Many brands starting out with Google AdWords are vulnerable to wasting some money at first. That’s because Google’s default keyword ‘match type’ when you get started is broad match. This casts a much bigger net than many boutique businesses need, and it also includes branded keywords (the name of your own business) which I don’t love for small budgets. Here’s my understanding of the different keyword types:
Broad Match: Google makes keywords this type by default, but they’re tricky because 1) they can include your own brand name, which you might not want to spend money on and 2) they can bring in a bunch of traffic that isn’t going to necessarily buy or be interested in your site.
So, for example, if you have the keyword “flashlight” it’s going to bring in the widest amount of people who may have already been searching for you to begin with (by typing in your brand name Flashy’s Flashlights) and it also may bring in people who are searching for tiny flashlights when you only produce the largest flashlights in the world (they’ll type in the tiniest flashlights available for my car) and then your brand will still pop up.
“Phrase Match”: I like this type of keyword, because it catches more than exact keyword matches, but it’s not as wasteful as Broad Match. It’s like the mama bear’s bed in Goldilocks. Wordstream puts it nicely here:
Phrase Match – If you enter your keyword in quotation marks, as in “tennis shoes,” your ad would be eligible to appear when a user searches on the phrase tennis shoes, in this order, and possibly with other terms before or after the phrase. For example, your ad could appear for the query red tennis shoes but not for shoes for tennis, tennis shoe, or tennis sneakers. Phrase match is more targeted than broad match, but more flexible than exact match.
[Exact Match]: This one’s the most straightforward but you might miss some queries you hadn’t thought of. It pulls in searches based on exactly the word or phrase you enter (plus its plurals). Ironically I think that when people are getting started with Google Ads this is what they think of as being the default.
In general, if you’re starting an account today for the first time – I’d say skip the broad match and exact match keywords and start out with phrase match. Then keep a close eye on the queries that come in and add those to [exact match] on a rolling basis.