In part one of Paid Search is Customer Service, Not Advertising, I shared a tip about your target audience. They’re lazy. We’re all lazy. Most shoppers/searchers follow what is called “The Principle of Least Effort.” Here’s an excerpt about this principle from Wikipedia…
This principle states that an information seeking client will tend to use the most convenient search method in the least exacting mode available. Information-seeking behavior stops as soon as minimally acceptable results are found.
So, how does this knowledge affect how you should run your PPC campaigns?
Ad Writing
The first way this knowledge should affect your PPC campaigns is in your ad writing. Instead of writing ads to persuade, you want to write ads that serve. This means your ad copy won’t be chalk full of great things about your company or your product. It will contain content directly related to the monologue of thoughts occurring inside the heads of those who are searching. This means using the words they use, addressing the questions in their head and presenting benefits that will help them avoid the pain they’re trying to avoid. Yes, I know you only have a few characters to do it in, but that’s why we experiment. Oh, and even better than that, that’s why we talk to the customer. Haven’t done that in a while? Well, it’s time to start because this is the ammunition you need to dominate your industry’s online audience.
Ad Groups
Another major way in which the knowledge of the Principle of Least Effort should influence how you manage your PPC campaigns is ad group organization. This should be the guiding principle that determines which keywords are matched to which ads within ad groups. After you have written your ads correctly, the keywords that should be matched to those ads are the ones where the searcher is communicating what you’re addressing in the ad. For example, if you’ve written the following ad about the latest “wing ding” you came out with…
Now, this is an extremely simple example to make the point, but you don’t want searchers who type the search queries “red wing dings,” “best wing dings,” or even just “wing dings” seeing this ad. That’s bad customer service. Remember, after all, that’s the industry that search engines are in. No, it’s not advertising. It’s customer service.
You’re not making it easy for the searcher on the query “red wing dings” to find what they’re looking for. Sure, you’re suggesting you might have red wing dings. After all, you have blue ones, so why not red, right? But, you’re basically ignoring the customer. Imagine if a customer walked into a store and asked for a red wing ding and the CSR brought them a blue one?!?! We’ve all had that happen. The store doesn’t have what you’re looking for, but the person helping you wants to make a sale, so they just show you something else. How does that make you feel?
So, you’ll most likely lose the sale to a competitor who is better at customer service in this case. Make sure the right ads are showing to the right searchers. Group keywords by the ads you want them to appear with and block them from other ads you don’t want them to appear with. This alone will save you a ton of money.