A great way to reach a highly targeted market is to use contextual advertising. This method can maximize the return you'll see for the outlay of your advertising dollars, but many novice web marketers tend to make some mistakes which can result in their contextual advertising campaigns being less than successful. Read on for five things you should avoid:

1) Don't bid too high on pay per click advertisements whether these are content or search engine based. Do your keyword research first you can save yourself a lot of money by targeting your pay per click ads efficiently and keep yourself on budget. You can find a lot of resources on pay per click advertising keywords on the web, including the going rates on keywords. This can help you bid appropriately on your keywords.

2) Failing to diversify you campaign, or failing to keep track of how you ads are performing for your business. You should use several ads using different copy to test out which work best for you. To this end, Adwords advertisers can use Google Analytics and conversion tracking to determine how your ads are performing. You can then use this information to fine tune your ad campaign.

3) Another common mistake is using words just to drive traffic. A good example of this is the word "free". This may get you clicks, but will likely not get you conversions. Since you are paying each time someone clicks on your ad, this can end up costing you. It is far better to use targeted keywords to reach your chosen demographic.

4) Using too many different keywords. In web marketing, relevance is everything - a wide net may work great for fish, but not so well to get leads using pay per click advertising. Your focus should be on keywords which will be directly relevant to your target market. Remember that Google Adwords work by pairing up ads with websites sharing keywords. This can maximize your conversion rate if properly employed.Take Google's advice here and try to get inside your prospective customer's heads. Think of the words which will get their attention. Google offers Adwords tips and support, don't neglect to check this out.

5) Sending all of your traffic to one page. You need to make a landing page which gives visitors the information they clicked your ad in search of right off the bat. Make the copy on this page relevant to the wording of your advertisement. Don't for example link your homepage to an ad for say, wrenches. Take your visitor directly to your page of wrenches. It's simple, but many make the mistake of sending visitors to irrelevant pages. The easier you make things for the visitor, the more likely you are to make a sale.

Avoid these common pitfalls and you will see much better results from your Adwords campaign.