What we set out to test
Can broad match keywords capture search interest and increase website traffic and conversions?
The background
Hyundai Marine & Fire Insurance (HDMF) is a leader in South Korea’s nonlife insurance industry. While HDMF recognized the importance of capturing users’ ever-changing needs, it faced the challenge of doing so accurately and efficiently.
Committed toward continuous business growth, HDMF wanted to explore ways to increase discoverability of its website and offerings. The brand was keen to see if expanding keyword match types to include broad match could enhance performance in addition to its existing exact match keyword strategy.
Exact match allows brands to home in on specific user searches. By contrast, broad match uses audience signals to connect with more people and show up whenever users are researching online. This meant that both types of keyword matching strategies could complement each other effectively.
The team set up an experiment to test if adding broad match keywords, paired with Smart Bidding, could help HDMF reach its target audiences more efficiently and unlock website traffic and conversions.
How we set the experiment up
A search query-based A/B test was set up through the drafts and experiments tool to compare the effectiveness of exact match and broad match keywords:
- Control group: Generic keywords campaign with exact match
- Test group: Generic keywords campaign with exact and broad match
The experiment ran for a total of five weeks in South Korea, using the same keyword set and budgets across both the control and test campaigns. Both groups also used Smart Bidding with the same target CPA bidding strategy.
For this experiment, a conversion referred to either a request for insurance premium quotes or an online purchase of an insurance policy made on the HDMF website. By comparing conversions and website traffic driven by the two groups, the brand could determine if adding broad match keywords to complement existing exact match keywords would be more effective than using exact match keywords alone.
Solutions we used
What we learned
HDMF found that expanding into broad match keywords unlocked more conversions and website traffic at lower acquisition costs overall compared to the campaign that ran with exact match keywords only. The test campaign drove:
In today’s fast-changing landscape, brands must evolve their search ad strategies to keep up with ever-evolving user behavior and remain discoverable. Devising hundreds of long-tail keywords that users might search for is no longer able to precisely capture the diverse array of consumer searches and interests, nor is it operationally sustainable.
Additionally, with the power of machine learning, the test also demonstrated how Smart Bidding can enable brands to further optimize their keyword strategies and tailor their bids to search interests in real time. By complementing Smart Bidding with broad match keywords, HDMF could maximize efficiency while reaching the right users at the right time.
"Based on our prior testing experiences with other media, I thought that using broad match would only increase advertising costs and not increase the number of conversions significantly. As a result, I had been avoiding broad match for a long time. Through this broad match test, we successfully increased the number of conversions while maintaining the target CPA. I will try applying broad match to various campaigns in the future and actively use the experiment opportunities provided by Google."
“Drafts & Experiments made it relatively easy to make decisions based on the whole process, from testing broad match to applying to the original campaigns. I look forward to using Google Experiment to create even more successful cases.”
This case study is part of the Experiment with Google Ads program.
