This week, Gabe Ingalls gives us some insight into using Exact Match keyword functionality in your PPC campaigns.
Cheers
Mel - adCenter Community Team
While an uncovered light bulb can illuminate an entire room, a laser can highlight and draw attention to a single item in that room. Exact match can do the same for the keywords within your adCenter account. Building on the account optimisation techniques that Simone focused on in her
negative keywords post, this week I will help you understand the benefits of using exact match in your account and outline some of the best practices for doing so.
Benefits of Exact Match
To make your adCenter account highly effective it is necessary to target your most relevant keyword and ad combinations to the most relevant user queries. By using exact match you can do exactly that. Consequently, using exact match will provide your account with:
1) a more precise correlation between the user query and delivered results
2) an increased propensity for the most relevant ad copy to be displayed
3) reporting that allows you to see more clearly where your clicks and conversions are coming from
All three of the above should help to increase the CTR and long-term ROI of your account.
The Right Answer to the Right Question
If you think of search as a question, then the results you obtain can be seen as the answer to your question or query. It is therefore important to provide users with the most relevant results for their questions to increase the likelihood that they will click on your ad. While broad match can provide you with more traffic for individual keywords, it does not provide the user with a 1-to-1 ratio between the search query and the displayed results as illustrated below. In this diagram, the original keyword is at the apex of the triangle. With each step down the triangle or away from original keyword, the relevancy between the original keyword and the derivative keyword is reduced. This occurs even though each of the derivatives contain the original term. The terms at the bottom of the diagram receive more impressions, however they would also receive a lower CTR when displayed against a specific keyword.
Like a flashlight shining on a wall, the closer the wall is to the source the more precise and bright the beam is; when the light is moved further from the wall it illuminates more of the target area, however the beam is not as precise or bright (relevancy) as a laser would be when pointed at the same wall. With exact match you can provide the user with brighter, pinpointed results specifically relevant to their query and boost your CTR.
Seeing is Believing
Exact match also increases the probability that relevant ad copy associated with the keywords will be displayed when used in combination with targeted campaign strategies (see our
adCenter account structure post) or
Dynamic Text Insertion. Writing specific ad copy that is associated with either a granular account structure or individual keywords (
Dynamic Text Insertion) ensures greater relevancy between the searched query and one of your ads; closer relevancy maximises the chances that your most relevant ad will appear. It is this relevancy connection between the user query and the displayed ads that helps to drive a successful ad campaign. For example, for the query below which is the most targeted ad copy?
The middle ad is the most relevant to the search query because it utilises the most meaningful elements of the keyword and should provide the highest CTR/ROI for that particular query.
Moreover, exact match also allows you to see the precise words that users are clicking on. Because adCenter keyword performance reports can be split by match type, an exact match strategy will allow you to see which keywords are getting traffic and which are getting clicks. This knowledge can then be applied to your overall understanding of your account as well as provide greater understanding of what the best possible keyword and bid strategy looks like.
Bid Strategy Best Practices
An analysis of adCenter data for the top 30 car insurance keywords across all advertisers and all positions shows that exact match provides keywords with a higher CTR than broad match.
In addition to this, an analysis of the top thousand UK customers shows on average that exact match (9.82% CTR) has twice the CTR of broad match (4.52% CTR). Consequently it is important for you to incorporate exact match in your bidding strategy.
Focusing on Your Target
While exact match should play part of your bid strategy, many opportunities could be lost if this was the only practice that you exercised in your account. It is therefore recommended that exact match be used in combination with broad match. This will allow your account to benefit from both the precise relevancy that exact match brings as well as the scope that broad produces as well as help to maintain a long-term ROI for the account.
To be more precise, when using both broad and exact match it is necessary to bid higher on exact match than broad. This should help to prevent exact matched keywords from being ‘eclipsed’ by broad match. For example, if a keyword has the same bid for both exact and broad and broad has a stronger keyword history because it receives more impressions, the exact match bid may be ‘eclipsed’ by the broad match bid and not be displayed. The same would be true if the exact bid was smaller than the broad bid. By bidding higher on exact you can help to ensure that the highest level of relevancy between the query and bidded keyword will be displayed in your ad copy.
Incorporating a higher exact match bid into your overall bid strategy should help you to increase your CTR. Over time this will help your ads to be displayed at a higher position for a lower CPC! However as mentioned in previous blogs, negative keywords, account structure and ad copy are also essential parts to an inclusive adCenter search campaign.
Next week, Kate returns to answer the top adCenter frequently asked questions of the moment!