How To Bid On Keyword Champions

Instead of clinging to old practices, successful advertisers shift to keyword champions (one variant of the keyword concept used to catch all) to represent all the variants they are looking to capture.

Keyword champions work because they:

• Can save you money. Opting for a cheaper variant will occasionally grant you access to the more expensive one, so you’re not always committing to paying a premium.
• Remove time-wasting steps that don’t provide value. Negative keywords don’t have close variants, so it is not profitable nor practical to perfectly protect each keyword.
• Ensure that a higher ratio of ads leads to conversions. They allow the budget to be focused on the strategic objective of the campaign, as opposed to supporting lots of keywords that might not deliver.

To bid on keyword champions:

1. Limit your ad groups to no more than two to three keyword concepts on exact match.
2. Have at least one ad group with a single long-tail broad match keyword in order to ramp up the campaign and capture ideas you may not have thought to target.
3. Convert exact match keywords to negatives in the broad match ad group.

Using the original example, we would bid on:

• Exact match (to capture all of the original variants): “dog training” / “dog trainer”
• Broad match keyword: “pricing for dog trainer near me”
• Exact match queries that yield high value in a statistically significant way

By following this strategy, you’ll free yourself from keyword bloat and ensure your campaigns are able to deliver desired outcomes while complying with the current rules of engagement in ad algorithms.