We are rapidly approaching the Back to School shopping season. Planning your search campaigns and promotions carefully will result in a successful execution. Keyword research is an important step during this process. Today, I have outlined useful best practices on how to properly structure your campaigns and ad groups, and keyword research tips that will help make you successful.

Define your Campaign's Purpose and Structure
Are you looking to increase sales online? Is creating brand awareness priority number one? These are important questions to ask prior to keyword research. If online sales are your top focus, then creating a campaign and ad group structure by product line and product might best fit your needs. Assigning keywords that are more informational to their own ad groups allows you to target the appropriate audience. I recommend creating a flexible structure that best works for you long term. Eliminating the hassle to constantly restructure your campaigns will help to save time for bid and ad copy optimizing.

Plan out your Keyword Strategy before Researching Keywords
Keyword research is vital when planning an execution such as Back to School. Include your products including variations. If you carry "Spiderman lunch boxes", create a Spiderman ad group that targets "Spiderman lunch boxes" and lunch box variations.

Consider adding seasonal keyword variations such as "back to school sales" and "back to school discounts" when keyword researching. Be sure to bid on variations of your keywords that include "buy", "cheap", "savings" and "sale" modifiers. Do you have local stores? If so, including keywords, such as "back to school sales Seattle", will help to drive offline sales through online advertising. Creating lists prior to researching keywords helps to efficiently research and build your campaigns.

Use Microsoft Advertising Intelligence to Research Keywords for adCenter
Microsoft Advertising Intelligence (formerly adCenter Add-In Beta for Excel) is a great keyword research and optimization tool (highly recommend if you have Excel 2003 or 2007) that uses adCenter data. Features include keyword expansions through keyword suggestion, traffic estimates and forecasting. Monetization is also a great feature. This feature provides pricing and performance indicators on keywords by average position and match type. Understanding the market enables you to make educated bid decisions. If you are a new user, I recommend checking out the Microsoft Advertising Intelligence demos.

Defining your campaign's purpose, structure and keyword strategy will enable you sufficiently target your audience and achieve your desired return on investment. Microsoft Advertising Intelligence is a great optimization tool for all of your Back to School needs including the creation of keyword lists, budget research and traffic forecasting. Next week, I will discuss ad copy best practices for Back to School campaigns.