Within an online campaign, the holy trinity would be stability, predictability and account manageability. How can you create an account that is exceptionally stable, predictable and manageable in a world of changes happening every second?
The Greatest PPC Search Stability Problem
The most significant problem within search campaigns when creating stability is the ability to judge if a keyword is a loser or a winner. Within these keywords, you have four match types that we rank here based on stability:
Exact match
Phrase match
Broad match modified
Broad match
The more exact match keywords you have within your Google Ads Search account, the more stable and predictable is your account. Although exact match is exceptionally stable, the drawback is keyword growth/exploration. It's unfavorable to have an account that only has exact match keywords leading you to 0% keyword expansion. To compensate for the exploratory issues of exact match we also keep phrase match and broad match modified keywords in the exploratory (Beta) campaigns. Beta campaigns allow for us to keep exploring new valuable keywords all while controlling the overall spend for keyword exploration.
Why SKAGs (Single Keyword Ad Groups) Aren’t Typically the Solution
The key is having stability and predictability while keeping everything manageable. SKAGS should be used in particular cases only. One of these use cases would be using the top converting keywords and converting them into SKAGs. SKAGing the entire account gives you the ability to have exceptional control, but you also lose lots of predictability which would come from grouping similar keywords in one particular ad group to acquire data much faster.
Let’s say you have an account with 5,000 keywords with 5,000 clicks per month. If you choose the SKAG route, then you have 5,000 ad groups with 10,000 ads being a/b tested. For a single account manager to test 10,000 ads will be a feat in its own, but you also have to deal with massive data segmentation. The ad group to click ratio at 1:1 leaves you with massive predictability loss. The loss in predictability is why SKAGs must be used sparingly and with keywords that are highly important and have large volumes.
X-Alphas® Solution to separating winners from the rest
Through years and hundreds of millions of dollars of testing at SalesX®, we have found X-Alphas® to be the ultimate solution for providing stability and predictability, all while remaining manageable. With SalesX’s X-Alphas® process we keep the exploratory keywords as stable as possible by segmenting them into a specified Beta campaign. We run our ORCA™ (Optimization Recurring Checklist for Ads) process weekly which adds all negative search terms within the SERP report along with bid adjustments and ad testing thus creating the most stable exploratory environment possible.
Once a keyword within the Beta campaign produces a conversion, the converted search term is then sent for approval to the account manager to be pushed into its respective Alpha campaign. The Alpha campaign then becomes 100% exact match, with 100% converted keywords in the past. To avoid losing any predictability we also import the converted term to its respective ad group relative to the Beta campaign.
The X-Alphas® process leads to a cleaner text ad a/b test, extremely stable campaign, and highly predictable results.
Benefits of X-Alphas®
Account Stability
Account Predictability
Manageable Account
Manageable Growth
Great for Limited Budgets
Great for Quality Score and Massive CTR Improvement