If you’re buying traffic using pay-per-click (PPC) advertising then you probably have a checklist for the intricate details… but what about the common sense stuff?

It’s obvious the following Realtor doesn’t. In fact, I nominate the Realtor that placed the following PPC ad for the Marketing Darwin Award. Take a look and then I’ll tell you where the REAL ouch factor lies.

What starts off as a PPC ad in my Gmail inbox…

Turns into 404 FAIL:

Now, I’m a nice fella and am willing to throw a fellow marketer the benefit of a doubt. But here’s the burn… I’ve seen this ad show up for the past 3 weeks. Every time I click on I receive the 404 page.

Whether your PPC ad leads to a 404 or to a high-converting landing page, Google cares not! They’re still going to charge you for every single click made on your ad. That’s the ouch factor… a poorly crafted PPC campaign can cost you thousands of dollars.

Tracking your ads is critical to your success. Not only will you be able to identify the activities that yield the highest ROI (return on investment) but you’ll also be able to spot under-performing areas (like bad PPC) and cut them off before you lose the shirt off your back.