For many businesses, driving online sales is a critical component to getting the best return on their investment. Customers are searching for, researching, and ultimately purchasing high volumes of products and services online versus traveling to a store. For this reason, it’s important that paid search advertisers using platforms like Google AdWords and Bing AdCenter create campaigns that are set up for success.
Here are a few of our favorite tips for optimizing your paid search campaigns:
Utilize Match Types
Paid search platforms provide several options for advertisers to help achieve campaign goals, one of which is keyword match type. You can cast an enormous net to capture the maximum amount of traffic, or you can go the other extreme and use only exact match keywords to gain traffic with only the highest amount of relevancy. Each match type has pros and cons, so be sure to learn more about keyword match types to select the ones that meet your campaign goals and are most cost-effective for your business.
Here are the four match types you can choose from:
Segment Your Keywords Carefully
Ad groups are sets of keywords within a broader campaign. For example, a shoe store might have a Women’s Shoes campaign with several ad groups like Red Shoes, Blue Shoes, Brown Shoes and Black Shoes.
By grouping your keywords into closely related sets, you can keep tight control over your campaign’s success. Having ad groups with a small number of related keywords will ensure that you can write directly relevant ad copy for that specific ad group as well as control how much you are spending on those keywords, depending on how well they are performing.
Additionally, highly relevant ad copy will help your campaign achieve better success rates in general. Paid search platforms analyze how closely they keywords in your ad group are related to the ad copy. The more tightly focused they are, the higher your Quality Score will be. High Quality Scores will help your campaign receive a better ad position at a lower cost, meaning you will spend less for the positions that get you the most clicks and conversions.
Utilize Remarketing Lists
Create remarketing lists that cookie visitors to a specific section or product page on your website. When you apply this list to a remarketing campaign, you can serve your ads to only those visitors on the remarketing list. Your remarketing audience has already expressed interest in your product or service, which increases the likelihood they will return to your website to buy. Additionally, because the potential audience your ads are served to is smaller, you ultimately pay less to gain visitors to your website.
Creating a successful AdWords campaign takes time and serious thought. We recommend using tools like the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to help you research keywords surrounding your product or service, and get started grouping them into focused ad groups with different match types. By incorporating these tips into your strategy and evaluating your campaign success on a regular basis, you’ll be well on your way to gaining new customers for your business!
