I'm sure most of you have seen articles about how to set up a Pay-Per-Click campaign. The majority of such articles are written for novice webmasters who don't receive much website traffic and have never done the comprehensive keyword research that is so critical for any successful internet effort. As I discovered recently, creating a PPC campaign for a mature website can differ greatly from a typical PPC campaign setup.
We recently built a PPC microsite for a client who possesses a very mature, content-rich, well-trafficked website that unfortunately had serious lead conversion problems. After analyzing the client's log files in preparation for starting the PPC campaign, I realized that traditional keyword research wasn't going to be a necessary step. In fact, the logs contained an absolute blizzard of mostly relevant keywords. I quickly determined that the Google AdWords tool and other similar tools that people use to flesh out PPC keyword lists would be redundant to this exercise.
So how did I set up this particular campaign?
An example:
I sell "Green Widgets". "Green Widgets Florida" appears in my website logs. However, I sell green widgets everywhere...so, there isn't any special reason to keep "Green Widgets Florida" in my keyword list so long as "Green Widgets" already appears. Similarly, if "Widgets" appears in the logs and I only sell "Green Widgets", I want to make sure to delete "Widgets" since it is too broad and includes products that I don't sell.
Each keyword string remaining in my campaign should not to be either too specific (so as to exclude relevant searches) or too general (mapping to keyword possibilities that don't fit the business).
Remember my client that I was telling you about? Their new PPC microsite is converting 20% of all PPC traffic into leads at a ridiculously low cost per lead...and I believe that much of their success relates to the keyword "depth" present in their campaign. When I suggested to the client that they double their PPC spend, they responded that they have more good leads than they can assimilate into their sales pipeline. Most businesses likely wish they had such problems.
About Cube Management:
Cube Management provides sales acceleration services to emerging growth and mid-market companies in the technology, manufacturing, healthcare and business service sectors. The experts at Cube Management work across the entire spectrum of marketing, sales and business development to provide customized solutions that drive revenue and profit growth. Cube Management combines Strategy, Process & People to produce winning results.