Adwords keyword and phrase matching tips

This is an overview of how you might use keyword matching to narrow down and hone the clickthrough you might recieve on an advert in order to maximise conversion rates. Here are the tools,

Broad match

This is the keyword or phrase type that nearly everyone will use without understandning how to further optimise your campaigns. Truth is, if your campaigns are only full of broad match terms you are probably wasting money and have a low conversion rate. Time and thought should be spent on all your keywords and phrases in order to maximise your campaigns potential. With a broad match your ads will result in an impression for, your keyword or phrase with other terms or even search terms where not all your terms have been searched for, resulting in a lot of unwanted impressions.

Phrase Match

A Phrase Match is just like when you are searching for something. It groups multiple keywords and ensures your Ad will not show for searches that do not include this exact key phrase (and in that order) it will however result in and impression for this phrase plus another word or phrase, an example might be “Nike Rucksack” your ad will show for searches like, red nike rucksack, used nike rucksack etc

Exact Match

Exact Match is what it says on the tin, your advert will not appear unless exactly this phrase is searched for, in other words it will not appear if your phrase is accompanied by other search terms. Use this by putting square brackets around the [keyword] [or phrase] An example where you might need to use an Exact Match might be if you are selling a product that

Negative Match

Negative Match causes a phrase to not appear if an additional keyword is used in conjunction with the phrase. Use you phrase with -keyword to use this. My example of this the other day was in a very specific pay per click campaign. Let’s say the HR department is using Adwords to advertise jobs, my keyword phrase might be “Marketing Manager Job” this would be a popular combination but it would also result in an impression for the search phrase “Marketing Manager Job Description” this might be students or the like researching was expected of a Marketing Manager and would not result in a conversion or in this case an application. Additionally a search phrase might be so popular that you only want your ad to be displayed if it explicitly contains a certain word, let’s use the same example. Your key phrase is “Marketing Manager” you are getting a high level of impressions but your conversion rate is low, you might want to only display your ad for searches including the word “Job” or “Vacancy” this would reduce the amount of impressions and wasted clicks. Remember that unless you have an unlimited budget you shod address all your keywords in this way, it is time consuming but will save spend in the long run.

March 30, 2011 | | Posted in: Digital Marketing | No Comments »

PPC – Pay Per Click Marketing and Purchase Process

Also see,
Understanding the science of PPC Digital Marketing

The other day I did an hour session on the use of Google Adwords and like most of my explanations related it back to conventional marketing practises and thinking about purchase process.

So, it is an extremely large subject and some might say its an art to perfect pay per click for a particular industry, product or brand. For more specifics on keywords and your campaigns see this article. If you break it down to it’s absolute basics and suggest some theory that could be applied to any campaign and in fact could be used to refine or revisit your existing campaign. The aim is to pick up your potential customer from an online space where you know they are specifically looking for something. Your advert should then suggest to them that you have what they are looking for, in as few steps as possible the customer will arrive in front of your product where they will find the right price and enough information to make a purchase decision. Of course it’s not that simple, product awareness often happens way before the online experience, the competing ads on the search engine may grab their attention more, they might feel you have the right price but not enough information to make an informed purchase decision or visa versa, they might research the product on your site but purchase from the cheapest vendor, they might even drop out during the checkout process. The point is that the drop out could occur at any point in the purchase process and so they are many important aspects to consider when designing your pay per click adverting and it’s not just about cleverly chosen key words and advert. You should also be looking at your SEO, landing pages, website content, price reviews, targeting, the list goes on! One is not successful without the other so think of PPC as a small part of your Digital Marketing Strategy.

I’ve written some beginners guides to SEO to here, which should also help with your landing page content.

September 21, 2010 | | Posted in: Digital Marketing | 2 Comments »

Digital Marketing Strategy – What should and shouldn’t you be doing

Also see,
Introduction to Search Engine Optimisation
Beyond SEO – The right traffic to your site
An Introduction to Google Webmaster Tools
Introduction to Google Analytics and other website analytical tools
Introduction to Pay Per Click Campaigns
PPC Pay Per Click Marketing and purchase process
Integrating online video into your digital marketing strategy

One of the biggest issues companies face with their marketing at the moment is the “because I can” attitude. Social media platforms has made it very easy for Joe Bloggs to set up a Facebook Page, Start a Twitter account etc without first considering what you are setting out to achieve or does it really fit into the marketing strategy for that particular brand, product, service or industry.

The aim of this post is to encourage you to stop and think before leaping head first into an arena that is far more complicated than copying and pasting content into online spaces.

I’ll firstly start by simplifying how I see Digital Marketing and please bare in mind this is not taking into account traditional Marketing metrics or an individual companies Marketing strategy which also should be taken into consideration when addressing that should I, shouldn’t I? question.

The above shows my idea of a rough guide to the nuts and bolts that build up your Digital Marketing Strategy. Note, one is nothing without the other supporting it.

A video is merely a file sitting on your computer until you give it a platform and a means to be spread by it’s viewers and this is the case with all your content be it news articles, data or PR. As I mentioned it has become increasingly easy for Joe Bloggs to set up a Facebook page, start a Twitter account or post something to YouTube but pause for a second and ask yourself does this “because I can” attitude to marketing really satisfy your marketing objectives? Ask yourself a few key questions and at the same time refer back to the marketing and branding strategy, business development objectives, PR efforts etc does setting up numerous social media accounts that remain dormant really let your clients know you understand social media? No, not really! Does multiple versions of you companies graphics and variations on messages increase and improve you brand awareness amongst your clients? No, it probably damages your brand!

The message is, understand what it is you are doing and choose the right nuts and bolts that support your pre existing strategies, don’t do things because it’s easy, you can or because everyone else is doing it!

April 12, 2010 | | Posted in: Digital Marketing | 4 Comments »

Introduction to Google Analytics and other website analytical tools

Also see,Google_Analytics
Introduction to Search Engine Optimisation
Beyond SEO – The right traffic to your site
An Introduction to Google Webmaster Tools
Introduction to Google Analytics and other website analytical tools
Introduction to Pay Per Click Campaigns
PPC Pay Per Click Marketing and purchase process
Integrating online video into your digital marketing strategy

Google Analytics is an absolute gem of a tool and can be used to make accurate business decisions regarding your advertising activities and marketing objectives. It will provide an opportunity to see what is working and what is not working in order to better utilise budgets and redistribute your spend and efforts.

It should pointed out that while Google Analytics is a great free tool, it should be cross referenced against other analytical software such as AWStats (free and installed on most hosting packages) or more professional software such as Omniture or Webtrends as data sometimes can be slightly conflicting.

It is also important to understand your objectives before you start your analysis. If you are approaching from an SEO point of view then the data you receive from the visitors of your site is as important as the data from the visitors you don’t achieve. Use services such as Googles Webmaster Tools or SEMRush to take a look at the information about where your site achieved a search engine placement but did not achieve a visit. More on this in another post.

If you are not familiar with the terms associated with web traffic then please see the summary below before reading on.

Once you have established your objectives there are two ways I approach the use of the data. Dip in and retrieve the data necessary to conclude the objective or take a look at the site visitors journey.

A site I worked on recently targeted the promotion of a trade in a specific vicinity from the trading address. Using analytics we were able to take a quick look at the geographical data by choosing visitors > Map overlay to see where the hits were coming from. In consequence the area the PPC campaign targeted was refined, reducing spend on clicks and improving conversion rates. Outside of the world of the web this data also facilitates decisions made about other geographical based advertising. A reasonably high spend on directory advertising was proving to have comparatively low conversion rates so the budget would be better distributed in areas producing sales. This is applicable for small and large business, with higher traffic websites you will have more data to play with and in turn a bit more digging to do but the cost savings are greater and overall turnover should far exceed the investment in getting it right.

So, let’s take a look at the journey I mentioned earlier. Although it can be very difficult to track one visitors journey through the website (unless you have software such as LivePerson) it is possible to retrieve enough data to make informed decision. This is technique I developed while working at a very high traffic retailer in order to make recommendations about advertising spends both on the Internet and in the real world. The basics of the journey is as follows

Referral > Landing page > Most popular pages > Exit Page > External links

This collection of data alone can answer a multitude of questions. Referrals, can quickly answer the question of whether some of your paid marketing is worth the spend, you will often see hits directly from mail sites so to some extent you can monitor your mailshots. Where you might struggle to monitor the effect of your advertising from print media or anything without a direct link. There are a few ways around this and I’ll give you a hint, creating unique landing pages to your advertising allows you to track how many hits you obtain from, say a flyer. Possibilities also arise in usability, pushing your visitors to specific parts of the site based on what you know they have come to find.

Landing pages are good for monitoring where traffic has come from but also provide a window into what is appearing high in search engines or popular pay per click search terms. Organic traffic to certain landing pages shows these are probably the most optimised pages satisfying more unique search terms. Check your search engine placement using webmaster tools, use this information to improve other pages and products.

The pages that receive the most hits Most popular pages might be highly optimised but also may reveal good usability and navigation of the site for example, home pageadvertising, good linking structure. Again this might reveal answers regarding offline advertising.

Exit pages are vital in knowing where your visitor got off. Ideally a thank you page post checkout or the contact us page for a trader. Match this by recording other data, whilst a checkouts provide the facility to monitor conversions, 10 hits or exits from your contact us page followed by 10 phone calls or emails suggests a conversion rate.

External links are as important as internal links and depending on the function of the site, remember that analytics does not drop a cookie so I the visitor leaves the site for more information and comes back google cannot tell you this. External links are especially good for sites providing information, sites with adverting, sites with sister sites and products.

Bare in mind that journeys can only be measured between two places, if a visitor hyperlinks to another page on your site then google can track the time spent on the first.

Organic Search – This is the natural search traffic obtained through the websites indexed pages on a search directory. For example, the left hand side of google.

Paid Search – This is search traffic from the adverts that appear on a search engines page. For example, Pay per click campaigns.

External / Internal links – External links are the links on the the website that link to another site. Internal links link to pages within the site.

Traffic Sources – Is a bracket heading for all the traffic sources that can be measured by Analytics.

Conversions – Are the traffic that can be measured and acheive a sale or appropriate call to action.

Conversion Rate – Are measurements on how many conversions achieved compared with number of visits. For example, a search term acheives 10 visits and 1 sale, this will produce a conversion rate

Landing Page – Is the first page at which the visitor arrived at the site (not always the home page)

Exit Page – Is the page at which the visitor leaves your site.

November 23, 2009 | | Posted in: Digital Marketing, On the Web, Software, Web and Software | 3 Comments »

Understanding the science of PPC digital marketing – Make Pay Per Click work for your business

Also see,Google_Adwords_Logo
Pay per click marketing and purchase process

I’m often approached for some pointers in the area of Pay Per Click advertising and I start by explaining how varied the subject can be. I often read Googles guides, and other readings but don’t reach the end a whole lot wiser as every Microsoft_adExcellenceindustry, every product even time of day, week or the weather effects a large campaign. I have decided my new advise approach should therefore be, how to not get PPC Marketing or advertising wrong rather than how to get it right.

So, where to begin? Let’s start with the setting up of the campaign as this is where you will begin. A common mistake from the outset is to follow all of Googles recommendations and have your advert appear for every associated word that refers to your product. It is good to tYahoo_Search_Marketinghink of every combination of words your customer might search but be careful not to include to broader terms especially if you do not stock the full range yourself. A brand that has a huge product portfolio will generate traffic but if you pull traffic through for broad terms there is no guarantee you will have to specific product at the specific price your potential customer is looking for. Broad terms often result in a low conversion rate. Having said this in an uncompetitive market this will be another story.

Ok, we’ve targeted our specific customer looking for a specific brand and a specific product in that brand range, the next thing they see is our advert on the right hand side / top of the search engine. All too often retailers go for a catch all advert for their entire campaign. This poses two problems, firstly, most customers want to know at the search engine stage if the retailer has the product and so this approach might lead to no click at all if a competitors advert supplies the required data. Secondly the customer clicks on your advert unsure as to what they might find, browses your site for a short while and then leaves, resulting in low conversion rates and a high spend. The odd wasted click here and there may seem insignificant on a small account but I have handled accounts from between a £500 to £2000 weekly spend, if these clicks aren’t turning into sales then you will soon be running at a loss.

Usability doesn’t just become important when the potential customer reaches your site, you are dealing with a savvy shopper that doesn’t wish to continue searching once on your website. You have used the right keywords, captured them with a good advert now clinch the sale by presenting them on a landing page with the product they’re after and at a competitive price.

Rather than just looking to the Google keyword tool as this will bombard you with every possible combination of key words know to man (well computer) you should use webmaster tools, google analytics and other 3rd party sites or tools to influence your choice of keywords. More detail on these in a later post.

All of the above should be done with measured targets in mind. Without bench marks there is no guarantee you are achieving a good ROI. I always stand by that PPC marketing is a short term fix and that the foe the bulk of the advertising or sales should not rely on PPC Campaigns. Your Pay Per Click should run alongside your SEO campaigns and other digital marketing, targets and goals should be set that work in synergy with a view to improve organic search conversions and digital marketing with a higher ROI. Remember some of the most innovative digital marketing costs virtually nothing.

If you have a large AdWords spend be sure to make use of your Google account manager, they are only at the other end of the phone and will work with you to improve your campaign. Be sure to provide a clear brief and if you doubt that they completely understand you brand do not ask them to make ad hoc adjustments to the wording of ads. They are extremely useful for performing repetitive time consuming jobs. Alternatively you can speed up your editing by using tools such as Google AdWords Editor, you can have more control over your adverts and if you are a whizz with exel can export and import files allowing you to work in a more familiar format.

Just a taster for now! But do ask more specific questions and I shall rage on additional posts.

November 3, 2009 | | Posted in: Digital Marketing, Learn at lunch, On the Web, Web and Software | 5 Comments »