Mark Shore
Mark is the Founder of Dabmatch and a Forbes 30 Under 30 recipient. He previously co-founded Strike Social, where he managed $75M in annual ad spend for clients like Apple, Disney, Netflix, and Nike.
Google search ads are a cornerstone for any successful performance marketing program. A well-defined campaign structure is essential to maximize the success and scale of your PPC ads. This article breaks down how HiFi – a fictitious, global fintech startup – would structure their account. These best practices can be applied to your brand as well, whether you’re a startup or an established business.
There are three main targeting categories you’ll want to differentiate – brand, competitors, and generic.
This campaign will contain keywords unique to your company, including your brand name and individual products. Some examples would be:
Since you’re targeting people already searching for your brand or products, these will typically be your highest performers. While some companies shy away from these terms since they figure they’ll get those same customers organically, this can be a risky strategy (as we’ll see in the next section) since your competitors are trying to steal your customers.
Conquesting is an effective way to pull traffic away from your competitors to your website or app. In this campaign, you’d target keywords around your competitors and their products, for instance:
It’s often effective to mention what makes you unique compared to the competition in these ads.
This campaign will contain groups of general keywords that relate to your products. Some terms HiFi may want to target are:
Competitor and Generic categories are typically further broken down by theme (unless you only offer one product). For instance, you may want to bucket similar keywords together:
Separating by theme will allow you to have specific ad copy for each group, as well as drive to various landing pages with tailored messaging. Funneling traffic to specific landing pages based on ad copy can be a great strategy to boost conversion rate optimization.
Google offers three match types: exact match, phrase match, and broad match. The goal is to allocate most of your budget to the exact match keywords most likely to convert. Phrase and broad match can help you continue to find new keywords to add to the mix.
The syntax for exact match keywords is to put them in brackets, for example, [hifi investing app]. Searches must have the same meaning or intent as your exact match keyword. These keywords will typically have the best performance, but they also have the highest CPCs.
The syntax for phrase match keywords is to put them in quotes, for example, “hifi investing app”. To show on phrase match, searches must include the same meaning as your phrase match keyword but may also have other terms. These keywords help you find variations of existing keywords that you can add to your campaigns.
The syntax for broad match keywords is to simply input the keyword, for example, hifi investing app. To show on broad match, searches must be related to your keyword but don’t need to include your keyword. These keywords can help you find similar, completely new keywords. It’s best to dedicate only a small portion of your budget to broad keywords.
Google also allows you to add negative keywords. You’ll want to add related keywords that don’t align with your brand or products. For instance, since HiFi doesn’t offer crypto investing, they would add crypto-related keywords as negative keywords.
You’ll also want to utilize negative keywords to keep your campaigns or ad groups focused on the proper match type. For instance, your phrase match campaigns would negative target exact match keywords, and your broad match campaigns would negative target phrase match and exact match keywords. Here’s an example of targeting the same keyword across different match types.
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Separating campaigns by specific demographics can make sense if messaging or customer experience varies significantly. Some segments to consider are:
For instance, if HiFi has different investing experiences in the US and UK, they would likely separate all campaigns by those two regions.
In general, however, Google’s algorithm does a good job of getting your ads to the right people. So when in doubt, you should leave all demographics together in the same campaign.
