Here are a few thoughts on how to advertise for keywords that do not precisely correspond to your company's product or services:

Step 1: Grouping Your Keywords into Campaigns and Adgroups

An ancient Buddhist story tells of a master who orders his overly-eager student to clean up the breakfast table, before moving onto philosophical discussion and meditation. The story goes that the key to enlightenment lies in the small details of life. The same applies to search marketing. Before envisioning creatives that stand out amongst those of your competitors, how much money to bid on a keyword, and what landing pages to design; it is necessary to be organized first.

There are several factors that determine why some keywords convert better than others. Some keywords are expensive while others are cheap. Some are synonyms of your company's product while some only evoke a vague connection to what you're selling. Grouping keywords together will allow you to write the appropriate creatives for each cluster of search terms. This will also allow you to initially make a rough estimate of the ROI that each of these search term clusters will yield.

The terminology adopted by Google for this purpose is a good and simple guide for a two step division of your keywords. Start by dividing your keyword list into general campaigns. Then divide each of these campaigns into Adgroups. All of the keywords that accurately describe your products or services should be presented in the same campaign or campaigns. In addition, all of the keywords that correspond to complementary or competing products that have not been sold but may still have marketing power should be bunched together into entirely separate campaigns. When dividing these Campaigns into Adgroups, remember that you will have to write separate creatives for each Adgroup. Finally, any keywords that contain the names of competing companies should also be contained into a single campaign named, for example, 'Competitors'.

Although, Yahoo!Search only has one designated 'category' column in its account management interface and insert sheets, it is always a good idea to carry over this distinction into your Yahoo!Search account. For example if you're in the business of selling widgets, then a portion of your Adwords and Yahoo!Search account should look like the following:

In Adwords:
Campaign: Widgets
Adgroup: Widget_Accessories

In Yahoo!Search
Category: Widgets_Accessories

Step 2: Finding That Proper Balance in Your Creatives

The above title is a self-evident truth. Creatives that are to appear for Adgroups that contain keywords directly related to your products or services should generally be as clear and precise in both title and description. A good idea could also be to include pricing information in the description. Such Adgroups will generally receive the highest click through rates and subsequently conversion rates, as they accurately represent what the search engine user is looking for. This assumption depends on the quality of your creatives, landing pages, and, of course, products.

Now for the interesting part: Keywords that do not directly correspond to what your company is offering by nature tend to convert more poorly, hence lowering your overall cost per acquisition, conversion rate, and many more interesting indicators that serve to either impress your boss or secure that down payment on that car you've been wanting for a long time, depending what your life situation is. In any case, securing a low cost per acquisition rate and a high conversion rate for this type of broad or 'not-so-directly-related-but-still-promising' keyword does require a good deal of balance. Your Adwords title and first line of description (title and first half of the description for Yahoo!Search) should correspond to the theme of the broad keywords in the Adgroup in question. It is also a good idea to place a landing page containing information on the subject in question on your landing page so that your visitor is not completely dissatisfied upon clicking on your ad. The second line of description should, on the contrary, be a direct call to action: Describe the purpose of your website and what products or services you offer. At this point don't be afraid to imply that the point of your website is to make a sale. If done properly and with a little bit of style, writing creatives for your broader keywords while following these guidelines should make search engine users read your creatives from beginning to end. The general introduction to your creative should also provide you with a high enough click through rate to keep you from getting disabled on Google, while the concluding specific call to action should prevent too many uninterested users from clicking on your ad and needlessly driving up your daily spends.

When writing creatives for keywords that contain your competitors names, a good rule of thumb is never to include those company names into the creatives. Be sure not to use Google's keyword insert function for titles in such Adgroups:

Here are a couple of additional dos and don'ts for writing creatives:

• Do keep a recognizable convention in capitalization throughout your creative to add to your legitimacy. Whether you decide to go for the headline style or the regular sentence style, be sure not to switch in the middle of your creative.
• Do not be afraid to write in a simple style. Simplicity appeals to a wider audience, while complicated or technical jargon may alienate and confuse some potential visitors.

Step 3: Be Prepared to Recognize and Minimize Your Loss

With any great potential profit comes great risk. Being a good accountant is a necessary skill to successfully pull off your campaigns that contain 'not-so-directly-related-but-still-promising' keywords.

Start by isolating the daily, weekly or monthly spends of each keyword group and sub-group in your advertising account. Then compare these figures with the number of acquisitions that each keyword group and sub-group received using your tracking software. This will enable you to quickly determine which campaigns are performing well and which are performing sluggishly in terms of indicators such as CPA. The grouping of keywords into campaigns that you expect to perform well and into campaigns that you suspect may cause some problems down the line offers the benefit of being able to quickly shut down the latter campaigns within minutes.

Step 4: AB Testing Creatives for Your Broader Keywords

An alternative to systematically shutting down poorly performing campaigns is to work on the creatives that appear for the keywords that they contain. For example, an excessive cost per acquisition for a single campaign may simply be resolved by writing a creative that resembles a sales pitch, in other words by telling search engine users that they just won't be satisfied to visit the site unless they are willing to make a purchase. It's simple but effective.

Conversely, advertisers who have a gift for designing landing pages in order to receive a high conversion rate can attempt to push their CTR limits by writing creatives that appeal to a very broad audience. A truly talented SEM can do this without causing a significant increase in CPA.

Conclusion

While managing your paid search campaigns remember that the tighter, more structured, and more organized your keyword sub-groups are, the easier it will be to write appropriate creatives for them. Also try working on creatives for your poorly-converting subgroup, rather than immediately bailing. It's empowering, try it!