New Years because we have enough leads to keep us busy until then.

1. Not researching keyword terms correctly

The #1 mistake that I see many mortgage and real estate professionals make is that they only use the keywords that they think will be searched for. When I started the PPC campaign for my current website, I had 20 keywords...After the proper research, the list soon expanded to over 700. I like Wordze but there are many others that provide similar results.

2. Using one ad and not split testing

While there is quite a bit of discussion about what types of ads work best, the truth is that you always need to have two of them running against each other at all times and keeping the best producer after a couple weeks, then adding another one and start testing all over again.

3. Sending visitors to the home page

This is a HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE mistake, whatever you do, NEVER send your PPC visitors to the home page. The page they land on needs to be relative to the ad they clicked on and it also needs to ask or the visitors contact information. You are trying to generate potential clients, you are not paying to provide information to them. 

Here are two examples from my website. Which one do you think will convert better? Home Page or the Landing Page ?

4. Broadcasting your ad to the whole country

Did you know that most PPC networks allow you to choose which part of the country your ad will appear in?  So, if you are a Realtor in Reno, don't show your ads in Denver!

5. Not using conversion tracking

If you don't use conversion tracking then you will go broke! 

While it's great to get a lot of traffic to your website, you need to know what keywords are converting and which ones aren't.

I have a low traffic .07 cent keyword that converts at a rate of 50% while I used to have numerous high traffic $5.00 keywords that converted at 1%.

Conversion tracking lets you know which combination of keywords and ads give the best conversion rate and keep more of your money in your pocket!