Theory: The “generic keyword conundrum” is so big that it is even considered a novice marketer’s biggest pitfall. Generic keywords are “high-volume” keywords that have a very large search volume but a low conversion rate. This is because the buyer intent is that of research, and not of purchase. There can be plenty of volume for a keyword like “sunscreen”, but the cost to convert people just looking for the keyword “sunscreen” is too high to be worthwhile. For this reason, ROI focused digital marketers do not target high- volume and relevant looking keywords.

Approach: We used Google’s Re-Marketing Lists for Search Ads (RSLAs) to record all the website traffic and only target a generic keyword when the person had previously visited the Brown Thomas website’s cosmetics page. We theorized that if the person who searched for “sunscreen” had recently visited the client’s website, they had already shown purchase intent and was more likely to convert than any other person searching for the generic keyword.