Advertising is all about making a profit, so why do so many marketers settle for digital ad waste? Although there are many outreach expenditures that you just have to live with, when it comes to keyword marketing, most companies could stand to trim the fat from their campaigns. Here are six choice tips for reducing waste and optimizing your keyword strategy.
1. Choose Appropriate Keyword Match Types
Keyword match types determine when your ad is served in response to a given user search.
Broad Match
Broad match triggers your ads on searches that include misspelled words, synonyms and variations like closely related terms. This is the default on AdWords. Broad match can increase the number of times your ad is viewed, but it may not lead to quite as many clickthroughs since not everyone will actually be searching for your content.
Broad Match With Modifiers
Broad match modifiers let you raise clickthroughs and conversions by targeting searches that include one or more of your keywords. They help reduce spurious results, but they may exclude some consumers who aren’t quite sure how to phrase their searches.
Exact Match
These matches display your ad to anyone who searches for the exact keyword or close varieties. They have the highest clickthrough rates, or CTRs, but they function best in conjunction with other match types, such as broad match.
Phrase Match
These matches let you target phrases and certain variations. In terms of precision, they lie somewhere between exact and broad matches.
2. Eliminate Negative Keywords
Negative keywords let you prevent your ad from showing in response to certain keywords. Why might this be a good idea? Some keywords simply don’t lead to conversions, and if you’re paying for them, you’re basically wasting campaign money. Instead of targeting users who don’t actually want to see your content, you can specify excludable keywords to increase ROI.
3. Start Geo-targeting
Geo-targeting is essential to local businesses. If you want to increase engagement in a specific area, for instance, you should display ads to people in the vicinity and stop showing ads to locales that you don’t serve. Smart geo-targeting heightens ad relevance and profitability.
4. Become Better at Bid Management
There are many bid management techniques that can help you reduce your minimum bid, which is the lowest cost per click, or CPC, that you’ll pay. For instance, by targeting your ads correctly, creating relevant ad content and directing users to optimized landing pages, you can increase your Quality Score and lower your minimum bid. Other forms of bid management include grouping closely related ad groups and experimenting with different bidding strategies.
5. Be Discerning by Using IP Exclusions
Some IP addresses generate large numbers of costly spurious clicks. Whether this is due to fraud, bots or some other source, monitoring and blocking troublesome IP addresses can lower your marketing expenses.
6. Reduce CPC With RSLA
Remarketing lists for search ads, or RSLA, let you tailor your ad campaign to target users who have already visited your site. Reengaging consumers who left without making purchases and targeting undecided shoppers are great ways to increase conversions and ROI.
Getting Started
Whether you’re using Bing Ads, Google AdWords or Yahoo Ads, following these basic pointers can make your marketing game more lucrative. For more great tips, subscribe to our SEO blog series. Or connect with us on social media.