PPC Condition 3: Starved for Traffic

When you find yourself on this node in our diagram, think CAUTION! If you’re dealing with a mature account, look back at the history of what has been tried in the past to the extent possible. Why are we not able to efficiently spend the client’s ad budget? As we step out and search for other ad opportunities, we risk spending ad dollars unproductively. Since most bargains are often long tail keywords in core ad groups, stepping into new ad space most often generates only marginal returns, or worse, destroys value.

The velocity of our management cycle revs up to a whir, when we add new advertising account elements.

Solutions for Starved for Traffic

Things we can consider to generate more traffic may include:

• Broaden match types
• Add more ad groups (products, services, or KW ideas)
• Add more keywords (relevant KW’s, of course)
• Broaden geo scopes
• Broaden ad types
• Pause worst performing ads in each ad group (with low CTR’s)
• Improve targeted ad positions (increase bids)
• Turn on Content Network
• Add new managed placements

Many of the above can cause the account to perform worse, not better, so careful monitoring is required. Remedial action is required whenever any of the above elements fail to meet conversion expectations and ROAS hurdle rates.

Finite Number of Relevant Searches per Day

With search marketing, there exist a finite number of prospects within your geographic market who are typing in your relevant search phrases. You can’t force more people to search for your core search phrases. The best you can ever do is to present your ad to everyone who searches (at your targeted ad position). Considering this, for many advertisers which are earning a high impression share, but still feel they are starved for traffic, their best approach may actually be to modify their own expectations (decrease their budget!!), and focus on improving conversion rates in the core search element of the ad account.