Let’s discuss an important PPC strategy. For starters, let’s assume that you have a well designed PPC account. You’ve done a great job separating your keyword phrases into smart Ad Groups, and those Ad Groups are grouped well into thoughtful Campaigns. Your Quality Score is good because your keyword phrases, ad text and landing pages all match up well. Your ads are showing up, you are getting a good click through rate, and your landing pages are performing well. What’s next?
Do you leave the account alone since it’s running well, or do you take things a step further? It’s time to start thinking about a more advanced PPC Optimization strategy dealing with All-Star vs Research keyword phrases, and their association with specific campaigns.
In reality, every PPC account has keyword phrases of varying success. The whole point is to research which phrases work best, then to dedicate budget to your All Star keyword phrases. So how does that work?
Let’s say you have a PPC account with 3 Campaigns, and each Campaign has 5 Ad Groups as shown in the image below:
Within the PPC Campaign, you have 5 Ad Groups, and each Ad Group has 5 keywords in it as shown below:
Over time, you realize that of those 25 keywords, 10 haven’t had any conversions, 14 of the keywords have had several conversions, but more importantly, 1 specific phrase has generated more conversions that the other 24 keyword phrases combined! Most people would leave that phrase alone since it’s working well, and they would start adjusting landing pages, ad text, etc to improve certain metrics.
Here’s the smarter PPC strategy.
Take that amazing keyword phrase, pull it out of its existing campaign, and create a specific campaign for that individual phrase. That campaign has 1 total Ad Group and only 1 total keyword inside that Ad Group. You should even consider calling that Campaign “All Star – [your keyword phrase]”.
Why would I do that? What’s the benefit of that PPC Strategy?
When that phrase is inside a shared Ad Group within a Campaign with several Ad Groups, that keyword phrase has budget constraints on it. You control daily ad spend at the Campaign level. This means every other keyword and every other Ad Group gets some budget allocated to it. This means your all star keyword phrase is not showing as often as it could. There are more advanced ideas dealing with Lost Impression Share Due to Ad Rank or Budget, but the key idea is you want your best keywords to have all the budget they need to show up all the time and do their thing for your business.
Make sure that your All Star Campaign(s) get as much budget as possible. I’ll get a little technical here, but make sure that keyword phrase has a 100% Search Impression Share. Make sure there is no Lost Impression Share due to Rank OR due to budget.
What happens to my PPC account over time?
As you implement this PPC strategy, your account will have more and more Campaigns. Highlight or rename your All Star campaigns, and make sure those Campaigns never run out of budget. Your best ROI comes from theses phrases, so treat them with extra care!
If that means you have to pull budget from the other campaigns, do that. Again, once you discover a phrase is an all star, make sure it shows up all the time! If you don’t like the idea because of a limited budget, still give your all stars as much budget as they need, then seriously consider increasing your budget for your Research Campaigns.
Keep doing this over time. Research different phrases. Test different ad text via A/B testing. Test different Landing Pages via A/B testing. Find the magic keyword phrase – ad text – landing page combinations. When you find those all star keyword phrases, pull out each individual phrase and put it in its own Campaign with its own dedicated budget. Make sure that phrase shows up all the time in all the right places and networks. Pretty soon, your PPC Account will have a bunch of All Star Campaigns with maximum budget and an amazing ROI!
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