Cat Seda has a great response about targeting the "tail terms" with your pay per click and organic search campaigns to a reader question on her blog today. In it, she talks about the heavy competition and low conversion rates for popular phrases and suggests that businesses take the time to dig a little deeper.

See, bidding on single words (or even broad phrases) could quickly blow your budget on pay-per-click (PPC). For example, if you sell car insurance, DON'T bid on "insurance." With the competition these days, even "car insurance" may be too broad and cost too much (generally speaking, more competitors mean higher bids). Instead, dig deep to find a targeted tail term like "florida car insurance quote." Now that's targeted! True, not as many people will search for that keyword, but the ones who do are definitely your ideal clients. That's why tail terms are very, very profitable.

It's good advice and one that I often try to remind businesses of myself. For more on this idea, try reading Keyword Strategies - The Long Tail from the Search Engine Guide archive.