New Year’s resolution: Improving paid search campaigns - Part 1

Andrea van Eugen from AdPrecision writes:

Whilst I was searching for a New Year’s holiday and also a specific television model (a gift), I noticed that paid-for search results simply need to become more relevant to the user requested search term/s.

The Internet user is becoming more web savvy year by year searching very specifically for desired products to purchase – the search engines act as a buyer’s classified ad library as more users move away from price comparison sites.

Each specific or long tail search request should produce results with accurate price points, specific models/ products available etc thus pre-qualifying every paid for click. I, however, was repeatedly served ads that were obviously concentrating on the generic search term e.g. ‘plasma TV’; no negative matches seem to be applied thus wasting impressions about 70% of the time.

The natural results can, on first glance, appear to be more relevant to a user search query. Mainly from price comparison sites I found the information to be out of date and sometimes limited. For 2007, I believe it’s time to give the web user what they want – a result that relates exactly to what they searched for.

Let’s take travel as an example. “Madrid holiday in March”. Why have generic PPC ads promising a “Holiday in Spain, Best prices available”, when you can easily create “Holiday in Madrid, Depart LGW frm £199 per person inc 4* accom”?

As the search is for the month of March, why not produce a landing page that lists March offers with further navigation links?

The specific ad - results in a better quality of the ad and also pre-qualifies the click by a significant degree for the marketer. The consumer already knows what is available and what price they should be expected to pay. As paid search costs on each and every click it seems sensible to make sure the ad is as relevant to the search query as it can be.

Part 2 tomorrow…

Andrea van Eugen, account director at AdPrecision [email Andrea here]