Adwords can be the secret weapon in your marketing toolbox. It helps kickstarts the traffic on your website and in your shop, it only needs a ramp up period of three months, and it can handle seasonal changes allowing you to optimize your campaign or change directions as your shop needs. So why would you hold back your secret weapon if you didn’t need to?

Google Adwords has several different types of violations that can severely hurt your adwords campaign. They are common mistakes that can happen to anyone, so we wanted to help our clients stay in the know!

Don’t Do Twice the Effort

Many of our clients ask if they can run their own Adwords campaign alongside ours. Unfortunately, Google does not approve of more than one account using the same URL. They feel so strongly about this that they will even disapprove ads that are forwarded to another domain! In Google’s eyes, running multiple accounts for one company drives up the cost for a click and allows businesses to monopolize ad placements for competitive keywords. This is why Google reacts quickly and harshly when they find companies running two Adwords accounts at one time. If Google catches you, which may be immediately or may take time, they will blacklist both accounts immediately. Google also makes it extremely difficult to become reauthorized after your company and website have been blacklisted from its program.

This is why we advise our clients to pause old campaigns before we start new ones. By pausing the old one as the new one starts, or vice versa, you prevent the ads from running at the same time. If they do run at the same time, the accounts will be competing with each other. This ultimately drives up the cost of both your campaigns and puts you at risk from losing your secret weapon altogether.

Avoid Copyright Wrongs

This violation is not as severe as running a duplicate account, but it does cripple your account’s performance and its reach. Before Google will approve your ads, they will verify that you are not using any copyrighted terms. An example of some of Google’s copyrighted terms would be “Mercedes” or “BMW.” If your ads contain any of the copyrighted terms, then Google will approve your ads under certain conditions. These conditions prevent your ads from appearing to the majority of Google’s users. They call this Approved (limited). This can be detrimental to your campaign as it drives up the cost of a click and prevents your potential customers from seeing your ad.

In order to overcome these restrictions, we will often write the ads in your campaigns with generic terms or nicknames that relate to the specific make. Instead of BMW, we will use Beemer, Bimmer, or German Auto Repair. This will allow us to target each make, driving traffic into your store, without violating any copyright concerns.

These are only a few things that can be detrimental to your Adwords campaign, but they are the most prevalent violations we see within the auto repair industry. Be sure you are not holding your marketing back, and ask your Account Manager how you can help, and not hurt, your Adwords campaign!