Man­ag­ing pay-per-click cam­paigns (be they search, social, or dis­play based) usu­al­ly becomes a series of habit­u­al tasks.

While this allows for sta­bil­i­ty and scal­a­bil­i­ty, some­times it caus­es blind-spots in lega­cy accounts (work­ing togeth­er more than a year).

Here are my favorite tac­tics to break the mold.

Tactic 1: A Single Long-Tail Broad Match Keyword, with Every Other Word Added As Negatives

If there’s one uni­ver­sal truth to PPC man­agers, it’s that we val­ue con­trol over everything.

Broad match is the antithe­sis of that control.

Broad match key­words become ground­ed in the actu­al syn­tax of the key­word cho­sen when they have at least 5 words.

Addi­tion­al­ly, broad match opens up access to key­word con­cepts that would be too expen­sive to active­ly invest in.

When you adopt this strat­e­gy it’s cru­cial you take the fol­low­ing steps:

  • Every key­word you’re active­ly tar­get­ing gets added as an exact match neg­a­tive. This will ensure your broad match key­word can focus on new query ideas/one off search­es, while your core cam­paigns can deliv­er leads/sales via proven key­word concepts.
  • If an applic­a­ble in-mar­ket audi­ence exists, lay­er it on the broad ad group/campaign so you can pre­qual­i­fy the data acquisition.
  • Audit your queries reg­u­lar­ly, and be open to swap­ping key­word con­cepts you’re active­ly tar­get­ing for ideas your broad match key­word secures (pro­vid­ed there’s enough volume/the busi­ness case is there).
  • Cam­paigns should only have one broad match key­word (sequestered away in its own ad group). Any more than that, and the data acqui­si­tion will turn into waste.

Tactic 2: Lead with Display, Remarket with Search

Not every busi­ness hast the bud­get for Google search as the first touch with a prospect.

Dis­play is here to bring the curat­ed audi­ence worth invest­ing in.

The beau­ty of cus­tom intent, cus­tom affin­i­ty, and in-mar­ket audi­ences is that they rep­re­sent pre­qual­i­fied leads anoth­er brand paid for.

Lay­er­ing these audi­ences on a dis­play cam­paign (where the cost-per-click are dra­mat­i­cal­ly cheap­er) allows your brand to curate a list of ide­al prospects – ripe for the pick­ing by brand­ed search and/or RLSA.

All ad types should be aligned with the tar­get audi­ence, and dis­play is no exception.

Dis­play cre­ative needs to be atten­tion-grab­bing, and can lean on image, text, or a hybrid approach.

If you decide to lever­age this tac­tic, it’s vital two con­sid­er­a­tions are in place:

  • Your indus­try is approved for remar­ket­ing. Full list of restrict­ed indus­tries is here.
  • You have your remar­ket­ing tag and Face­book pix­el in place.

Depend­ing on the ini­tia­tive, the dis­play cam­paign may be send­ing folks to a microsite or sub­do­main, so it’s impor­tant to con­firm the track­ing codes used on your main site make it over to your PPC land­ing pages.

Tactic 3: Sequester Branded & Competitor Terms in Their Own Campaigns

Regard­less of where you fall on the branded/competitor cam­paign debate, there is val­ue in pro­tect­ing your gen­er­al ser­vice terms from false pos­i­tive (brand­ed) and false neg­a­tive (com­peti­tor) metrics.

Most key­words are capa­ble of adding in brand­ed or com­peti­tor terms to their queries, cre­at­ing false positives/negatives in the metrics.

When brand­ed and com­peti­tor terms live in their own cam­paigns (and are made neg­a­tives every­where else), cam­paigns are able to focus on the main job they’ve been given.

Cam­paigns jobs range from:

  • Gen­er­al service/product: Core ser­vice offer­ings and prod­ucts offered – ad groups are dif­fer­ent ways of refer­ring to that service/product.
  • Loca­tion-based: Cam­paigns have very sim­i­lar struc­ture but are tar­get­ed to dif­fer­ent loca­tion so they’re not com­pet­ing with each oth­er and can have ads/keywords that account for how that loca­tion searches/thinks.
  • Buy­er Per­sona: While this usu­al­ly makes more sense at the ad group lev­el, if the buy­er per­sona rep­re­sents dif­fer­ent margins/profit poten­tial, it can make sense to set cam­paigns in line with prospect poten­tial value.
  • Brand­ed: A safe space for the cheap­er and high­er con­vert­ing queries revolv­ing around your brand, as well as a focused spot for brand­ed creative.
  • Com­peti­tor: Top five to sev­en com­peti­tors with a com­peti­tor per ad group that allows you to set spe­cif­ic mes­sag­ing in line with why you’re better.
  • Exper­i­men­tal cam­paigns: Safe spaces for crazy ideas that you don’t actu­al­ly want to run but are “forced” to by team members/clients

Every cam­paign rep­re­sents addi­tion­al bud­get, so it’s impor­tant to choose the jobs that will serve your brand best, as well as allow you to have an account that’s easy to manage.

Tactic 4: Use DSA for Keyword Research

Dynam­ic Search Ads (DSA) rep­re­sents a beau­ti­ful hybrid approach between SEO and PPC – empow­er­ing PPC cam­paigns through well SEO’ed sites.

DSA func­tions by allow­ing Google to crawl the site, and match the best land­ing page to the user’s query (if it was includ­ed in the dynam­ic target).

There are two main ben­e­fits to DSA:

  • Empow­er­ing bud­gets to sup­port hundreds/thousands of land­ing pages with­out need­ing hun­dreds of campaigns.
  • Teach­ing us how our prospects search and at what cost.

All key­words you’re tar­get­ing in oth­er cam­paigns need to be made neg­a­tives in the DSA campaign.

By mak­ing the key­words neg­a­tives, you ensure your active­ly cho­sen key­words get a fair shake to be prof­itable, and DSA can focus on net new ideas.

It is vital reg­u­lar audits of the search term reports accom­pa­ny DSA. You’ll be check­ing for the following:

  • Key­word con­cepts you want to active­ly target.
  • Key­word con­cepts that need to be made negatives.
  • Auc­tion price range of valu­able queries.

Tactic 4 Use DSA for Keyword Research

Tactic 5: Invest Aggressively in the Beginning and Then Roll Spend Back

Most cam­paigns begin with a small test­ing bud­get – adver­tis­ers are loath to invest until they see results.

Yet if there isn’t enough fuel for the key­word concepts/targets cho­sen, the learn­ing peri­od can drag caus­ing waste.

If the cam­paign is oper­at­ing at less than 30% impres­sion share (of all avail­able impres­sions, the amount it’s secur­ing), that means at least 70% of poten­tial prospects aren’t get­ting access to your brand.

Some­times, new cam­paigns need to be less ambi­tious in scope (tar­get­ing only part of the offerings/some of the mar­ket) to allow the bud­get to ful­ly fuel their learn­ing periods.

The first month of a cam­paign should get a 15%-20% increase in bud­get for data acqui­si­tion (how prospects search, what they will cost, and to teach the ad net­works the val­ue of the campaign).

After the ini­tial learn­ing peri­od (min­i­mum of two weeks but can go for the full month), you’ll have the intel to make edu­cat­ed and prof­itable deci­sions about the account.

This can mean:

  • Rolling back spend to ide­al parameters.
  • Lever­ag­ing a smart (con­ver­sion-ori­ent­ed) bid­ding strategy.
  • Cam­paign opti­miza­tions (neg­a­tives, new keywords/ad groups, cre­ative choices).

Final Thoughts

Our job as PPC mar­keters is to con­so­nant­ly push the bound­aries of what’s pos­si­ble in prof­it and scale.

Yet if we add in too many vari­ables, we won’t know what was behind our success.

Give your­self a full learn­ing peri­od as you test out these innovations.

SOURCE: Search Engine Journal