As a Pay Per Click (PPC) advertiser using Google AdWords, you can select whether your adverts show for broad searches relating to your keywords or very specific searches that match your terms exactly. By choosing from a range of ‘keyword match types,’ you can tactically enhance your campaigns and improve the quality of the traffic that you attract to your website.

In AdWords, there are five different keyword match types to choose from:

Broad Match

Broad match - as you might ascertain from the name - returns a broad range of results originating from your keyword or phrase. Your adverts will automatically run for keyword variations including synonyms, singular and plural forms, common misspellings and even other phrases that contain the selected keywords. Although assigning broad match to a campaign can help to increase traffic, it may also result in wasted spend, attracting clicks from people looking for products or services your business does not supply.

"Phrase Match"

By placing quotation marks around particular keywords, Google will only display adverts when the search term entered contains the keywords in the same order as they are listed in the ad. For example, when bidding on a keyword which is written in quotation marks - e.g. "car insurance" - you will show for those keywords in that order. However, you will also bid on search terms such as 'cheap car insurance', 'car insurance quotes', 'car insurance policies', etc.

[Exact Match]

Exact match is the most specific keyword match type. By placing your keyword or phrase in square brackets - e.g. [car insurance] - Google will only show the advert for that exact term, without including any variations.

-Negative -Match

Negative matches are an excellent method of reducing the amount of wasted spend your ad campaign generates. The addition of a negative sign shows Google that your ad is not to be returned for any search including that keyword. Using the car insurance example, by adding the negative keyword '-sports', your advert will not be returned for "sports car insurance" searches.

+Modified +Broad +Match

The most recent addition to AdWords, modified broad match allows you to apply a more specific version of broad match. By putting a plus sign in front of a keyword or key phrase, you can tell Google exactly which keywords you would like to bid for, ensuring you show for a range of terms without appearing for those which aren’t related to the products or services you sell. For further information on modified broad match, check out this blog post, when we wrote about its initial launch in the UK.

Done well, pay per click advertising can really help to drive more traffic to a website at a minimal expense. However, unfortunately, we’ve seen many people give it a go themselves, only to set up their campaigns with the wrong keyword match types in place. Our PPC Team have years of experience in setting up and managing campaigns in a plethora of industries and therefore know the do’s and don’ts with Google AdWords.

For more information, please visit our dedicated pay per click advertising page or call 029 2076 6467 today.

Don’t let it be said that we aren’t willing to share here at Liberty. Yes we do have our own team of pay per click advertising specialists and yes they are extremely good at what they do, however, we are still willing to spend a little bit of time compiling this list of common pay per click advertising mistakes you should avoid like the plague should you decide to run your pay per click advertising campaign in-house.

Analyse your results

A pay per click advertising campaign is for life, not just for Christmas. Granted that’s a poor use of metaphor but it does help to emphasise just how important it is to look after your pay per click advertising campaign. You shouldn’t simply set it free to roam; it needs constant care and nurturing. All those statistics enable you to fine tune your campaign and cut off the fat, leaving a lean, streamlined and effective campaign.

Take your time over keyword choice

Choose your keywords wisely. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that a more expensive keyword is a better keyword. Conduct thorough research. You never know, you might unearth a gem! Sometimes niche keywords produce the most lasting results and the more targeted your choice, often the less expensive the bid.

Give your ads a chance

Don’t go chopping and changing your pay per click advertising campaign when you start to panic that you aren’t receiving enough clicks. To establish a true picture of the success of an advert, even if it’s destined to fail, it is essential to give it every chance. By leaving adverts for a good amount of time you will eliminate any element of doubt. Such an advert can then be removed from your future pay per click advertising strategy with certainty.

The top spot is not reserved for the biggest spender

Pay per click advertising can be a great leveller. Do not make the mistake of assuming that by blowing the competition out of the water with a high bid, top spot is guaranteed. Google is far too clever for that. Your bid will be considered alongside the wording of your ad and the quality of your landing page. Keep the standard high or prepare to be usurped!

If you’d rather trust the proven expertise of pay per click advertising specialists, Liberty Marketing’s in-house team benefit from the experience gained whilst managing over 200 campaigns.

A bugbear of Pay Per Click advertisers across the globe is how inaccurate geo-targeting can be. The thought of being able to display adverts to internet users in a tightly set location is ideal for local businesses but the unfortunate reality is that platforms like Google AdWords haven’t been able to accurately serve adverts a lot of the time.

Geo-targeting to date has mainly been based on the location of a users’ Internet Service Provider. This can often be very different to where that user actually is. Take us as an example - Liberty has had three offices, all based in Cardiff, but Google believed the first was in Birmingham, the second in London and the current one in Essex, due to the ISP we have used at each location. Very frustrating for advertisers and surely very frustrating for Google, knowing they’d spend more if this could be improved.

It looks like this may soon happen as, according to New Scientist, technologies are being developed that can accurately track internet users to within 690 metres of their physical location. The article says “The new method zooms in through three stages to locate a target computer. The first stage measures the time it takes to send a data packet to the target and converts it into a distance – a common geolocation technique that narrows the target's possible location to a radius of around 200 kilometres.

...they then send data packets to known Google Maps landmark servers in this large area to find which routers they pass through. When a landmark machine and the target computer have shared a router, the researchers can compare how long a packet takes to reach each machine from the router; converted into an estimate of distance, this time difference narrows the search down further.

Finally, they repeat the landmark search at this more fine-grained level: comparing delay times once more, they establish which landmark server is closest to the target. The result can never be entirely accurate, but it's much better than trying to determine a location by converting the initial delay into a distance or the next best IP-based method. On average their method gets to within 690 metres of the target and can be as close as 100 metres – good enough to identify the target computer's location to within a few streets”

If/when this rolls out, we can't wait to see the impact it has on Pay Per Click!

The Advertising Standards Agency’s online remit is due to expand to cover the marketing communications on organisations’ own websites, as well as other non-paid-for-space under their control.

This significant development which will undoubtedly affect the operations of in-house online marketing teams as well as marketing agencies across the UK is to be brought in on March 1 of this year.

This progression in the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing will regulate all of an organisation’s messages which appear online. The new rules will govern areas including misleading advertising, social responsibility and the protection of children.

Such a development is due to be greeted with open arms by consumers and ethical businesses alike, as it will offer further protection to both, ensuring the same high standards are applied online as are enforced in other media.

The new regulation is set to cover:

• Marketing messages displayed by businesses on their own websites, ensuring their integrity regardless of the sector or industry in which they operates. The rules will apply to all organisations, completely irrespective of size.
• Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

Following the principles of the ASA’s new remit will ensure that you can continue to run your business with complete peace of mind, safe in the knowledge that your obligations have been met. You can find more information on the Committee of Advertising Practice website: http://www.cap.org.uk/CAPServices/Digital-remit-advice.aspx

If you have any confusion regarding the regulations, contact the team here at Liberty Marketing, and we will be happy to ensure the marketing messages on your website are fully compliant.

Writing AdWords copy has become a modern day art form, one that many SEM’s have refined over years to take advantage of the 4 line structure. I’m sure we have all slaved over that phrase or line which is just 1 character too long! Well, Google have recently made things more challenging – thanks very much - by adding variable line lengths to the equation.

In the past we have written ads which fit within the following structure:

Title: 25 characters max
Line 2: 35 characters max
Line 3: 35 characters max
Display URL: 35 characters max

This strict format has often seen punctuation omitted in favour of that last character and to date we have been able to get away with it because we know exactly how our ad will appear in Google. Variable line lengths change this by expanding or contracting the line length in relation to the size of a user’s browser.

The result is that an ad you may have spent ages over will now appear in a completely different way to different users thereby losing some of its advertising appeal in the process.

So what does this mean for future copy?

Good copywriters won’t be fazed by this change. A good copywriter will create dynamic copy which reads well regardless, but the correct use of punctuation will now become critical to ensure your advertising message gets through the way you intended. Reviewing existing ads and altering them accordingly would also be advisable.

The first half of 2010 has seen a dramatic rise in the total spend by British organisations on online advertising, up 10% from last year to £1.97 billion.

The bi-annual online advertising expenditure study produced by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), in partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers, puts the increase down to a large surge in the video and social network advertising budgets of many small and medium sized companies.

With a current market share of 24.3% of the total UK advertising spend; online advertising is now becoming a major consideration for many businesses. The 10% increase in online advertising is within a context of a 6.3% rise in total UK advertising spend to £8.1 billion, which shows positive signs relating to the increasing confidence in the economy.

The highest spending could be seen in the entertainment and media sector, which has always relied heavily upon advertising within the digital sector. This accounted for 14.4% of total online advertising spend in the UK, followed by finance and fast moving consumer goods.  

In what was a largely positive study, figures reflected a sense of optimism in the industry which has not been seen for the past couple of years. Even retail, a sector which has been hit disproportionately severely by the economic collapse, experienced an increased online advertising spend from 7.1% in the first half of 2009 to 8.4% in the same period of 2010.

The chief executive of IAB, Guy Phillipson, commented: “The return to double digit growth in UK online advertising spend is characterised by increased investment by major brands, particularly in fast moving consumer goods and entertainment. The effectiveness of social and video ads for classic brand building is reflected in these formats enjoying exponential growth”.

The report indicates a number of drivers for the recent surge in growth, one being the increase in online users within the UK, mainly due to the proliferation of devices such as Smartphones.

The way people spend their time on the internet is also changing with the IAB claiming UK internet users are currently spending 23% of their time online using social networks and blogs.

New regulations mean that from March 2011 companies will be subject to strict advertising rules as the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) extends its power over online marketing. In 2008 there were over 4500 complaints about internet marketing communications that the ASA did not have the authority to deal with. They will now be able to force marketers to remove any content or online advert found to be in breach of its regulations, giving the consumer much more protection.

False claims and misleading statements on websites, as well as untrue price comparison sites will be under the ASA’s control. These new regulations will give the ASA the capacity to position their own adverts in place of those of noncompliant advertisers. Companies that flout these rules will receive substantial negative publicity from the ASA which can damage an advertiser’s reputation.

Marketing statements on Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites will also be covered by the new regulations. This means that marketers will have to be careful to ensure that no offence is caused and that no misleading statements are used. Using foul language or sending malicious comments from official company accounts will result in complaints and possibly fines from the ASA.

Internet giant Google has provided extra funding for this extended remit and is completely co-operating with the ASA to help make the Internet a much safer place for the consumer. These regulations will provide an interesting challenge for marketers as some will have to change their current practices to comply.

2009 was a landmark year for online marketing. The first six months of the year saw online ad spend overtake television to become the UK’s largest advertising sector for the first time. It was predicted that this trend would continue into 2010.

A recent report from the Internet Advertising Bureau, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the World Advertising Research Centre, has found that online ad spend in 2009 went on to surpass predictions, reaching £3.5 billion (a total increase in spend of 4.2% over the year). Online advertising has continued strengthening its position as the largest advertising sector into 2010 and has proven itself not to be just a blip, caused by recession-hit companies looking for cheaper ways to advertise, as was suggested by some academics in 2009.

The report shows that spend on paid search (Pay Per Click advertising) rose by 9.5% to £2.15bn in 2009. One of the consequences of this increase is that businesses using Google AdWords and MSN Adcenter to market a business are now competing against more bidders for advert positions and clicks.

One of the most surprising results from the report was the 140% increase in video advertising. This is partly due to companies using the internet to distribute their television adverts and also due to many hoping that a video released on the internet may go “viral”.

The increase in online advertising is thought to be due to the changing habits of UK citizens. The Internet is increasingly becoming a vital part of 21st century life and people are spending more time surfing. The changes in consumer habits towards mainstream Internet use has resulted in innovative marketing from companies that have had to re-think the way they advertise. As the results of the study show, many companies are completely restructuring their advertising strategies to include far more online advertising and turning their backs on the increasingly expensive, hard to track, traditional means of promotion.