Adwords Explained - Page 7 - Targeting customer needs

Targeting the need and not simply showcasing the product

Another important strategy for improving the CTR of your campaign, is to reflect on and include keyword terms that focus on the problem that the user is trying to solve or the key need that they have when searching on your product.

So in the vacuum cleaner example, rather than only targeting an elaborate set of keywords about vacuum cleaners, you might focus on keywords which reflect the key need which the user has which might be :

Clean carpets
Cleaning carpet
Less time vacuuming
Easy vacuum
Stain removal

You may wish to do this in a separate Ad Group or Campaign to identify how effectively this strategy is working.

When enough is enough?

It’s important to ensure you obtain a well targeted but comprehensive list of keywords with which to focus on improving your CTR.

Broadening your keywords serves the dual purpose of :

1. increasing the number of words your ads are displayed against hence increasing ad impressions and
2. lower the average cost per click by finding less commonly used keywords upon which you can bid a lower amount to achieve a reasonable ad position.

There are sensible limits to these strategies however, so if your efforts at identifying broader / more diverse keywords are starting to move away from your key target audience and their needs, then it’s time to cease trying to broaden your keyword inventory.

There are also practical issues about trying to manage a certain volume of keywords, so if your inventory is getting into the hundreds, it might be time to pause and observe whether these words are achieving your advertising objectives before trying to go even broader. Tool's like Brad Callen's Keyword Elite and others of that ilk are worthy of examination in pursuit of rapid keyword breadth. Google's Traffic Estimation tool also offers reasonable data on expected click cost and volume for many words.

Using Exact Match to test search results

In entering terms like ‘vacuum cleaner’ in your campaign, this may leave you with questions about who is actually searching for vacuum cleaners and who is looking for other issues such as vacuum cleaner repair. One way to obtain some of this information easily is to do a side by side comparison by entering both ‘vacuum cleaner’ as a broad match term (ie with no quotation marks) and as an exact match [vacuum cleaner].

This will then provide you with statistics about who is search for just ‘vacuum cleaner’ with no other keywords which you can compare to the broad match keyword term results. This can be useful when deciding whether an exact match will deliver enough ad impression volume for your campaign (as exact matches are usually more targeted / focused than broad matches and therefore result in a higher CTR).

Non Performing Keywords, Ad Groups or Campaigns

Over a large number of ad impressions Google deem that a CTR of < 0.5% is not acceptable and they will slow or disable any keyword, ad group or campaign where the CTR is < 0.5% on a sustained basis. It is important to note however that this scrutiny only applies to results of search based ad serving. Ads served to the Google content network are not subject to this scrutiny.

If you find that certain keywords have been slowed or disabled by Google, however you wish to re-enable these using a different set of advertisements or a new set of negative campaign keywords to try and improve the CTR of these previously non-performing keywords, one way to bring them back to life is to create a new Google campaign and add these keywords. An alternative approach would be to change broad matched keywords and change them to a phrase match term which will also allow them to continue.

It’s worth reflecting on the previous poor performance however, so in re-enabling these via a new campaign or a change in match type, it is advisable to closely monitor and manage these otherwise they will simply be disabled again by Google.

Testing Conversion Rates

Page 8....How often should I monitor your campaign?