Proactivity in PPC:

Sometimes in PPC we spend more time responding to things (e.g., client comms, new briefs) than proactively reviewing & planning. This is due to factors like lack of time, higher priority tasks/projects, or just general uncertainty about what needs proactive management (vs where proactive management would be overkill). But if we don't make the time for these things, our accounts can run amok.

Platforms change & you need to review this before changes roll out and performance starts tanking. Match types become more lax (e.g., phrase taking more liberties) & intent changes (e.g., the term "Jersey" referring to basketball, baseball, or any type of jersey outside of world cup periods while being heavily football focused during). If you don't watch these things, your accounts can and will drift.

In this article, I’ll describe the difference between proactive and reactive management of (or interaction with) the following, but you can proactively manage other things in PPC (e.g., Google account settings, campaigns, etc.):

• Negative Keywords

• Keywords

• Search Term Intent

Negative Keywords

Scenario A (Reactive management)

Picture this, you sell jerseys and you’ve set up a campaign to sell them. You’ve got a few negative keywords in there that you think are relevant (e.g., competitor terms as you KNOW you don’t sell these). You think this should suffice & proceed with setting the campaign live.

2 days later, you check your search terms and see that you’re inundated with searches for world cup jerseys. You also see that CPCs are quite high and budget is being spent. Fast. You decide to reactively add the terms you’re seeing as negative KWs, but this doesn’t rectify the previous, wasted spend. You can’t lie to the client about the spend, so you have to admit that you spent a chunk of the budget on searches that would never convert.

Scenario B (Proactive management)

Let’s say that, instead, you set your campaign up with your keywords & add a few negative keywords in there. You’re using the same approach of adding terms you think are relevant (e.g., those competitor terms), but you take it a step further.

You look into Google Trends & use other tools like AnswerThePublic to see what people tend to search as well as the jersey KWs you have. You also research upcoming sport events (or any other events that could impact jersey demand & the intent of that demand). You find out that there are a lot of football & baseball matches coming up and you know these events aren’t relevant to you. You decide to add terms like “world cup”, “football jersey”, “england shirt” to your negatives list (among others). You review your list and keep researching until you’re no longer finding new searches or events that you haven’t yet covered.

You also set a cadence (e.g., monthly) to review your negative lists so that if you ever do carry world cup jerseys or football kits, you’ll be able to remove the negative keywords and prevent missing the opportunities to convert in the future. Now the campaign can go live without ads serving on football or baseball searches that you know you can’t convert right now. You also know that your lists aren’t static and that if a negative keyword later becomes relevant to the business, you can remove it & let the traffic flow.

Keywords

Scenario A (Reactive management)

Imagine you sell training wear (e.g., leggings, sports bras, etc.) and you have a few base keywords like “Training Shoes”, “Yoga Pants”, & “Yoga Mat”. When you added the KWs, they were a good fit because people on r/Fitness reddit were firmly focused on Training & Yoga.

But women within this training target audience have recently started to shift their preferred exercise regimen and have begun focusing on dance as a form of training. You don’t know this though, so you don't have any “Dance” keywords in your campaigns &, at best, you’re able to loosely target dance keywords using broad match. Your CPC is a bit higher and you’re late to the trend. Your ad also lacks customisation & looks less relevant than competitors’. Plus, other competitors have already begun capturing impression share, driving people to purchase, and creating the association between their brand & dance.

Scenario B (Proactive management)

Scenario B looks more like reviewing your keywords at a regular cadence, irrespective of your search term review process. For example, on a monthly basis, looking at your top keywords and then doing user research to understand different intents and desires that you might be able to satisfy.

If you sell training gear, you might look at Reddit threads, Google Trends, or AnswerThePublic (any tool that gives you insight into how people think & search) & you might identify a shift in people’s way of training. Maybe you see a lot of searches for dance as of late & you consider whether this would be worth having as a keyword.

You check Google Trends & KW planner to look at demand over time & get a rough estimate of volume. You see decent volume and that demand is at its highest in the last 3 years. You decide to add it as an Exact KW, helping CPC come down and your ads feel more relevant (especially if you use DKI). Now, you’re not waiting for the trend to trickle down to you. You’re discovering it early and establishing your position as the brand that can help people dance with ease.

Search Term Intent

Scenario A (Reactive management)

Imagine selling gym gear before the pandemic. When people were searching for gym gear before, they were looking for clothes they could wear in a physical gym.

But then the pandemic struck, so people’s intent changed. Instead of looking for gym shoes & backpacks, they’re now searching for yoga mats & indoor treadmills. Neither the executive nor manager had thought about how this major world event would impact people’s desires and which products they were looking for, so no proactive work was done to identify negatives (e.g., treadmill because you know you don’t sell it) & adapt keyword selection (e.g., adding yoga mat terms because you do sell them, they were just low demand before & not worth the fuss).

Now you’re burning budget on treadmill terms while a product you do sell is collecting dust because you didn’t realise that people’s desire had changed and that they were now SUPER into yoga mats.

Scenario B (Proactive management)

Scenario B would entail looking at your top spending keywords on a regular basis (e.g. Training Gear) & seeing which terms have been matching to them over the past months.

Has there been any difference in the types of terms coming through? For example, have you seen a shift from searches for training shoes, clothes, backpacks to home equipment? If so, this is something to consider when restructuring your keywords (for stuff you do sell) & negative lists (for stuff you don’t sell).

Note: Although Intent is closely tied to negative keyword management & keyword management, I made it its own section because negative, keyword, and intent management are cognitively heavy processes that each require dedicated time and attention to prevent quick skimthroughs.

Wrapping Up

Managing negative keywords, discovering new search trends, and auditing user intent are cognitively demanding tasks. They cannot be done effectively in the five minutes between client calls or as an afterthought at the end of the week.

When we treat these areas reactively, we allow external forces (whether it’s a global pandemic, a sudden sports trend, or an algorithmic update) to dictate our performance. By establishing structured, proactive cadences for these distinct areas, you gain control over your accounts and strategy. Ultimately, proactivity is the dividing line between an account that simply survives and one that performs consistently & is capable of scaling.