I'm in the UK however my business is open to people in the UK & Ireland. I believe my account is structured very well - however, each campaign targets the UK & Ireland. Should I have 2 copies of each campaign: 1 for the UK and the 2nd for Ireland, and keep them separate? Or just keep them lumped together? As things stand, as my business is just as important to the UK as it is to Ireland and vice versa, I've just kept them together for simplicity sake, but ... I'm thinking there is always the chance some keywords could work better for Ireland audience to what it does for the UK. Opinions will help me decide. Thanks in advance.
The decision really is yours to make, but you did touch on a good point-some keywords may work better in one location than the other. I ran a campaign across one entire country and a few US states. I created campaign for each geographic location to being with, and as time went on, optimized and edited the campaigns based on each one's individual performance. Some keywords performed better in one state than another, and some in the other country performed better than the US states. Spelling differences and regional 'dialects', if you will, also played a role in different results. It also allows you to judge your sales/conversion/what havey ou based on each location. You could target each one with unique landing pages, or keep one general page based on performance. It really is something that you should decide. It won't hurt to break it down by region, that's for sure. It will give you more detailed information about your consumer audience that you might not have had with an all-in-one campaign.
I'd split em'. Generally speaking the more granular you can get the better. Like you said, even if it's just a few new keywords you could add that resulted in conversions you'll be ahead of the game. You may also see some CPC efficiencies. Not a guarantee but a definite possibility.
split them... its better for optimization, bidding and text ad targeting... plus you will probably realize one geo target is more expensive than the other and also converts very much differently
Now you can even easily create geo targeted campaigns based on geographic conversion data. Good stuff.