One of the most effective targeting tools available in Google AdWords is the negative keyword.
A negative keyword is a word or phrase that, when it appears in a searcher’s search query, you don’t want your Google ads to appear.
For example, if you’re bidding on the keyword “shoes” but you don’t sell ballet shoes, adding the term “ballet” as a negative keyword will prevent your ads from being shown for the term “ballet shoes.”
Negative keywords help you more precisely target your ads to your ideal prospects. (Adding a number of negative keywords to a campaign is also one of the most effective ways to give your clickthrough rate a nice boost.)
Facebook PPC has no such equivalent. I’d like to suggest that Facebook add a similar functionality to their pay per click program to help Facebook marketers more precisely target the groups they want.
Here are a few examples of how this could be helpful:
I’m in the planning stages of a campaign right now. Though I can’t give too much away, it would be very helpful if, geographically, I could target people in the U.S. except for those who live in Hawaii. (You can easily do this in Google.) To do this now in Facebook, I’d have to set up a campaign and individually add the other 49 states to it. It’s doable, but it would be a pain in the ass.
Another example is suppose you want to target women, but have discovered that the group of women you’re targeting are generally not fans of Oprah. Wouldn’t it be nice to add Oprah-likers as a negative demographic in your Facebook PPC campaign?
What do you think? Are there situations where you can see this being helpful? If so, please share your ideas in the comment section below…
Related posts:
