One sure fire way to boost the performance of your Google Ads campaigns is to strategically use keyword and creative qualifiers.
What are Qualifiers?
Qualifiers are words or short phrases that make your service or product more specific. For example, if you don’t service consumers then including the word “business” in keywords or “for businesses” in ad or asset copy will help guide the right audience to your website. And at the same time will help keep the wrong audience out.
Whether you place these in keywords (also called modifiers) or ads you should think of these as a filter to get the right people seeing and engaging with your ads. Using them in keywords will tend to lead to both higher CTRs and higher CVRs. Whereas using them in creatives will tend to lead to lower CTRs and higher CVRs.
The main types of qualifiers are…
Prepositional:
- In: [red shoes in store]
- For: [shoes for men]
- With: [shoes with heels]
Descriptive:
- Best: [best red shoes]
- Cheap: [cheap red shoes]
- Vintage: [vintage red shoes]
Brand:
- Nike: [Nike red shoes]
- Adidas: [Adidas red shoes]
Location:
- Toronto: [red shoes Toronto]
- Canada: [red shoes Canada]
How do Keyword Qualifiers Work?
Including a keyword qualifier, particularly in exact or phrase match keywords ensures the qualifying word (or close variant) must be present in the search query in order to trigger your ad. This means that you are effectively excluding anybody that doesn’t include the qualifier when searching.
With the much more precise keyword strategy in place you are sure to get more qualified clicks on your ads. However, you need to be careful because most people do not include qualifiers in their initial search. Thus if you use this strategy too aggressively you might find there’s virtually no available search traffic and no point in running a campaign.
Thus you need to be thoughtful in your approach and plan to make adjustments as needed to find the right compromise between volume, CPC, and quality.
What are Some Examples of Keyword Qualifiers?
The most common is to include a descriptive modifier to state your relative price point. Using words like “luxury” or “high-end” indicate that you’re in the upper price range. Conversely, words like “bargain” or “affordable” indicate you sell low cost options. Another popular qualifier is designating your target audience. If you’re an accountant, for instance, you might specialize in “business” solutions or “tax prep” or you may only work with “lawyers.” In the first two cases you’ll almost certainly dial in the right traffic without cutting to much whereas the last option might cut your traffic to a crawl. So in the last case I’d recommend using some keywords with qualifiers such as “lawyer” or “legal firm” but also running some general keywords. You can, of course, still qualify your ads, which I’ll be talking about shortly.
If you are a B2B you can include “business” as above but you might also want to be more specific. Do you only work with Fortune 500 clients, how about including that and/or “enterprise” in your keywords. On that note, you may also be interested in our article about optimizing Google Ads for B2B.
Another classic qualifier is the use of locations you serve. While it’s okay to sprinkle these into your keywords there’s no need to build entire ad groups with matched keywords and ads any longer. We now have location insertion that takes care of the heavy lifting.
One other thing to consider is you should also be on the lookout for qualifier opportunities in your search terms report.
How do Creative Qualifiers Work?
Creative qualifiers are bits of ad copy that can appear in headlines, descriptions, display url, or assets that indicate specific elements of your product or services. Generally they make your offer more appealing to specific people and less appealing to everybody else.
One major difference between keyword and creative qualifiers is that you can offer a lot more detail in your ad copy. Let’s say you sell very expensive kitchen knives. You can spell out “Our Knives are For Professional Chefs.” Whereas with keyword qualifiers you might use “pro” or “chef” to target the right audience.
For example, prepositional qualifiers are important in creatives for clarity, but aren’t useful at all in keywords since Google ignores them.
What are Some Examples of Creative Qualifiers?
The most common creative qualifier is stating your price. This is a complex issue and I’ve already started writing a separate blog post about this… should be out in another month or two. But in summary, disclosing your price will typically drive better performance when you sell for less. On the other hand it can help in some cases when you sell more on benefits and features, but can also prevent clicks that you might want. Put simply, this is because somebody might be turned off by the price before they have a chance to learn how wonderful your product is.
As with keywords, you can also use other language to indicate your price point without saying it outright. Words like “premium” or “best” or “top brand” all indicate that you’re offering a higher-end product.
What About Your Landing Page?
Your campaign qualifiers should always align with what you state on your landing page. If you’re adding a qualifier to a keyword and not mentioning that on your lander you need to ask why not?
Summary
To enhance the performance of Google Ads campaigns, strategically using keyword and creative qualifiers is crucial. Qualifiers are specific words or phrases that refine your product or service offerings, attracting the right audience while deterring irrelevant ones.
Keyword Qualifiers:
Function: Filter search queries to match your target audience
Impact: Higher CTRs and CVRs.
Considerations: Balance between volume and quality
Creative Qualifiers:
Function: Make your ad copy more appealing to specific audiences
Impact: Lower CTRs but higher CVRs
Considerations: Align with landing page content
By effectively incorporating keyword and creative qualifiers, you can optimize your Google Ads campaigns for better relevance, engagement, and conversion rates.
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