Tightly-Themed Ad Groups: The PPC Pro Advantage
PROFITABLE PPC By David Szetela, Search Engine Watch, Aug 18, 2008
Columns | Contact David | Biography
For the past three columns, I've been describing the best practices for creating comprehensive keyword lists. Our ongoing exercise assumed we were setting up a PPC campaign for the legendary mythical guitar manufacturer, Krisp Guitars. We defined Personas -- identities of typical buyer types - and then generated a list of 540 keywords for the Roger persona, a serious buyer of high-end guitars.
Now it's time to roll up our sleeves and split that long keyword list into ad groups. We'll do so with our Ad Group Mantra in mind:
(Almost) every keyword should appear in the ad text.
Refer to my previous column to understand why this is important. Also, realize that this is intended to be a guideline -- your ad groups will be sufficiently "tight" if each of the keywords has at least two words in common, and those words appear in the ad text.
I added several keywords related to particular models of Krisp guitars, and then separated the 620-word list into 11 ad groups. You can download a spreadsheet with each of the ad-group-level sub-lists here >.
The first four ad groups are ones whose keywords and ad text relate to potential guitar buyers who are at the Research phase of the Research-Shop-Buy cycle. At that point they are apt to be performing searches just to see who the vendors are and what sizes, models, etc. are available.
Ad Group Name: Research 12-String Guitars
Example Keywords: 12-string guitar, compare 12-string guitars online, twelve string gitar
Ad Text:
Twelve-String Guitars Hand-made 12-String Guitars. Top Quality Materials, Big Selection! KrispGuitars.com/12-String-Guitars
Note that the ad is general -- it doesn't include any particular features or benefits, and anticipates the fact that someone performing a Research-stage search is probably interested in seeing a large selection.
Note also the display URL -- it includes the root keyword at the end of the URL. As mentioned in past columns, the display URL can include any text as long it appears to be a legal, working URL -- even if the page it refers to doesn't exist. The only requirement is that the root domain match the root domain of the actual landing page.
Note also that I've "bolded" the words in the ad that might be bolded when the ad is displayed. Bold words get better CTRs.
Let's move on to the set of ad groups that assume the searcher is in the Shop phase - the second tab of the spreadsheet. Here's an example ad group:
Ad Group Name: Buy Collectable Acoustic Guitars
Example Keywords: buy collectable acoustic guitar, buy high-end acoustic guitars, buy professional acoustic guitar online
Ad Text:
High-end Acoustic Guitars Low-Priced Professional Collectable Guitars. Top-Quality Workmanship! KrispGuitars.com/Acoustic+Guitars
Now let's look at the ad groups created for people who are clearly in the Buy phase:
Ad Group Name: D25 Guitars
Example Keywords: d25 12-string gitar, d25 twelve string guitar, d-25 guitar
Ad Text:
Exclusive D-25 Guitars Own the Choice of Pro Guitarists. Superior Sound and Workmanship! www.KrispGuitars.com/D25+Guitars
The word "Exclusive" in the ad text makes it clear that this ad represents THE official vendor of that particular guitar -- and hence this ad more likely to get the click than competing ads.
Now, if you're thinking this is an awful lot of work for just one persona, here's hope: if you determine through intuition or research that a subset of your big keyword list is apt to be searched on less often, feel free to get a little sloppy. I've represented such a subset in the Recording tab of the spreadsheet. For the sake of this example I've assumed that a relatively small number of people will search on guitar terms that include the word "recording." So I've lumped them all together, and created a relatively generic ad.
Ad Group Name: Recording Guitars
Example Keywords: compare recording 12-string gutar, recording acoustic guitars online, buy recording acoustic guitar online
Ad Text:
Pro Recording Guitars Top-Quality Pro Acoustic Guitars. Big Selection of 12- and 6-Strings! KrispGuitars.com/Recording+Guitars
After the ad group has run for a while and accumulated enough data to identify the most-frequently-used search terms, we have the option of revisiting the keyword list and splitting the ad group into two or more smaller ones with tighter correlations between keywords and ad text.
In fact, this is a process that should be ongoing for even the most tightly-themed ad groups. Given enough time and data, you'll see that some keywords in the ad group are garnering more impressions, clicks and conversions. These should be split off into even smaller ad groups with a tighter relationship between keywords and ads.
The last tab of the spreadsheet contains a longer list of keywords for the Roger persona -- see if you can figure out how to split it into tightly-themed ad groups. Meanwhile, next week I'll talk about the next step in the campaign-building process: determining the bid prices you should start with. As always, let me know your comments and questions via the feedback form below.
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Biography
PPC Advertising expert David Szetela founded Clix Marketing in 2003, following a 25-year career in technology sales and marketing. He is active in the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) and was the author of two lessons in SEMPO's Advanced Search Advertising course. He is a regular speaker at PPC Summit, MarketingSherpa and SES events, and his weekly radio show, PPC Rockstars, is broadcast every Monday at 4 PM EDT on Webmasterradio.fm.
Article Archives by David Szetela:
» Tightly-Themed Ad Groups: The PPC Pro Advantage - August 18, 2008
» Dynamic Keyword Insertion: Friend or Foe? - August 11, 2008
» Awesome Ad Groups: Small is Good - August 4, 2008
» More Killer Keyword Techniques: Personas and Buckets - July 28, 2008
» PPC Keyword Sets: Words to the Wise - July 21, 2008
» Creating PPC Campaigns: the 'Live or Die' Settings - July 14, 2008
» More Articles by David Szetela
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