I would add another big misconception that smaller business owners have, and that is that they often have a small budget, but “must be on the first page” for high volume keywords. Instead, the best practice for them is to bid much lower and they will get 2 – 5 times the volume. I’ve done that for a number of clients…

I recently posted a question on twitter about how to convince business owners of the problem, and got some great responses:
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/marketing-sales/advertising-promotion/internet-marketing/MAR_ADP_INM/385962-10668879?browseIdx=1&sik=1231390521614&goback=.amq

summarized at:
http://www.liveinternetmarketing.com/articles/show/25

Excuse the self promotion – I think it’s valuable to the community :)

I agree with using broad matches to gather data, if anything you are getting good learnings from the use of the broad match.

I would recommend using phrase matches and exact matches (which I am sure you are doing through your learnings) for terms like cheap trumpet and bargain trumpet, but you are right. There is no way to really negative match trumpet.

Good to hear that SEM has helped you provide your clients with decent ROAS.

If I wanted to bid on plain ‘ole “trumpet” I would. By including a qualifier I am indicating that I want to attract a sub-section of the general market.

I wouldn’t have a problem with G matching for “cheap trumpet” or “bargain trumpet” but matching for the term without a qualifier seems illogical to me. Plus there is no way to negative around it.

IMHO broad match is only useful now for figuring out what phrase match terms to bid on. My strategy is to broad match initially, gather data, switch to phrase match and then periodically turn on broad match to make sure we aren’t missing any good terms.

This has resulted in lower campaign cost and I am sure we have lost a few sales as a result of it but it is the only way I can get decent ROAS for a lot of my clients.

I agree that Google’s algorithms are tipped in Google’s favor, but in the case of discount trumpets, initially, Google feels that someone searching for trumpets would also be interested in discount trumpets. To counter act that, Search Marketers use phrase matches, exact matches, and negative matches to refine what terms they are actually willing to pay for.

Ideally, search marketers can use broad matches to get potential consumers in the conversion funnel, or reach consumers during the information search portion of the funnel, using phrase matches and exact matches to convert on consumers who are deeper in the funnel.

But, yeah, sometimes the broad matches can get advertisers in trouble if we are focusing on strict KPI’s. But broad matches play a role in driving conversions, and should be incorporated into advertisers search portfolios.

The same company water down their washing up liquid!!

That’s understandable, except that I had a negative broad match: 19th birthday ideas

Chat suggested I add that as a negative as well as the negative broad did not “catch” it.

What a double standard! Jeez.