Skin Perfect is an online retailer that deals in natural skin care products.
Objectives:
To develop a Google Adwords strategy to
- Lower its CPA
- Reduce the loss on each order and drive profits from sales.
- Reach out to customers who are searching for products that Skin Perfect offers.
Strategy adopted by Skin Perfect:
Skin Perfect decided to work on ad group structure and utilize the power of match types to drive traffic from highly targeted keywords.
I. Restructuring Ad Groups:
A close observation of the responses to keywords highlighted that the keywords were not properly differentiated and grouped into clear ad groups. When a customer searched for ‘Salicylic Acid Soap’ she saw the ads for ‘Salicylic Acid Peel’ and vice versa which resulted in confusion. It also used dynamic keyword insertion that created further complication when the ad was displayed, as it highlighted an improper headline not suited to the landing page and hence bringing dissatisfaction to the customer. This process of inadequate ad grouping and dynamic keyword insertion also affected the company’s reputation as it drove dissatisfied customers away, not to return to the brand.
Skin Perfect restructured its keywords into well-defined ad groups, one having keywords for ‘Salicylic Acid Soap’ and the other for ‘Salicylic Acid Peel’ respectively, differentiating clearly between the keywords that would trigger ads from the correct ad group.
II. Utilizing the power of Match Types:
Match types are applied to keyword to help get optimize search results for better results. They also help in getting targeted traffic, rather than random and very general search results. The match types that Google Adwords offers are:
Broad Match – Broad Match keywords display very general search results, that are directly or even remotely related to search terms that the users enter.
Eg. ‘Flower Delivery’ can show results as flowers, buy online, red flowers, purple flowers, roses, lilies, flowers blogs and so on.
Broad Match can result in a number of irrelevant impressions of the ad as various results are displayed that are not necessarily what the user is searching for. For example a broad match keyword like ‘buy flowers online’ can show ads even when the user is searching for description or categories of flowers, not particularly with an intent to buy. In this case, you will get irrelevant clicks that will give an increased CTR and hence waste of money since the user clicked without an intention of buying.
Broad Match Modifier – Matches keywords with search terms without showing results for synonyms. This is especially helpful when you do not want your ads to be displayed for a broad category of synonyms of the product you offer.
Eg. ‘Flower Delivery’ can show results for flower online delivery, flower home delivery and more.
Phrase Match – This is one of the matches that helps you target more accurate keywords that the users are searching for, or are a part of the search. It is a phrase that is used in the search that also helps you get highly targeted traffic.
Eg. ‘Flower Delivery’ can show results for flower delivery at home, flower delivery of roses, flower delivery for funeral, online flower delivery, custom flower delivery online.
Exact Match – It triggers ads if the keyword is exactly the same as the term the user is searching for. Any change in the words won’t trigger the ads. It is highly relevant to use exact match when you see that a number of users are searching for a keyword and target it to get conversions.
Eg. ‘Flower Delivery’ will show results only for flower delivery.
Negative Match – This match type works above the other match types, and negates the search if a negative match keyword is used while searching.
Eg. Free flower delivery. Since your offering may not be free, you may want to target ‘free’ as a negative keyword to reduce irrelevant traffic to your ads.
The results of Broad Match are the widest and they get highly targeted as we make the match type more specific.
1) Using Broad Match Modifier:
As you have seen that Broad Match results in irrelevant impressions and hence can get unwanted search results, SkinPerfect changed its Broad Match keywords to type Broad Match Modifier, lowering down unrelated and unwanted searches and hence decreased impressions. It also helped in getting targeted traffic that was more specific and searching for its products rather than the more generalized results of Broad Match. This resulted in preventing irrelevant clicks and save money from such clicks, finally resulting in a lower CPA.
2) Introducing Negative Keywords:
SkinPerfect improved its campaigns to drive relevant traffic by negating inadequate searches that brought them high traffic, increasing their CTR and hence CPA.
It diagnosed that even though customers were searching for their products, the search terms they used were triggering irrelevant ads, those that were crafted for another ad group. Therefore it used keywords of one ad group as a negative match in the other ad groups in their campaigns. This drove the most relevant traffic to exactly the ad which the customer was looking for, thereby increasing traffic and increasing sales.
SkinPerfect had two ad groups for two different products one of which was ‘Salicylic Acid Peel’ and the other ‘Acid Peel’. The keywords triggered ads for ‘Salicylic Acid Peel’ as well when ‘Acid Peel’ ad group ads were targeted. ‘Salicylic’ was targeted as a phrase negative match to prevent the triggering of ads from ‘Acid Peel’ ad group. This was done for all exact match keywords of one ad group added as negative match for the other phrase match and broad match modifier ad groups.
This ensured that only the relevant ads were being displayed and hence helped the customer find what she was searching for. This brought relevant clicks, and higher conversions, thereby reducing irrelevant clicks and decreasing CPA.
3) Using Exact Match to lower CPA
SkinPerfect also used Exact Match keywords to its advantage, which had a lower CPC as compared to other match types which companies generally bid on. By doing this, it was possible to bid lower on keywords that users were actually using as search terms and get relevant traffic that converted into sales. This lowered the CPA and increased conversions.
Results:
By restructuring ad groups and using adequate match types to optimize campaigns, SkinPerfect not only drove relevant traffic with a high relevant CTR, it also reduced its CPC by using exact match with most keywords, bringing the average CPA to $27.85 (within the desired $30). The greatest advantage of Exact Match keywords was a 75% conversion rate. They also achieved 60% lower CPA.
Learning:
With a clear understanding and strategic application of Ad Group and Keyword Match Types fundamentals, we can get great results for our Google Adwords Campaigns.
Image Credits: boulderdigitalarts, acquisio
