Paid search, like other advertising mediums, has a limited scope. Google receives tens of billions of visitors each month (reportedly sending Wikipedia nearly 2 billion of those users), but only so many users are going to be searching for an “electric plane launcher kit” or “pig watering can“.

Search Has Its Limits
Today, we will discuss how to push those limits using both the Content Network and Search. For this discussion, let’s assume you want to boost the sales volume of the aforementioned electric plane launcher kit (EPLK). Let’s also assume you are making good money targeting “paper plane” and toy-related keywords, but you want to increase your total sales from 45 to 75 per month.

Finally, let’s assume that you know what you are doing. You have created highly targeted Campaigns and your ad text closely matches the keywords targeted by your AdGroups. If someone searches for “cool toys”, your add will incorporate “Cool Toys” and associate the EPLK to cool. Furthermore, you make money on the Search Network (cost per conversion is less than the $14.95 price point), and you have used keyword research tools to pinpoint as many relevant keywords as possible. You have a high clickthrough rate and solid quality score.

So, at this point, really, the only question left is how to make more money.

Finding New Customers
The answer is to find more customers. And, the method to find more customers is to create and test different strategies and see what works. In essence, to create testing grounds.

In the military, testing grounds are an excuse to blow holes in island countries or radiate entire atolls. In paid search, testing grounds are an opportunity to spend some money on unproven strategies. Specifically, testing grounds in paid search are Campaigns that are created for the sole purpose of finding what works in order to incorporate it into your overall paid search strategy.

Building Testing Grounds
Create multiple content-targeted Campaigns. For example, create a Toy Campaign that targets keywords on the Content Network associated with paper planes or model railroads. Create a demographically-targeted Campaign that targets dads (men 35+ with children) and a Campaign that targets the Games cateogory.

Similarly, run search query performance and keyword performance reports to identify top-performing keywords. Funnel these keywords into keyword-targeted Campaigns on the content network.

This should leave you with four solid areas to test:

Budget the testing ground Campaigns so that you won’t go broke but can collect enough data to gain value. Sit back and collect data.

Filter Out the Good
After you have compiled enough data, run placement performance reports to identify converting & non-converting domains. Add the non-converting domains as negative placements and funnel the converting domains into a site-targeted Campaign.

To improve performance on the site-targeted Campaigns, add top performing keywords so that you are only targeting relevant pages of the domain and can again offer relevant ads to the Content Network.

Continue the process, testing different strategies, and incorporating the best of those strategies into your paid search campaign.