What Are Match Types in Google Adwords?

Match types are method used within Google Adwords to allow you to better target your customers depending on the keywords they type into Google and the words your are targeting your advert at. This essentially means through the different types of keyword matching you need to ensure your advert only shows when you want it to. There are 4 types of keyword matching commonly used in Google Adwords accounts, I have outlined each below. I use the same example from laser eye treatment as my last post on structuring Adwords accounts.

Broad Match

This particular match type will see you appear for a lot of terms. As one example: If you had laser eye treatment in your add group set to the broad match type you would be eligible to appear for any keyword with, laser, or eye or treatment and any combinations of. This will obviously mean you appear for thousands…

Approaches to increase the value of your email messages Part 2 When resources are scarce

When we try to make email more valuable for subscribers, we tend to focus on technical and transactional optimization. Which means we focus on making the actual offer/content more targeted, mainly using tools like segmentation, dynamic content personalization etc. That's a good thing. But there are two limitations to this approach. First, we forget that value doesn't just lie in the relevancy of content and offers. Second, the required tools, data and/or resources for technical and transactional optimization aren't always available to marketers with budgets to care about. Part 1 of this article explored how you might use personality, human voice etc. to address the idea of emotional value: building an emotional connection that keeps people engaged even when the content or offer misses its mark. In Part 2 I suggest five relatively simple concepts you can use to build more…

Examples of how to improve conversion rate through applying common findings of usability studies

Value: [rating=4] Our commentary: Paul Rouke, our expert commentator on all-things usability, recently gave a UX 101 talk at Manchester Metropolitan University. Although billed as a usability presentation, much of the guidance covered by Paul featured examples of how changes to marketing messages and navigation on home pages and landing pages can increase conversion rate. Usability & User Experience 101 - #UX101View more presentations from Paul Rouke. Marketing implications: If you review the slide deck you may pick up some ideas on "quick win" changes you can make to your site to increase conversion rate or changes to the design that can be…

What are the barriers stopping companies blogging and how can they be encouraged?

I strongly believe that every business should have a blog since they're an essential hub to your digital marketing activities. If you don't have one, you're missing out on one of the best ways to engage existing customers and to get new customers through the power of advocacy and SEO. So we're on a bit of a mission to get more companies blogging, but know we need to understand what is holding companies back. I find when I ask in my training workshops, that often only a quarter to a third on the course have a blog. So there must be some serious reasons behind low business adoption of blogs. In the spirit of encouraging more companies to adopt them I've summarised here the reasons for and against. But first a poll - thank to those who helped devise…

Creating an enewsletter that keeps subscribers engaged

As I've shown with these examples, the design and layout of your email newsletter is important, but it's the content of course, which really helps engagement. The chart below shows that online users aren't set on shopping primarily, rather it's learning, having fun or socializing! Source: RF Intent Index

The sell-inform-entertain balance

For me, getting the correct balance between using your newsletters as a sales tool and adding other types of value is key to their success. This applies equally to other e-communications like a blog, Facebook or Twitter. (more…)…

A case study of why many companies continue to buy links

Value: [rating=4] Our commentary: Well, the answer to the question, as with many tricky #digitalmarketing questions, is "it depends". I prompted to write this post, to alert you to a really interesting new piece in the New York Times shows both sides of the story - the publicity has caused a penalty. It's a massive company - JC Penney - an $18 billion company,  that's featured. This is a big a case of Google SPAM as when BMW were delisted from Google several years ago. Through using paid links as their strategy JC Penney have been very successful. As the NYT puts it: The company bested millions of sites — and not just in searches for dresses, bedding and area rugs. For months, it was consistently at or near the top in searches for “skinny jeans,” “home decor,” “comforter sets,” “furniture” and dozens of…

Why your blog should be *the* focal point for building your brand online?

I'm still surprised how little blogs feature in digital marketing strategy and planning -- whether marketers run a corporate or brand blog as part of their web strategy, or leveraging third party blogs via blogger out-reach. Blogs can also give you a hub for syndicating content and offers via the social networks as this post by Dave on blog content syndication shows. I believe that this area really needs taking more seriously, the latest information from Technorati's 'State Of The Blogosphere' (Technorati quiz several thousand bloggers) reveal some interesting take-aways that I'd hope provide some motivation: Blogs are the new news: The blogosphere is still in transition, and still they have mainstream influence - you only have to look how progressive brands are leveraging bloggers to promote their latest product, message or campaign. Blogs are social:…

Over the past few months it has been hard to escape stories about Bing. A recent post on Search Engine Watch which goes into some nice growth figures for Bing really made me sit up and listen. Some of the numbers quote in this blog from Search Engine Watch should start make you wonder how & when Bing fits into your search strategy, for example: Searches on Bing last month increased by 21 percent Bing passed Wikipedia on compete’s list of top 50 websites Bing saw its share of searches jump from 10.6 percent to 12.81 percent for the same period Compete reported that Bing closed the year with a 105.36 percent increase in unique visitors -- the largest yearly growth among the top 50 sites. You can view all the stats & full story from Search Engine…

A "back to basics" guide on targeting Pay Per Click through campaign structure setup

What do we mean by campaign structure?

Campaign structure is the way in which your keywords are grouped within your paid search advertising account like Google Adwords or Bing/Microsoft adCenter. The example below shows how it's important to have a specific Ad Group for each model of a mobile phone and only related keywords within there.

They help define the appropriate ad creative to be displayed when these terms are searched for. Because creative for searches and the keywords that triggers ads are set at an Ad group level it is all too easy to have adverts that are not targeted towards the keyword searched for if you put a number of unrelated or even subtly different keywords in an Ad Group. This ultimately means relevance will be low,…

Great examples of websites with effective online value propositions (OVPs)

"Why should I do business with you online?" is the question on the subconscious minds of all site visitors and especially first time visitors. I believe the design has to emphasise your key offers and why we should do business with you online rather than via another channel or a competitor. I call this an Online Value Proposition. I'm always on the lookout for sites that do this well, so thought it would be handy to present some examples here from different sectors. I like the example on the left from O2 which they use in the area of the site where visitors are viewing phones. It has links to the main parts of the proposition to help support the decision and highlight it with a good hook, image and…