Once in awhile you get a client who’s site offers a lot of little specific products that is great for niche keywords but low traffic. Those keywords are great when they convert, but the real traffic is in the high competitive keywords that bring the visitors to the site. These visitors that search by the broad terms most of the time don’t actually know what they are looking for yet. It’s a “I’ll know it when I see it” type of shopping mentality.
So, the question is: how do you get the most out of those big terms you have to bid on to get the traffic?
For example: Your client sells bridesmaid gifts. The keywords to get traffic to the site related to bridesmaids gifts are going to be expensive, but the problem is the bride is shopping around and isn’t exactly sure what to get yet.
So in the meantime, we have to be smart with the spend while waiting for that bride to find what she wants.
First off, look at your keywords. Could they be segmented out further for increased relevancy and a lower cost per click? Do you need to separate “gifts” keywords and “presents” into different ad groups? Can you break out keywords that include “suggestions” or “ideas”?
And at the most granular level, check out your keywords letter by letter. Find out if while “bridesmaid gifts” converts, “bridesmaids gift” does not and act accordingly.
Second, look at your revenue generating keywords. What are those? Would it be a benefit to break those into a separate ad group or even campaign by itself? If they were in their own campaign, you could increase or decrease the budget as needed to make sure they’re receiving the funds they need . Or adjust the campaign settings to show during peak times of the day or incrementally increase the bids during those times only.

This one’s a keeper!
Third, look at your non-revenue generating keywords. Those terms that are just bleeding money. Do you really need them? Try pausing them, deleting them, lowering the bids of even throwing them in their own ad group or campaign to better control the cost.

Some revenue, but over time this one hurts.
Fourth, look at your match types and negatives. If they keyword is showing thousands upon thousands of times a day, it may be a little too broad and out of control. Try upping the ante with phrase or exact. At the very least you should be running search query reports and searching on the terms yourself and seeing what else is showing up with your ads. Filter out those irrelevant and over inclusive searches.
Fifth, and most certainly not last, ad copy. Use those revenue generating terms in your headlines and again in the body. Make those search terms bold so that they catch the eye of the potential visitor.
If you’re account doesn’t pull in much revenue yet, use bounce rates, pageviews and time on site to evaluate the relevancy of the keyword. If the bounce rate is much higher than 50%, people are not finding what they are looking for when they come to the site. If they’re only spending a few seconds or looking at a couple of pages, you have your answer on that particular keyword.

Get rid of it!