Clicks 'n Conversions Blog

This article was first published April 23, 2008 on the Tatum Marketing blog

Lately I’ve been looking at many technology pay-per-click campaigns – both as part of our PPC Management service and our Marketing Coaching program. Here’s one of the first recommendations I almost always find myself making:

Take a closer look at your ad groups – you probably need to reorganize them.

Ad Groups, for those of you who don’t know, is the way Google lets you cluster similar keyword phrases to separate them from non-similar keyword phrases. They’re called “ad groups” because the same ads are used for each keyword phrase in the group. Other major search engines let you do the same thing.

If you don’t know too much about how pay-per-click advertising works, it makes sense to cluster keywords phrases according to the main category word(s) used.

For example, in our marketing business it makes sense to arrange keywords in groups according to topic such as websites, pay per click advertising, search engine optimization, technology marketing and so on.

A software company with a contract management product would likely arrange keywords in groups such as contract management, business proposals, supplier management, etc.

This is a reasonable place to start. But it’s not enough because it doesn’t take into account where the searcher is in the buying process and this has a huge affect on what specifically the searcher is looking for, which in turn affects what kind of ad and landing page will appeal to him or her.

Let’s go back to my Tatum Marketing example. An ad group called “PPC” could include a wide range of keyword phrases from just plain “ppc” to “ppc consultant” to “how do I manage my PPC program”. If I want to reach people searching on each of these keywords I can’t reasonably do it with the same ad.

Why?

Because the person searching for “ppc” is very early in the buying process – if he or she is even a prospect at all. This person is probably looking for a definition. He or she is not going to be interested in clicking on an ad about PPC management services. (Note: it’s unlikely that I would include such a broad term as “ppc” in our pay per click campaign. I’m just using it here as an example).

The person who searches for “ppc consultant”, on the other hand, might very well be interested in finding out about our PPC Management Services. And the person who types in “how do I manage my PPC program” has made it clear that he or she is a do-it-yourselfer and would probably be more interested in a PPC management product.

This is another example of the importance of understanding the intent of the click, which I wrote about a couple of months ago.

A successful PPC ad program requires that you make your keyword groupings more granular than most technology marketers (even PPC agencies) seem to understand. Keep dividing your ad groups until you have shorter lists of tightly related keyword phrases, offer ads and landing pages geared to the people searching for these phrases, and you’ll see your ppc results soar.