Those in the business of paid advertising and marketing strategies understand that there is value in minimizing overall costs. The notion of cost per acquisition (CPA) remains one of the most important metrics when making decisions about marketing on search engines and social media. If the CPA is low, then the potential benefit is high, and vice versa. Many marketers have made the decision to eliminate less competitive keywords from their marketing budgets and campaigns due to this particular metric. However, engaging in bidding on lacklustre keywords can sometimes be to your advantage. We’ll discuss below how and why bidding on lacklustre keywords can be a great investment in some situations.

Total Market Saturation

Beating the competition is sometimes considered an impossible feat. However, it is not always necessary to beat them: sometimes, you can sift off of them. There are a variety of keywords that may seem uncompetitive, poorly related or otherwise not optimal for bidding, but that can actually provide benefit in terms of cost per click when pinging servers with them. A market or industry with a wide variety of products that are loosely related, for instance, may have keywords that seem less than ideal on the surface. If, however, your marketing efforts are strong enough – and can convince searchers or visitors that your particular product has a better solution than what they initially wanted – then bidding in these areas can make sense.

Incomplete Data

The costs of true acquisition for some brands can be phenomenally high. This isn’t necessarily because the advertising campaigns are not working, but because of the nature of the brand or industry. Some markets require persistent advertising and convincing in order to convert individuals. The process may take weeks, months or even years. Some initial clicks may register in metrics as being failures when in reality, they are conversions waiting to happen. The individual in question may come back to the site several times before making a purchase or subscribing. This can make the CPA numbers look way off, and render that initial judgement on a keyword being lacklustre completely irrelevant.

Increased Awareness

Purchasing ads on search engines and social media do not always present the same types of benefits. In many cases, increasing the amount of brand awareness is absolutely critical in boosting overall long-term benefit. Lacklustre keywords may have relatively low costs associated with them, even if the CPA appears to be bad. As such, it is sometimes a good idea to start pinging servers in the hopes of being exposed in these niches, as the resulting exposure can help boost your overall recognition in the niches that are being targeted. Much like the incomplete data scenario in the previous paragraph, this increased awareness can subtly remind shoppers, subscribers and searchers in the future that they have other options to consider when performing tasks online in the future. This is yet another case of making a short-term investment for a long-term benefit.