How to ruin your paid search campaign before you even start

"Let's waste some money!"
-something you'll never hear yourself, or a client say

I was in a meeting yesterday with a creative agency who said they had constructed a high end site for one of their customers, who wanted to "advertise on Google". They built the site, set up AdWords for him (as a courtesy, they never claimed to be marketers) and set him loose. My head was already spinning, and when the story spiraled into a disgruntled customer's angry phone calls, I started imagining all of the things that must have gone wrong...

As such, a short list of ways to ruin your AdWords campaign from someone who has some experience in paid search management. So for you newbies, here's how to blow it from the get go:

1. Insufficient research and understanding of the platform. Just because you can get your ads live doesn't mean you know what you're doing. Check out the Google AdWords Learning Center before you get started. Take notes while you do it. I'm serious. And then, just to balance out the Google Kool-Aid factor, read your fair share of blogs like this to make sure you do things that Google doesn't tell you, like turning off the Content Network and rotating your ads.
   
2. Shorting your budget, or spreading it too thin. Sorry to tell you folks, but I've done some statistics in my day and there's something called sample size. Even the best of us will have to do a lot of adjusting to campaigns over time, but you'll never know what to adjust without some critical mass. Either have the budget when you start, or focus your efforts on a small number of keywords and ad groups so you don't have 600 keywords with four clicks each. If none of them convert well, you don't have enough of a sample to decide what works and what doesn't. Rule of thumb, don't make a change until you've had 30 clicks, bare minimum.
3. Making monstrous ad groups. This one has been said a million times, but can't be said enough. If your ad versions don't adequately represent each keyword, you need more ad groups.
4. You have no goals. Set a number of leads. Set a sales goal. Have SOMETHING to work towards. If you don't, you'll have no idea what you're working towards and how to get there. People who struggle here are the ones who remember a year later that they have AdWords running, have been paying for it, but completely forgot about it. This, my children, is unacceptable...unless of course you wake up screaming:

"Let's waste some money!"