Picking out great keywords can be challenging, but it’s an important part of an overall successful Google Search campaign strategy. In this post, we discuss the different kinds of keywords you can use to target your audience.
Think like your customer
When it’s time to come up with the keywords for your Google ads, you’re going to want to think like your customer at the time their searching for your product. Also, take under consideration that you might have a sale going on you’d like to promote to them that requires it’s own campaign with it’s own keywords such as “couch discount” or “couch sale”.
Explore your business objectives. Do you want more people to visit your website or to reach customers that are ready to make a purchase? You’ll need to formulate your keywords around the journey you want your customers to take.
The different match types
If you’re trying to reach a wider audience, you’re going to need a broad match or broad match modifier. These allow for variations and misspellings of the search terms that you enter in any order if they appear in the user’s search terms. For example if you enter “bicycle” and the user searches for “blue bike”, you would still show up in the search engine because bicycle is a variation of bike. These are the most common type of search types.
Now let’s look at more narrow searches–the phrase match and exact match. Phrase match can be useful when you are looking to target a specific brand of something such as “Comfy Couch” brand and you needed those to appear in order with no words in between, while still allowing words before an after. Exact match is just as a it sounds. The user must enter the exact search terms as they appear and really should be used sparingly as a keyword strategy.
The last match type is a negative match. This type is used when your broad match allows something to appear that you don’t want. Let’s say you don’t have any “sectional couches” in your inventory, you can add a negative keyword “sectional” so that you don’t appear in those searches.
At the end of the day, delivering an exhaustive list of keywords is nearly impossible, but understanding Google’s match types makes that effort a little easier. When you’re generating your own list, you can always reach out to us for questions–we’d be happy to help!
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question, as the most common mistakes made by digital marketers can vary depending on their level of experience, the type of marketing they are doing, and the specific goals they are trying to achieve. However, some common mistakes that digital marketers often make include:
Not having a clear strategy: Without a clear and well-defined marketing strategy, it can be difficult to know what the objectives are, what metrics to track, and how to measure success.
Not targeting the right audience: Understanding your target audience and what motivates them is critical to the success of any marketing campaign. If you are not targeting the right audience, your efforts and resources will likely be wasted.
Ignoring mobile optimization: With the majority of internet traffic now coming from mobile devices, it’s essential to make sure your website and marketing materials are optimized for mobile.
Overlooking the importance of data and analytics: In the digital age, data and analytics play a crucial role in making informed marketing decisions. Without tracking the right metrics, it can be difficult to understand what’s working and what’s not.
Not diversifying your marketing channels: Relying on a single marketing channel can be risky, as changes in algorithms or consumer behavior can have a significant impact on your results. It’s important to diversify your marketing efforts across multiple channels.
Not testing and optimizing: Digital marketing is a constantly evolving field, and what works today may not work tomorrow. It’s important to continually test and optimize your campaigns to ensure they are achieving the desired results.
Building an audience on social media is a great way to grow your credibility (do you take anyone seriously that has little to know following on social media?) while opening up channels beyond email for your target audience to receive important updates. Many organizations do not invest enough time in building online communities because traditional content marketing and earned media is generally a slow grind to build a robust following.
For those of you frustrated with a slow community building process we have good news. There are affordable paid media options to help you supercharge your online community growth. In this post we will focus on two platforms with huge audiences that provide simple ad units to boost your following: Facebook and Twitter.
Facebook:
In the Meta platform you will want to select Page Like Ads. These ad units largely look the same as any other ad unit that shows up within your feed, but what makes it unique is the “thumbs up” image appears making it easy for someone to like your Facebook page.
Twitter:
On Twitter you will want to select “Followers” from the campaign objectives menu in the ads setup. Just like Facebook, these ads look like any other ad in the platform, but they have a “follow” button that makes it easy for users to follow your content.
What kind of content should you use for an effective paid like/follow ad? Remember you are playing the long game with these ads. Your objective is to build a community of long term advocates, customers, etc. The most effective ads are short and to the point. Let people know why they should care to follow you.
For example, with brands, instead of focusing on your products, focus on your mission and/or brand identity. In the example from Neutral above, they are a carbon neutral dairy company, but their mission is to provide customers with carbon neutral milk that tastes good and is also good for the environment. Our paid like/follow campaign focused on the latter and was very successful in building community, quickly.
When considering how to target here are some suggestions:
CRM Upload: Uploading your email list can accomplish two things. First, you can negative target them. This means you tell the platform you do not want to target them with ads. This tactic will allow you to save money by not targeting people you can already reach while focusing solely on adding net new followers. Second, you can create a lookalike audience of people who are similar to those that already follow you via email. This is a great place to start.
Interest Targeting: Meta is very good at understanding their users interests based upon their in-platform browsing behavior. What is your target audience interested in? Meta will likely have an interest-based audience for you to target.
Handle Targeting: On Twitter you have the option to target people based upon who they follow. Do you know that your audience will likely follow a certain brand, influencer, organization, etc? Add them to your targeting list.
Geotargeting: If your organization is localized it is vital to zero in on the area(s) you serve. This will help narrow down your target audience and achieve maximum efficiency.
Finding the right platform to help measure your business success is crucial. When it comes to interacting with your website and apps, Google Analytics can help you better understand your customers and how they meet your demand from start to finish.
Determine Your Business Goals as it Relates to Your Site
What do you want your customers to accomplish on your website? At this point, your site should be built to support that customer journey so that a call to action easily directs them down your ideal path to the finish line.
Some examples of these business goals are:
Making a purchase
Signing up for a consultation
Calling your place of business
Getting directions to your place of business
Signing up for an event
Using Google Events to Measure KPIs
Google measures all interactions made with your site through events. Examples of events are:
Clicks and pageviews on your website
Installs and opens on your app
User engagement and conversions on either platform
A full list of recommended events can be found here. You’ll need to talk to your website developer about including these events on your website. Once you have the events set up, it takes 24 hours for them to start measuring in Google Analytics.
Now, you will need to determine your baseline for visitors and events over a period of time. By going into Admin, then Events, you are able to set certain events as conversions, which means that they are measured in a different report in Google Analytics for you. These conversions should be important events such as add to carts, or form submits and should align directly with what business goal you are trying to measure.
Next, you can go to Engagements, then Conversions to see how your conversions have performed over a period of time. You can add other parameters to this report to see, for example, the Session Default Channel Group where the conversions originated from whether it was from a paid media source Paid Search or an organic visit to your website. Organic Search.
Do you need help determining what a good conversion rate is for your business? Or where to start with setting KPIs to benchmark against? Let’s chat! Sign up for a consultation today.
Building and executing a marketing campaign for your business can be costly and taxing on staff resources. With the right approach, you can successfully employ a low-cost strategy utilizing content generated from your consumers, known as user generated content or UGC, on a budget.
We aren’t advocating purchasing bot farms to spray your content via comment sections, or an expensive influencer to shill your product, either. Consumers value authenticity in marketing, placing a high value on testimonials and product demonstrations.
92% of marketers believe most or all of the content they create resonates as authentic, yet 51% of consumers say less than half of brands create content that resonates as authentic. Stackla
Getting your audience and customers involved in your marketing efforts and becoming brand advocates can be as simple as requesting a service review or testimonial, sharing a photo or video of customers utilizing the product via social media post with a thoughtful tag integrated across platforms. Once you get the content, it is important to know how to repurpose and use it effectively.
Reward participants by featuring their positive testimonial on your website or in your next email newsletter. Engage with the content produced by expressing gratitude or offering helpful tips on social media. Being responsive and creating a community improves platform and user engagement.
Additional rewards can be determined by hosting a Gleam contest with a discount code or gift card as a prize. After running the user generated content campaign and identifying enthusiastic supporters, you can host a brief AMA via Zoom, YouTube livestream, or Twitter Spaces, yielding more recorded content to showcase your brand or product.
Did you connect with a new professional at a networking event? Utilize LinkedIn to thank them publicly and discuss your mutual opportunities and goals. Include a photo to put a name with a face.
Are you thinking, “Great ideas, team, but I don’t have the internal capacity to manage a large scale content strategy. Now what?” We can help. Schedule your free 30-minute consultation by emailing us at: info@populationscience.com
Whether you’re ready to graduate from Google Ads and Meta or you’re attracted to exciting new channels, selecting a demand side platform (DSP) partner to manage your programmatic journey is probably the most challenging process a marketing organization can undertake. No two DSPs are alike and each one boasts their own pros and cons that need to be carefully weighed. Before you start the process of researching potential DSP partners here are three items to consider:
Inventory
No DSP has access to all of the available digital ad supply out there. Ad platforms that also own and operate (O&O) web properties tend to make you buy that inventory from them directly. Examples include YouTube only being available from DV360/Google Ads and Prime Video is only available via Amazon DSP. Other platforms reach exclusive deals to manage inventory. For example, Yahoo DSP has a deal with Microsoft to manage XBOX, MSN, and other properties they own.
While there is nothing stopping you from working with multiple DSPs (if you have enough budget, more on this below), it is definitely easier to limit the number of DSPs you work with. The more platforms you add to your tech stack the more complicated it can become to manage.
We recommend that you determine what inventory is most important to you. Most DSPs specialize in being the platform of choice for specific types of inventory such as CTV, streaming audio, native, or high value O&O inventory.
Data
Data is another aspect to consider when selecting a DSP. Much like O&O inventory, major ad tech players can keep their data behind their walled garden. An example of this is the Amazon DSP. If you want to target consumers based upon the ecommerce data (or Whole Foods data) that Amazon has, you have to use their DSP to do it.
It is pretty easy to identify the handful of DSPs with unique data sets. Amazon, DV360 (Google), Yahoo, Roku, and Beeswax (Comcast) are the main players with large amounts of O&O data. Are you looking to target households with CTV? Perhaps you should look at Beeswax or Roku and their access to subscriber data. Is Google ads a major source of traffic for you right now? Perhaps it’s time to step up to DV360 to significantly increase the targeting/segmentation options there.
Budget
Knowing that Google and Amazon have unique data as well as high value O&O inventory, it is logical that many buyers want to use their DSP. Unfortunately, to work directly with either platform you need a seven-figure budget. Otherwise, you will be forced to work with one of their partners to access the DSP. These marketing partners will take a small cut of your spend, but you will still need to commit to spending six figures per year to access these platforms.
The next item to consider is whether or not you have the bandwidth to learn, setup, and manage your own DSP (self-service) or if you need the platform to manage it for you (managed service). If you do not have a very experienced media buyer on staff, managed service is probably the best option for you. There is a pretty steep learning curve to understanding DSPs, so it’s not for a beginner. That said, managed service comes at a premium cost since the platform will need to staff your account with support.
As you can see there are a lot of big decisions that go into selecting a DSP. There is no one size fits all approach to this process. If you are looking for some advice on which platform is right for you, feel free to connect with us. We are happy to help!
