Don’t Use Maximize Clicks Bidding

Google Ads sets the bidding to Maximize Clicks automatically. This is basically handing over your entire budget to Google and letting them decide how much to use…which is a lot like handing your wallet to a kid in a candy store.

In theory, Maximize Clicks is a good bidding strategy because it does, well, maximize your clicks, but in my experience, you end up getting so few conversions from those clicks that it is not worth it. I suggest using Manual CPC instead, as you will have the ability to fully optimize your ads by setting up each keyword or ad group bid to precisely what you want.

Don’t Use Broad Match Keyword Targeting

By default, Google Ads will have you using Broad Match (also called Pure Match) for your keywords. This gives a lot of control and liberty to Google, and more often than not it will make your keyword targeting too broad to connect with the audience you want to reach. (Remember Mistake #1!)

One of the only times when you’ll want to use this is if you are being extremely aggressive and don’t necessarily care about efficiency. But for targeted B2B ads, that won’t happen often. So instead of Broad Match, go for Exact Match or Phrase Match.

Pro tip: For Broad Match Modifier, you simply put a plus sign in front of the keywords that you want to be in the search, e.g., +marketing +agency. For Exact Match, you put brackets around the keywords you want to rank for precisely as they are, e.g., . For Phrase Match, you will put quotation marks around the phrase you want to rank for, e.g., “marketing agency.”

Don’t Run Search Ads & Display Ads in the Same Campaign

Google Ads likes to lump together search and display ads. This is a dangerous default setting and one that you will definitely want to turn off right away.

Why? Because these two campaign types behave entirely differently. Combining them is like trying to advertise to two different segments simultaneously, except this time, the segments are ad types rather than audience types. At the very

least, your conversion rates will be different between the two ad types, which alone is enough to make separating them hugely important. Even worse, combining them is deceptive—it will increase your impressions, which seems good, but actually lower your click-through rate.

So make sure you don’t let Google combine the two ad types by default. Make sure your budget and your bid are different for each of them.