Over the past year, Google Ads has changed more than it had over the past 10 years. Expanded text ads launched with a third headline, and a second description line. Smart bidding has not only become a legitimate option, but has clearly become the heir apparent to CPC. Dynamic search ads have really turned a corner and become usable. The watering down of the match types with close variants has ruining everything.
Since everything is evolving we need to learn to evolve with it or be left behind.
The Alpha-Beta (exact-broad match modified) structure was pioneered by 3Q Digital, and in its day was revolutionary. It involves creating 2 sets of campaigns: Alpha and Beta. Alpha campaigns are exact match terms, while Beta campaigns are broad match modified with the Alpha keywords added in as exact match negatives. This forces the exact match terms to the Alpha campaigns while using the Beta campaigns for discovery.
Up until that point most people were ignoring search term funneling between match types or doing it in an extremely manual process at the ad group level within the same campaigns. Needless to say, the simplicity and usefulness of shared negative lists with the alpha-beta process was dramatically more effective than having to maintain granular negative lists to funnel terms where you wanted them to go.
While the Alpha-Beta process was revolutionary, Google has evolved, so the Alpha-Beta process needs to evolve with it. At Jordan Digital Marketing, we use a modified version of the Alpha-Beta (exact-broad match modified), but we’ve expanded it to include Alpha-Beta-Gamma-Delta to reflect the changes that have happened in the last couple years in Google Ads.