Should Adwords Target a website as a whole or Part?

[Kalin35]

I have been trying to optimize my adwords. I question i had was is it better to have a adword focus towards your website as a whole or towards a part of your website that you offer.

Here is an example of what i mean, it isnt one of my adwords though.

If you wanted to increase profit or leads on a travel website. Would you create adwords towards the website like book a flight, rent a car, make reservations etc.

OR
would it be better to target things like, find a special and make adwords like Specials to flordia, Fly to flordia, holiday inn special. etc.....

If you guys dont understand what i am talking about let me know.
Sorry it so.

[Swash]

I would imagine the more specific the add, the more likely a surfer is to clikc through, and the more likely they are to be interested in what you have to offer. Niche is good. Specifics are good. imho

[Kalin35]

This is find of funny because i keep on things of making more specific ads, and then i went to make a couple and i dont even know what are some specific things that are good. I am more for generating members and creating leads then makeing sales

[ThomasB]

If you have a specific page to a specific ad the conversion rate on your site should be very high.

If you have a very specific ad and a semi-related page the user might go away because he's looking for specifics. Waste of money for the click.

If a user is looking for an information in some field and your ad suggests he's getting that the user might be surprised when he sees too detailed/specific information about a topic that he can't handle yet.

I think Ad, keyphrase and landing page should be as relevant as possible to each other.

[Robsp]

try every venue (broad and specific) and see what converts best for you. The difference between signing up members and doing sales is not that big. People do not want to become a member of something that does not appeal to them.

Key is that you measure what you do as it is very hard to predict before your start which combination of keywords, adtext and website are required to make good conversions.

[Syzygy]

Just to add my own tuppence ha'penny worth:

In the 8 or so months that we have been using ad words it is the generic approach (ie, promoting the website generally) that seems to work more successfully.

I have tried much more focused ads based around industry specific keywords & phrases but have found - as ours are technically orientated vertical markets - that there is just not the volume of impressions to warrant it, regardless of whether your ctr is good or not (ie, a ctr of, say, 8% isn't going to do you any good when that's relative to 1000 impressions per month...).

I have even broken down one of our (very broad) vertical markets into sectors and have tried to target these specifically - I terminated this campaign in less than a moth as the volume of clickthru's proved to be atrocious in comparison to the broader marketing approach.

Currently in one campaign I'm trying again with nearly all the suggestions from the key word tool and find myself whittling these down daily. The kw's I'm losing are those that are more specific in nature and thus it is the broader, more generalised terms that appear to be working.

The only other approach for us, would be to spend time that I haven't got in trying to compile a list of every technical term available across most global engineering and laboratory science sectors - as you will appreciate these truly are vast.

And anyway, from my experiences so far, adwords (and Google per-se) doesn't seem to work very well when it comes to attracting searchers who are using such technical terms.

Thus, to conclude, it is the broader approach that does seem to work for us.

Syzygy