How to Streamline and Optimize Your Account Structure

To create a winning account structure, once you have all of your keywords, break them out into “silos.” Silos are specific categories that are highly targeted to a specific page on your site or category of your site. Once you have broken up your keywords into silos, break the keywords up even further according to the buying cycle. That is, group your keywords into ad groups that focus on three areas:

• Research: These are more general, one-word keywords, for people who have just become aware of a product or service but don’t yet know exactly what they want. A good example could be “shoes.”
• Shop: In the second phase of the buying cycle, users search a little more specifically about what they want using keyword phrases of two or three words. For example, “red shoes” or “buy red shoes.”
• Purchase: People who have done their research and are ready to buy get even more specific. They use what we like to call “long-tail” keywords, which consist of longer keyword phrases: “buy red shoes sale” or “buy size 9 red shoes.”

It’s important to group like keywords according to the buying cycle so you can write specific ad text to trigger a response from a user who is in that phase of the buying cycle.
Once you have your account structure built according to the buying cycle, you’ll need to follow the buying cycle bidding strategy.

• The research phase typically will get a lower bid, since the user is looking for more general keywords; you’re likely to get more searches but not as many buyers at this stage.
• The shop phase needs to be a little higher on the search engines, so bid a little higher, but not too high. These people are still researching, but are also comparing prices. Your client needs to show up in the search engines in order to compete with other companies that have the same product as but at higher prices.
• And the last, purchase phase, you want to bid much higher. Aim to be in the #1 or #2 position for these keywords. Typically people who type in these keywords mean business and are very ready to buy. Therefore, you need to be front and center.

With your account structured according to this buying cycle, you’ll pay more for your long-tail keywords that target users when they’re ready to purchase. And you’ll pay less for keywords that target users who are just in their research phase and not ready to buy. In the end, following this account structure can save you hundreds of dollars because you pay for quality not quantity.