Are you limiting your audience? You should be.
A few weeks ago, Microsoft added a new tool to their adCenter system: the Broad Match Modifier. It’s a powerful ally when you consider how important it is to limit your audience when running an online marketing campaign.
I know that’s an odd statement. After all, the point of an advertising campaign is to help your company reach a wider audience. Limiting that reach may seem counter-intuitive, but there’s a method to this madness. In the past, broad match keywords could be a dangerous addition to your adCenter campaign. They could enhance your reach, but they also had a habit of bringing in a lot of traffic that converted poorly.
Negatives and Positives
Until now, keeping that traffic at bay involved producing lists of “negative” keywords and making clever use of phrase matching. The new Broad Match Modifier allows you, in essence, to create a “positive” keyword (or keywords) within a broad matched keyword. By putting a “+” sign in front of individual words within your keyword, you’re telling adCenter that you only want your ads to appear when those words appear in a search.
For example, if you’re running a delivery-only pizza place, you might run an ad for the broad matched keyword “pizza delivery”. You’ll get plenty of traffic for people looking for a place to get a pizza delivered, but you also might get traffic from people searching for “pizza restaurant” and expecting a table. You won’t be selling any pizzas to that audience, but you will spend advertising dollars to bring them to your web site. You can avoid the expense (and their frustration) by changing your broad match keyword to “pizza +delivery”. That way, you’ll only show up if someone uses the exact word “delivery” in their search.
Reaching a broad audience is important, but it’s even more important to make sure you’re reaching the right audience. Broad Match Modifiers should help you meet both of those goals.
About Jonathan Larkin
