As of late, I’ve been hearing a lot of teams encountering a few road blocks when presenting clients with a search campaign. Without fail, it seems like there is constant push back on one or all of the following:
Not running on Branded Keywords in the campaign, while putting the focus more on general keywords.
Run on an extremely limited keyword list.
Sporadic campaign launches. Only running during specific seasons.
Now, I understand that this seems awfully elementary, but I think it is important to stress a few of the basics when starting to put together a search campaign. While it makes sense to those of us diving into search campaigns day in and day out, you can’t always assume that the person receiving the search strategy and keyword list understands search completely.
Let’s focus on road block number one, avoiding branded keywords. For whatever reason, we hear time and time again that because a brand is doing well in Organic Search, it is not necessary to include branded keywords in the overall search campaign. On the contrary! Not only will it negatively impact your “brand” awareness, but it will drive down your ROI. Branded keywords are also typically a very low cost-per-click, which helps with the campaign’s overall cost-per-click. Brand keywords also tend to be high converters. So why would you want to pause your Branded keywords? If anything, the combination of Organic Search and Paid Search will help increase the ROI and overall search referrals.
If we look at road block number two, it is often forgotten that the advertiser will only pay for the click. Hence the reason it is called pay per click advertising or PPC. Limiting your keyword list will only limit the traffic brought to the website. Sometimes it seems advertisers are afraid to have too many keywords if they have a limited budget. It is imperative to note that the keyword list is the way to ensure the searcher will learn more about a product or service, but won’t be able to find you if you limit yourself. From the initial keyword list, you can see what keywords are not performing well for the campaign or see if there are keywords that can build off the high performers.
The last road block takes into account sporadic campaign launches. More often than not, some advertisers feel that it is only necessary to run only when it is their “peak” season. While it is essential to be there during the “peak” seasons, it is also vital to be there during “off-peak” seasons as well. I’m sure there are a few instances where they should only be seasonal, but these are few and far between. Running continuously will not only ensure consistent messaging, but it allows you be there when the searcher is looking for you.
Again, this may seem rather straightforward, but sometimes it is important to STOP diverting traffic and GO back to the basics. What are your thoughts?
