Money keywords? Amen.

You’ve heard this before, but I doubt you were listening.

It sounds obvious, but almost none of the advertisers who seek me for advice actually do it right. By focusing on the right keywords, you can dramatically increase your conversions and turn your campaigns into highly lucrative money making machines. Some of the most successful companies with pay-per-click know the secret and they’ve built success on this principle to generate high returns on their ad spend.

Call them shopping keywords, commercial intent keywords, high profit keywords, buyer intent keywords, whatever suits you… I call them money keywords and they are your best friend.

245% increase in conversion rates – The IPSL story

IPSL is one of the UK’s largest suppliers of PVC wall and ceiling cladding panels. The company makes 70% of its revenue from the internet – majorly from Adwords.

At one point the IPSL team, which had worked hard to build the company’s online presence and had recorded remarkable success, started observing some downfall of their results. Even an increased PPC ad budget failed to yield a proportionate increase in conversions. Something needed to be done. Fast.

IPSL’s managing director, Alan Matchett consulted with a New York-based PPC marketing consulting firm about the company’s challenge. As a result the consulting firm implemented a strategy that identified the keywords with the greatest potential to boost ROI and only those keywords were targeted.

After just one month, they realized an incredible 245% increase in conversion rates.

Although IPSL used a keyword evaluation strategy along with a content strategy through the LivePerson tool, you can replicate similar results simply by tracking your money keywords and focusing relentlessly on them.

Here’s more on the story in this PDF.

Leaner Campaigns – The Lighting Direct Story

Lighting Direct presently is regarded as the number one online lighting company in the UK. In late 2002, when the company website was created, Lighting Direct was a small company with just three staff. At the time, the company website had only about 200 products on it (they now have over 6000).

The company head, Gary Berg wanted to create awareness for the new website. And he discovered Adwords was the best way of doing that.

After Lighting Direct started to use Google Adwords, the business grew rapidly. Even though the initial results were remarkable enough, Berg wanted more… and of course, there was more.

In order to boost Lighting Direct’s ROI, Berg shifted focus from just driving traffic to getting more and more conversions. He shifted his focus to money keywords used Analytics weed out unproductive keywords and eliminated them.

The result of Berg’s changes was dramatic. The highly targeted keywords resulted in many campaign click-through rates skyrocketing by 20%-30%.

According to Berg, presently, the company now reaps a turnover seven to eight times that recorded four years ago.

Read more on the story in this PDF.

The American Meadows story

American Meadows was founded in 1981 by Ray Allen and is now one of the largest and most respected suppliers of flower seed in North America. The company serves large-scale commercial customers, individual home gardeners, states and other municipalities, stores, and garden centers all over North America.

When Allen moved his business from a catalog to a web-based business, one of his major challenges was traffic generation (for brand awareness). Being an advertising guru himself, Allen soon discovered the potential in Google Adwords and went straight for it. That was in 2001.

Very soon, American Meadows was attracting huge traffic and was getting customers. Initially Allen targeted generic keywords such as “wildflowers” and “wildflower seeds”.

Later Allen discovered that many customers were searching Google with more specific queries that included the names of wildflower species (such as “rudbeckia hirta,” the botanical name for Black Eyed Susan). He knew for sure that those specific keywords would attract even more buyers, and he targeted them.

“Since I’ve worked with Google, I’ve learned I should always list the terms I see our customers use to find us, like all 70 of the wildflower species we sell. It’s amazing how many people actually input terms like ‘rudbeckia hirta,’ the botanical name for Black-Eyed Susan. Site search logs are a great resource for finding all of the exact terms customers use,” Allen said.

Aside the fact that these specific money keywords attracted much lower cost-per- click, they boosted the company’s Adwords conversions. Significantly.

When American Meadows decided to introduce flower bulbs into their list of offers, Allen hired Google client service representatives to optimize the campaign. It was a success. But an optimized Adwords campaign further boosted that success by a whopping 350% the following year. (Can you beat that?)

Today, the American Meadows website attracts more than 2000 unique daily visits, with over 35% coming through Google Adwords from the ultra-specific money keywords they target.

Read more on how they achieved those results here.

How did those 3 companies do it? They got picky…

Simply put IPS, Lighting Direct and American Meadows  boosted their Adwords conversions by obsessing over keywords that drive sales and by ditching the unproductive ones.

You too can get even greater results by implementing the same strategy. That is, by finding keywords that match queries to real buyers: they are money keywords. People who type those keywords have their credit cards out ready to buy if you offer what they want.

Where to find money keywords? 

Well I’m glad you asked.

There is art in the process, testing and data. I’m going to show a few ways to find them. What’s important is for you be on the lookout, learn to identify them for your specific market and come up with creative ways to find more them. Don’t rely on tools too much. Keep your mind open.

More Money Keywords From successful campaigns.

List your top 10 converting keywords in your Adwords account.

1. If there are broad matches among them, use the “keyword details” tab to find out the exact queries that were triggered and add them to your list.
2. Head over thesuaraus.com and find synonyms of your each and every keyword you have in that list.
3. Head over to the keyword tool to find more variations to your keyword list.
4. Add the keywords to your account and monitor their performance to see if they really are money keywords.
5. After gathering enough data, keep the ones that convert, ditch the rest.
6. Repeat.

Money keywords if you’re just starting out.

1. List the products or services your business offers.
2. Assume that you are a customer, credit card in hand ready to buy, searching online for options.
3. What are you typing in Google? What is going through your mind?
4. List all the keywords that go through your mind as you gauge options comparing one product to the other, feeling the problem to which you need a solution.
5. Head over thesuaraus.com and find synonyms of your each and every keyword you have in that list.
6. Head over to the keyword tool to find more variations to your keyword list.
7. Add the keywords to your account and monitor their performance to see if they really are money keywords.
8.  After gathering enough data, keep the ones that convert, ditch the rest.
9. Repeat.

Did the keywords you came up with contain: buy, purchase, hire, best, review, cheap, something vs something else, low cost, stop, prevent, get rid of, help, treat, cure, specific model number of something, specific brand name of something, your city (if you are targeting local customers), etc… ?

If so you’re on the right track. Those are your money keywords.

You’ll have others depending on your business. Test them and be merciless as they prove their worthiness to you.