My Google Ads campaign bombed hard until I stopped optimizing for clicks

I was tweaking my campaign in Starbucks on a Tuesday and watched $500 burn through in two hours with zero conversions. Turns out my broad match keywords were pulling in random traffic from people just browsing. Has anyone else had better luck switching to phrase match for local service businesses?

2 comments

2 Comments

julia8439d ago

MAN, that HURTS to read. I've noticed this same kind of thing happens ALL the time in life not just ads. Like when people try to get more customers at a lemonade stand by yelling at everyone who walks by, the people who Actually want lemonade get annoyed and leave. You gotta match what you're saying to the people who are already looking for exactly what you've got. Broad match is like standing on a street corner shouting at random cars about your pressure washing service while phrase match is like putting a sign up at the car wash where the dirty cars already go.

rose_hart319d ago

Your lemonade stand yelling analogy is spot on honestly! It reminds me of this guy I knew in college who would try to sell his old textbooks by posting flyers in the library about how he was "the best seller in town" and people who didn't buy from him were missing out. Meanwhile his books were just sitting there in his dorm room covered in coffee stains. The real trick was just finding the people who actually needed that specific textbook and showing them a reasonable price. He finally figured it out when he posted in the class specific Facebook group instead of shouting at everyone in the library. Sometimes the extra effort to target the right crowd saves you a ton of wasted energy in the long run.