For many Google Adwords managers, the thought of using broad match keywords falls somewhere between fishing with dynamite or setting large bags of money on fire.
While broad match is a catch-all that can pull in a wide swath of people searching for related or completely unrelated terms, it can easily burn a giant hole in your budget if not managed correctly.
If broad match were a product, the package would say “handle with care”, and that’s exactly what we should do when implementing keywords of this type.
In the vast majority of cases, broad match keywords should be avoided. Example, a business that produces a high number of low margin items could easily spend themselves out of business with broad match.
However, for companies that sell high margin products or services, integrating broad match selectively can not only produce volume, but also quality leads, opportunities, and sales.
As an example, one company we worked with provided a high margin service targeted to upper income individuals. If you looked specifically at the conversion numbers for broad match, they looked roughly like this.
Cost Per Click $30
Cost Per Net Lead $1,000
Cost Per Sale $10,000
At first glance, the numbers look like a formula for financial disaster. The costs add up quickly as the person who entered the search term was served a broad match ad, and often falls out of the funnel before converting into a lead due to irrelevancy. This becomes a wasted click and adds to your cost per net lead.
However, if a company produces a product or service that far exceeds the cost per sale, then it makes great strategic sense to handle this dynamite with care.
Case in point. Suppose the average sale per customer for this company is $100,000. With a $10,000 cost per sale, we’re looking at a 10x Return on Ad Spend (RoAS). Providing the cost of goods or services is also within reason, the resulting ROI makes this a highly strategic and profitable strategy.
In many cases, ads like this serve either products that target an affluent demographic, or B2B campaigns for high spend products and services. The challenge in both cases is to manage all broad match ads carefully.
Broad match Dynamite Handling Tips
- Never launch your AdWords campaigns with broad match campaigns. Always start off with exact, phrase, and broad match modified to fully exploit all available keyword opportunities and to gain a better understanding of your customers and campaign dynamics.
- Use broad match selectively. Target keywords that are highly relevant and related to products and services with higher profit margins.
- Price your bids accordingly. As a general rule, start your bidding at about 30% of what you’re paying for exact and phrase match campaigns, then monitor carefully and ratchet it up as needed. Since these ads tend to have a higher quality score, Google will serve them over the broad match ads, which often have lower scores that drive up overall costs.
- Be vigilant with your negative keywords report. Watch the search terms that are triggering your broad match ads very carefully, and add the terms that are both wasteful and irrelevant. Pay close attention to this as negligence in this area can kill your budget in a hurry. Google has a way of changing the broad match rules on a whim, so diligence and detail is key.
- Organize your broad match keywords in a way that makes them easier to monitor on a regular basis. We would suggest holding them in their own ad group. You can even add a special character while naming them to keep them front and center at the top of your screen. Top-of-screen equals top of mind.
- Write your broad match ads in a way that is clear and concise. This is important for all match types, but especially broad match. This will reduce the number of false leads generated by a very wide audience of people viewing your ads. This can also affect your click through rate (CTR), another component of quality score, so try to find a nice balance. There are some queries that are not completely related, but could be converted into a sale as well. This point leads us to our last tip.
- Watch for new opportunities like a hawk. Broad match keywords are like a giant net that captures an abundance of search terms. Many will be completely irrelevant and wasteful (see #4 above), but you’ll also discover a few diamonds in the rough, certain search terms that didn’t present themselves in your initial keyword research. Capture and test these terms through exact, phrase, and broad match-modified ads.
As you can see, broad match keywords can make strategic sense for the right products and services. This match type is more than a lead generator; it can produce profitable sales if managed correctly. By monitoring your account with vigilance and care, you can control costs with negative keywords, and generate sales with search terms that were previously undiscovered.
Now toss me some dynamite and let’s go fishing!