The Popular Marketing Strategy That Didn't Work For Us: Broad Match Keywords

The one popular marketing strategy that didn't work for us was running Google Ads campaigns on broad match keywords with no negative keyword list. It's one of the most commonly recommended tactics for "maximising reach," and on paper it sounds efficient: let Google's algorithm find every possible customer searching anywhere near your terms. In practice, for a service-based client we worked with early on, it meant paying for clicks on searches like "how to fix [problem] myself" and "[competitor] jobs" when the actual keyword was a specific service name.

The mechanism is simple. Broad match tells Google to match your bid to any search it judges as "related," including synonyms, questions, and loosely associated terms. Without a negative keyword list actively trimming that out, the system optimises for volume, not intent. The symptom was obvious in the search terms report after about two weeks: a growing share of spend going to queries that had zero commercial intent, dragging the cost per lead up while the conversion rate dropped.

We switched the account to phrase and exact match on core terms, built a negative keyword list from the search terms report every week for the first month, and structured campaigns around tighter ad groups rather than one broad catch-all. Cost per click went up slightly, but cost per qualified lead came down because the clicks were coming from people searching for exactly what was on offer, not people researching a general topic. The lesson we took from it, and now apply to every Google Ads account from day one, is that broad match without disciplined negative keyword management isn't really a strategy, it's a budget leak with better branding.

If you're seeing ad spend climb without a matching rise in actual enquiries, it's worth checking your search terms report before you touch the budget. For businesses that want that review done properly, or want campaigns and websites built to avoid this from the start, get in touch with Jordan James Media.