Growing a campaign?

Best way not to reduce relevance

[Mark_A]

I have a campaign, we have target keywords that have been developed over time, the majority are now exact match and the daily budgets are usually adequate for the volume of clicks that the keywords generate. I am reasonably happy with this campaign in that the people arriving at our website are quite well defined as being of interest.

Now, we would like to generate more incoming traffic, perhaps significantly more. What I don't want to do is to reduce the quality or relevance of these visitors.. so to increase sessions, what is best?
1) move some keywords from exact match to broad match?
2) increase daily budgets?
3) increase keyword bids to be in top 2 per search
etc

[engine]

It's easy to increase traffic, but relevance drops off and often ends in budgets being depleted very quickly. I've steered away from that. Of course, Google will want you to go broad, so resist, especially if the campaign is working. So, no number 1 for me.

It does depend on the topic, of course, but i've run branding ads aimed at a wider audience that may not have been buying at that very time. Interestingly, the ads didn't deplete the budget as much as expected, but did do well from a good position. As mentioned, it may not be appropriate in your instance.

I'd keep testing ads, dropping the less good and keep the best ones.

Number 3 is a good option, and may affect the daily budget in any case.

Test, test, and test again.

[Mark_A]

Hi engine, thanks for your post.

I will review our bids.

I do have an inbuilt resistance to paying at or more than £2.00 per click. Luckily it is only a small number of our keywords for which first page or top listings demand more than £2.00 .. but in some cases it seems to me that companies have gotten themselves into a corner with top bids needing £4 - £5 or something equally silly. Normally when I see this sort of thing I just leave them to it and go play elsewhere.

ETA it should of course be built on the economic benefits of a session leading to business etc, we are unable to get to our ROAS that precisely so our max bids are for the time being down to my instincts ..

[engine]

Normally when I see this sort of thing I just leave them to it and go play elsewhere.

Very wise.

One way to test it is to run it for an hour or two and see what happens. I do this when I'd discovered a time window when buyers were looking. I discovered on one particular project that 8am until midday was the best time to compete, and then dropped bids after that time.

For me It's about knowing your prospects and their demands, then matching it as best as possible.

[Mark_A]

Aha, yes a trial for a limited time could be useful, thank you for that idea.

For me It's about knowing your prospects and their demands, then matching it as best as possible.

Indeed, I am learning more as we move on. Our ideal customers probably have about 4 distinct personalities depending on which member of the decision making unit is doing the browsing.

[engine]

Our ideal customers probably have about 4 distinct personalities depending on which member of the decision making unit is doing the browsing.

Great. If you know and understand these triggers, you're well on your way to running better tests.

Glad it's helping give you ideas.

[Mark_A]

Great. If you know and understand these triggers, you're well on your way to running better tests.

I shouldn't exaggerate my knowledge, :) I know there can be perhaps 4 types of individual (by job description) in the target DMU. But I don't know them well enough to predict browsing or searching habits.

Anyhow, on increasing our sessions from our G Ads campaign I am now aware of some pitfalls which is good, we are quite niche so there may be natural limits for people searching for our keywords.

[Mark_A]

Actually devices could offer room for growth. We have always assumed that desktop rules in industrial / technical / b2b and therefore I marked down mobile. We do get mobile visitors but less than desktop (perhaps because I marked them down) I need to have a play with seeing if there are mobile users in our niche.

[engine]

That's a good experiment to undertake.
Try and run experiments individually to make it easier to measure. Too many experiments at once makes it more difficult to judge what's working.

[Rndm]

A few thoughts.

1. Impression Share - What is your impression share with your current budget? Is there room to get more visits from the highest converting campaign, ad group, or keywords? If so this could be the best place to start.

2. Match Type - Before moving to broad I would try phrase. I like phrase because I can take my best converting keywords and see if there are more high converters that are adding a modifier (best, location, buy, etc.) to these keywords. My phrase ad groups generally have the highest conversion rate compared to my exact match. It depends on the niche but most searchers seem to add a modifier to my money keywords.

3. Bid Price - I will pay any price for a click as long as it generates a good ROI. Also don't just think of the first sale as the ROI. Think about the lifetime value of that customer. One other thing to keep in mind is how does your cost per lead and cost per acquisition compare to other advertising channels (on and off line).


Hope this helps!

[buckworks]

If you run any match types besides exact match, a well-developed set of negative keywords will be vital. Identifying words that should be blocked is one of the most important things you can do when branching out into broad match, phrase match or modified broad match.

Consider creating a separate campaign for getting started with other match types. Set cheap bids, and keep a very close eye on the query reports. Mine the reports for new query ideas you could add to existing campaigns, new negative keywords, or even inspiration for new ads.

Have you done anything with remarketing?

[Rndm]

@buckworks is absolutely correct. Being fanatical about negatives is essential to a good campaign. I like to use phrase match negatives when possible to maximize time/effectiveness.

[Mark_A]

@engine I am running with equal weight given to mobile now and watching to see what happens.

@Rndm thanks for your posts, interesting points, yes I would try phrase match before broad certainly. On bid price, at the moment GAds is good compared to LinkedIn ads, bing is lower cost but less scaleable, while direct e-mailshots are probably our best value promotions in terms of spend per resulting customer revenues.

@buckworks, yes luckily I have quite expensive negative keyword lists as initially our campaigns were broad and phrase match and every morning I would find loads more negatives from the day before :) I haven't done any remarketing and you are not the first person to suggest it to me. I should probably take a look at it. Thanks for your comments.

[RhinoFish]

Segment further, put top keywords in SKAGs, daypart, device offsets, audiences, make sure no money is wasted, so you can push on everything at the same ROAS, this will get your the wide reach, by being efficient everywhere. A big part of your QS is CTR, test more ads, then test some more. On QS, your mobile friendliness and mobile site speed are very important, tune them up.

[Rndm]

@Mark Happy to chime in. It sounds like you are on top of it. You mentioned that email has the best ROAS, but this is really lead nurturing since you have already acquired their emails. That makes it challenging to compare to a lead acquisition cost like Google/Bing PPC. I primarily work in B2B complex sales btw.

[Mark_A]

Hi @Rndm the type of email I was thinking about was where we mail to a rented list and only collect details of those who respond.

[Mark_A]

Hi @RhinoFish, good to see you, hope you are keeping well and thank you for your input. I recently ensured all AG have 3 ads, the most recent being responsive. Need a little more time / data before sorting again. I think the website speed is good, I suppose to be sure I run a speed test on my mobile and compare to desktop do I?

[RhinoFish]

I think the website speed is good, I suppose to be sure I run a speed test on my mobile and compare to desktop do I?

Today's tools give you an absolute score of how well you're doing, so you can work on improving your score, no need to compare, but do make sure you run both desktop and mobile tests, the corrective actions differ some.
:-)

[Mark_A]

Actually not convinced on the mobile, seeming to see 14s average time on site, which seems very short.

[RhinoFish]

Time On Site (TOS) is duration, and that highly depends on your sources of traffic (or targeting settings within a particular source).
Also highly dependent on your landing pages.
TOS is in the same usefulness bucket as Bounce Rate, which is the "Barely Useful" bucket.
Point being, 14s could be a great average TOS, or a horrid TOS, it depends on many factors.

Focus more on Site Speed, and Conversion Rate, and within PPC, your mobile ROAS.