In previous posts I've made the case that your adCenter campaigns might profit from focusing on your core keywords rather than long tail terms (Different Engines, Different Tactics), improving the size of your audience, while warning that the technique was not without risk. Negative keywords are an important tactic in qualifying that larger audience (Qualifying Traffic with Negative Keywords). Negative keywords help prevent your ads from being displayed to people who aren't interested in your products or services. A more qualified audience is more likely to click on your ad, increasing your CTR which consequently improves your ad's position on the page at no additional cost.
There are several additional ways of qualifying your audience.
- Ad copy
- Geographic targeting
- Demographic targeting
- Dayparting
Targeted Ad Copy
Your ad copy needs to appeal not only to the right people, it needs to dissuade the wrong people. It should clearly state the product or service that your site offers. Ads that are clever but vague may boost your CTR but cripple your conversion rate. Be aware of any audience your keywords might attract that isn't specifically your audience. For example, a campaign advertising the Hilton Hotel in Paris is likely to attract some very tangential traffic. You'll usually uncover these "similar but different" markets during your negative keyword research.
Geographic Targeting
Geographic targeting is about excluding traffic from outside a specific geographic area that you designate. It makes sense to prevent presentation of your ads to people in the UK or Argentina if you don't ship outside of the US. If you sell only in a single state, a single city, or a single neighborhood, it also makes sense not to waste your budget on clicks from outside your sphere of commerce. Realize, however, that your traffic volume will fall as you apply increasingly granular targeting. That's a good thing if the traffic you receive is increasingly qualified and likely to buy.
Demographic Targeting
Targeting by demographic is about age and gender. Right now demographic targeting is available only in Microsoft adCenter. It isn't exclusive like geographic targeting where you prevent people from seeing your ad. Rather, it allows you to incrementally increase your base bid for people who meet your demographic target. If 30 year old women are your ideal audience, you can configure your adCenter campaigns to increase your bid by 20% when women are searching for your keywords and another 10% for people between the ages of 25-34. (These increases are arbitrary.) Your bid remains the same for everyone else.
Dayparting
Dayparting is the practice of displaying your ads during certain times of the day or days of the week. Like geographic targeting it can be either exclusive, ads either are shown or not shown, or you can incrementally increase your base bid for specific dayparts.
Research published in Search Conversion Rates by Daypart (Atlas Research, Spring 2007) offers a tantalizing insight into this technique.
"Sponsored search marketers can realize performance gains by managing their keyword bids by daypart. By reducing their bids at poorly performing hours and reallocating those funds to hours with better conversion rates, advertisers can expect to see greater conversion volumes and better returns on advertising spend."
For more information about these targeting options please see the adCenter Targeting Flash Tutorial.
The Bottom Line
Bidding aggressively on your core keywords as described in Different Engines, Different Tactics can increase your share of the available adCenter audience but that audience is likely less qualified. The use of negative keywords described in Qualifying Traffic with Negative Keywords can help prevent displaying your ads to that part of the wider audience who simply aren't your customers. And finally, explicit ad copy, targeting, and dayparting can further refine that audience, resulting in high CTR, high conversion rates, and increased audience share.