Use of only broad match keywords means your campaigns aren’t optimally targeted. Broad match keywords are very general. Many words have multiple meanings. For example the word “bark” could be referring to the sound a dog makes or tree bark. If you’re an arborist you don’t want to bid on the broad match keyword “bark” because you’ll be paying for clicks from searchers with loud dogs. The solution is to narrow your keyword targeting by using phrases that include the word “bark”, like “tree bark specialist” (phrase match), +tree +bark +specialist (modified broad match) or [tree bark specialist] (exact match).

Easily convert your Google Ads keyword match types in less than a minute using this free Excel spreadsheet

Have you been manually typing the +, “ and [ ] to change your broad match keywords into broad match modifier, phrase and exact match?. There’s no need for that tedious, exacting work…use this free Keyword Converter Excel spreadsheet to convert thousands of keywords in a minute or less.

How to Use the Google Ads Keywords Match Type Convert Spreadsheet

(Download the free Keyword Converter spreadsheet mentioned above here.)

Step 1: Open The Keyword Convertor Excel workbook provided at the link above

Step 2: Paste your broad match keywords in Column A as indicated by the arrow.

Step 3: All done! Just copy and paste your keywords from columns B, C or D as needed into Google Ads

Step 4: Google Ads Search Keywords—here’s the location to copy and paste converted keywords within Google Ads

Ready to convert the next set of keywords? Then delete column A keywords only, not the whole column, then copy and paste/type in your new keywords.

Note: if some cells show red, it means they’re duplicate keywords, just delete and you’re good to go!

What are Keyword Match Types?

Google Ads offers variations on keywords to improve your paid search campaigns. Here’s a list of keyword match types with descriptions:

• Broad match:

  “Broad match is the default match type that all your keywords are assigned. Ads may show on searches that include misspellings, synonyms, related searches, and other relevant variations. So if your keyword is “women’s hats,” someone searching for “buy ladies hats” as well as “women’s scarves” might see your ad.” (learn more from Google)

• Negative match:

  “Excludes your ads from showing on searches with that term. So if you’re a hat company that doesn’t sell baseball hats, you could add a negative keyword, designated with a minus sign (-baseball hats).” (learn more from Google)

• Broad match modifier:

  “Similar to broad match, except that the broad match modifier option only shows ads in searches that include the words with a plus sign “+” in front of them (+women’s hats), or close variations of the “+” terms.” (learn more from Google)

• Phrase match:

  “Ads may show on searches that match a phrase, or close variations of that phrase, which may include additional words before or after. Ads won’t show, however, if a word is added to the middle of the phrase that changes the meaning of the phrase. Phrase match is designated with quotation marks (“women’s hats”).” (learn more from Google)

• Exact match:

  “Ads may show on searches that match the exact term or are close variations of that exact term. Close variants include searches for keywords with the same meaning as the exact keywords, regardless of spelling or grammar differences between the query and the keyword. Exact match is designated with brackets ([red shoe]).” (learn more from Google)

Learn more about Google Ads keyword match types and how to use them to improve your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns here.

By Andy Hoover
Manager, Search Engine and Social Media Marketing, Beasley Direct & Online Marketing, Inc.
Digital Marketing Manager, Direct Marketing Association of Northern California

The post How to Convert Thousands of Keywords to All Match Types in Less Than a Minute appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

About Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., is known for bringing the latest marketing strategies to online and direct marketing. Beasley provides services in inbound and outbound marketing including:  content creation, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), print advertising, social media advertising, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, Amazon Marketing Services (AMS), website design, media planning/public relations, direct mail marketing, lead generation and nurture campaigns, and database management. Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., helps clients in both B2B and B2C marketing and is privately held and headquartered in the Silicon Valley suburb of Morgan Hill, California. For more information, go to www.BeasleyDirect.com .

About Silicon Valley Business Journal

The Silicon Valley Business Journal is the local version of the American City Business Journals (ACBJ), which is the largest publisher of metropolitan business newsweeklies in the United States, with 43 business publications across the country reaching more than 3.6 million readers each week. They also offer specialty publications for sports fans, sports business readers and classic car enthusiasts.

Is your Digital Marketing initiative failing? Beasley’s professional marketing team can help. Start with a free SEO audit of your company’s website. Sign up here.

By Laurie B. Beasley

The post Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., Places 14th in Silicon Valley Business Journal List of Largest Advertising, Marketing and PR Agencies appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Andreas Ramos, Vice President, Digital Marketing for Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., will be teaching a live online Google Ads fundamentals PPC workshop for the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California.

Andreas is the author of 14 books on SEO, social media and content marketing, including #TwitterBook, How to Write a Book!, The Big Book of Content Marketing, Search Engine Marketing (McGraw-Hill), and technical reviewer of Search Engine Marketing, Inc., by Mike Moran (IBM Press). Andreas co-founded two digital marketing agencies. He also led the digital marketing team at Acxiom and was Manager of Global SEO at Cisco. His clients include Stanford, Harvard, and MIT. He graduated from Universität Heidelberg, the top German university. He and his wife live in Palo Alto. Visit him at andreas.com.

What You’ll Learn

• You’ll see how a Google Ads account is structured and we’ll do a live walk-through of an Ads account
• You’ll see how to quickly find 10,000 keywords, including your competitors’ keywords, and how to test those keywords to find the best keywords

Key Takeaways

• How to use the best keywords in your Ads account
• Understand how to set up large accounts
• Understand how to test ads to find ads with high conversion rates

Bonus Material

• You can listen to the complete presentation with audio as often as you like
• Spreadsheet to collect and manage thousands of keywords
• Spreadsheet tool to translate your keywords into 44 languages

Three-Part Course on Google Ads

This is the introduction course of the three-part course for Google Ads. You can continue to Google Ads Advanced, which covers methods and tools that agencies use to write and test ads in Google Ads.

Who is the course for?

• Anyone who wants to work with Google Ads and SEM
• Senior staff, managers, and directors who are responsible for Google Ads and SEM
• You will be able to understand SEO so you can manage Google Ads and SEM agencies or contractors
• Agencies can improve their Google Ads and SEM services

To enroll go here.

About the DMAnc (www.DMAnc.org)

The DMA of Northern California was formed to educate, inform and provide networking opportunities for Direct and Online Marketing professionals in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We hold monthly luncheon meetings, workshops, periodic half-day seminars, and provide opportunity for the best in learning and job networking in the Northern California marketing community.

About Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., is known for bringing the latest marketing strategies to online and direct marketing. We provide services in inbound and outbound marketing including: content creation, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), print advertising, social media advertising, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, Amazon Marketing Services (AMS), website design, media planning/public relations, direct mail marketing, lead generation and nurture campaigns, and database management. We help clients in both B2B and B2C marketing and are privately held and headquartered in the Silicon Valley suburb of Morgan Hill, California. For more information, go here.

For help with your PPC campaign implementation and marketing, Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., can help! Get a free consultation.

Find case studies and white papers at https://beasleydirect.com/resources/white-papers.

The post Join Andreas Ramos, Vice President, Digital Marketing for Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., in a Live Online Workshop on “Google Ads Fundamentals” appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Andreas Ramos has joined Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., as Vice President, Digital Marketing.  Andreas will assist clients in global digital marketing strategy and in training their teams in content marketing, SEO strategy, social media, and Google advertising.

Andreas is the author of fourteen best-selling books on SEO, social media, and content marketing, including: #TwitterBook, How to Write a Book!, The Big Book of Content Marketing, Search Engine Marketing (McGraw-Hill), and technical reviewer of Search Engine Marketing, by Mike Moran (IBM Press). Andreas co-founded two digital marketing agencies. He also led the digital marketing team at Acxiom and was Manager of Global SEO at Cisco.

About Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., is known for bringing the latest marketing strategies to online and direct marketing. Beasley provides services in inbound and outbound marketing including:  content creation, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), print advertising, social media advertising, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, Amazon Marketing Services (AMS), website design, media planning/public relations, direct mail marketing, lead generation and nurture campaigns, and database management. Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., helps clients in both B2B and B2C marketing and is privately held and headquartered in the Silicon Valley suburb of Morgan Hill, California. For more information, go to https://www.beasleydirect.com/.

Need help with your digital marketing? Review our digital marketing offerings and get free SEO and PPC audits here.

The post Andreas Ramos Joins Beasley Direct & Online Marketing, Inc., as VP, Digital Marketing appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

John Thyfault, Vice President, Search Engine and Social Media Marketing for Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., will be teaching a live online Remarketing workshop for the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California.

How to Create Cross-Platform Remarketing Campaigns: The Sum is Greater than the Parts

(Wednesday, February 27, 2019. 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM Pacific Standard Time)

Remarketing is the process of reaching out to the 98% of people who landed on your website but who didn’t convert. A remarketing campaign can result in double digit response rates and 100-200% ROI if done properly. Many advertisers are not taking full advantage of remarketing though, limiting their efforts to just one platform and leaving potential conversions on the table. A well-designed, multi-platform remarketing campaign can combine different user data from each platform into a super engine for success.

This remarketing training workshop will focus on the specifics of developing a cross platform remarketing plan between Google Ads and Facebook (including Instagram), but the lessons learned can be applied to LinkedIn, Twitter, email and most other platforms. Case studies will illustrate the set up and measurement of your remarketing campaigns.

In this remarketing training workshop you will learn how to:

• Establish marketing goals that you can accomplish with multi-platform remarketing
• Benefit from the similarities and differences of remarketing audiences/lists creation by platform—and how you can use each platform’s unique targeting features to create super lists
• Create look-a-like audiences from current customer email lists
• Understand your customers better by looking at multi-platform data and using this to drive conversions
• Harness the power of layered remarketing across platforms
• Use parallel and sequential approaches to make the most of your remarketing dollars
• Create a unified dashboard in Google Data Studio to view your results on one screen

Learn more

About the DMAnc (www.DMAnc.org)

The DMA of Northern California was formed to educate, inform and provide networking opportunities for Direct and Online Marketing professionals in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We hold monthly luncheon meetings, workshops, periodic half-day seminars, and provide opportunity for the best in learning and job networking in the Northern California marketing community.

About Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., is known for bringing the latest marketing strategies to online and direct marketing. We provide services in inbound and outbound marketing including: content creation, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), print advertising, social media advertising, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, Amazon Marketing Services (AMS), website design, media planning/public relations, direct mail marketing, lead generation and nurture campaigns, and database management. We help clients in both B2B and B2C marketing and are privately held and headquartered in the Silicon Valley suburb of Morgan Hill, California. For more information, go here.

For help with your e-commerce site implementation and marketing, Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., can help! Get a free consultation.

Find case studies and white papers at https://beasleydirect.com/resources/white-papers.

The post Join John Thyfault, Vice President, Search Engine and Social Media Marketing for Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., in a Workshop on “How to Create Cross-Platform Remarketing Campaigns” appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., a full service direct and online marketing agency, is selected by The National Constitution Center to provide digital marketing services.  The initial work will involve managing paid advertising on Google Ads, the Google Display Network, Facebook and LinkedIn. We will be writing and trafficking new ad campaigns using a Google Ad Grant as well as other paid media.  The ads will promote new exhibits premiering in 2019 as well as the current exhibits.

About Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., is known for bringing the latest marketing strategies to online and direct marketing. Beasley provides services in inbound and outbound marketing including:  content creation, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), print advertising, social media advertising, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, Amazon Marketing Services (AMS), website design, media planning/public relations, direct mail marketing, lead generation and nurture campaigns, and database management. Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., helps clients in both B2B and B2C marketing and is privately held and headquartered in the Silicon Valley suburb of Morgan Hill, California. For more information, go to www.BeasleyDirect.com .

About The National Constitution Center

The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia inspires citizenship as the only place where people across America and around the world can come together to learn about, debate, and celebrate the greatest vision of human freedom in history, the U.S. Constitution. A private, nonprofit organization, the Center serves as America’s leading platform for constitutional education and debate, fulfilling its Congressional charter “to disseminate information about the U.S. Constitution on a nonpartisan basis.” As the Museum of We the People, the Center brings the Constitution to life for visitors of all ages through interactive programs and exhibits. As America’s Town Hall, the Center brings the leading conservative and liberal thought leaders together to debate the Constitution on all media platforms. As a center for Civic Education, the Center delivers the best educational programs and online resources that inspire, excite, and engage citizens about the U.S. Constitution. For more information, call 215-409-6700 or visit constitutioncenter.org.

Get started with a free PPC Advertising audit. Contact us for a free consultation!

Find case studies and white papers at https://beasleydirect.com/resources/white-papers

The post Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., is Selected to Provide Digital Marketing Services to The National Constitution Center Using a Google Ad Grant and Other Paid Media appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

When you search Google on the phrase “Integrating your CRM with Google Ads,” about 2.8 million results are offered. Obviously, this is a common integration issue. Having an integration checklist will help you plan your process before starting (which is the reason I wrote this blog). I hope my checklist will save you time, money and create ROI for you in the long run.

For the sake of giving examples, we’ll use Marketo as our representative Marketing Automation Platform (MAP), and explain how it connects to SalesForce (our CRM). These are not the only choices in the market, but they will serve to illustrate common opportunities and challenges.

Integration Checklist Questions

We list here a series of questions we will explore in the following sections. You might want to jot down answers to these questions first before we review each in detail.

1. Do you have a separate Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) and Customer Relationship Management system (CRM)?
2. Do your MAP and CRM systems have a clean, well-documented connection/interface?
3. Is there a direct connection to the CRM from Google Ads?
4. Are the forms on your site native to the MAP/CRM or do they pre-date it?
5. Is your campaign naming convention consistent between the MAP, CRM and Google Ads?
6. What elements do you wish to track across the three platforms?
7. How long is your sales cycle in both time and number of touches to a closed deal?
8. Do you have steps in your sales qualification process that are manual, requiring a human to make a judgement call?
9. Will there be multiple touches before the MQL is handed off to the sales team?
10. How many people will own this process?

Here are Additional Details on each Question and what they Imply

1. Do you have a separate MAP and CRM?

Some CRMs have great marketing automation built into their infrastructure and do not need the addition of a MAP. Often though, companies start with a MAP and eventually move to a full-blown CRM.

If you do not have an integrated MAP/CRM connection, budget additional time and resources to connect the two. This often can be a major hurdle in launching your campaigns. One of Beasley Direct and Online Marketing’s (BDOM) clients ran into this issue and an additional 6 weeks of development time was required to launch the campaigns.

2. Do your MAP and CRM systems have a clean, well-documented connection?

Both Marketo and SalesForce have invested time and money into creating these connections at the API level. Take advantage of this and use what’s there instead of trying to recreate the wheel.

Be sure to test the connection between the MAP and CRM before launch. In spite of having off-the-shelf solutions, BDOM has found allocating time and budget for running initial tests is key to long-term campaign and larger marketing initiative success.

3. Is there a direct connection to the CRM from Google Ads?

Is it one way or two way? Being able to send sales data back to Google Ads will make a much more efficient campaign over time. BDOM has found that where this exists the integration process is easier, and we are able to see a much more detailed view of what’s happening from click to meeting to closed sale. Be sure to spend time familiarizing both your marketing team and sales team with what results say. Having your sales team understand results goes a long way towards getting them to take online leads seriously as they allocate limited time to what they view as the best prospects.

4. Are the forms on your site native to the MAP/CRM or do they pre-date it?

It will save you time and lots of effort if you bite the bullet and convert all your forms to the native version offered by your MAP. This is probably the biggest source of frustration and delay when going through this process.

One of our clients chose to have a hybrid approach with new forms being built in Marketo and older forms being “imported” into the system. While they were able to make this work, it required additional development time when a new campaign would target the marketing collateral associated with an older “imported” form.

Spend the time and effort up front to convert older forms to your MAP. It will allow your team to be more agile and effective for future campaigns.

5. What elements do you wish to track across the three platforms?

Make sure your SalesForce campaign fields match your Google Ads fields. Also, importing your cost data into SalesForce can make your ROI much clearer at a glance.

This comes back to the idea of managing your resources effectively. We all have limited budget to drive traffic to our site, whether from paid search or email outreach. Being able to understand which traffic is driving the best leads and how much those leads are costing your company will allow your team to make better decisions on which campaigns are performing best. It also cuts down on the number of “poor” leads your sales team needs to shepherd from marketing qualified to sales qualified.

Your sales team has limited time to devote to qualifying marketing leads and will begin discounting them over time if poor leads are being sent because they appear to be “affordable.”

6. Is your campaign naming convention consistent between the MAP, CRM and Google Ads?

Keeping the naming convention consistent from the start will cut down on significant data issues. It’s easier to match them up at the outset of your integration process than going back to retrofit the data later.

One key field that needs to be included in SalesForce is the “gclid” field. This is the container that Google Ads uses to transmit all the campaign, ad group, ad, search term, targeting and cost info into a nice little package that SalesForce can decode.

7. How long is your sales cycle in both time and number of touches to a closed deal?

The more touches needed, the more you need to make sure you’re getting a clean, two-way data stream between Google Ads and your MAP/CRM.

Our team spent a lot of time and effort ensuring we are able to follow the lead stream with our clients to understand what is working. Having good, two-way communication between the eventual sale and the click that drove it is key. This can be the area in which a well-connected MAP/CRM solution pays for itself, giving the marketing team the data they need to focus on the best source of high-quality leads for the sales team.

8. Do you have steps in your sales qualification process that are manual, requiring a human to make a judgement call?

This is known as shifting a lead from an MQL (marketing qualified lead) to a SQL (sales qualified lead).

BDOM will sit down with our client’s marketing and sales teams at the beginning of any new engagement and ask how they qualify the lead, what makes for a good SQL vs. an MQL and what history the two sides have. This will often result in a better understanding on both sides and better long term buy-in to a process that may not be turnkey.

9. Will there be multiple touches before the MQL is handed off to the sales team?

Be sure that these are used to score the lead and it transmits to your CRM when the lead is transferred.

This again is a key step for getting sales and marketing on the same page in understanding the process and developing trust with the quality of the leads as they go through the pipeline.

10. How many people will own this process?

Is it just one person or are you splitting the work among different people and teams? Getting the multiple parties involved at the outset to discuss goals and possible issues is vital to having a successful process. Be aware that different team members will have different goals for the integration. Some may not want to do the work required and will need to be convinced of the final result’s value.

The ins and outs of the process will be very dependent on planning details before any steps are taken. Like any project, a road map with clear responsibilities will make your integration much more successful.

Additional links that can help you get started.

Link Salesforce and Google Ads accounts
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7538740

Import conversions from Salesforce
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6299296#setup_steps

Google Ads Integration Questions? | Marketo Marketing Nation
https://nation.marketo.com/thread/44948-google-adwords-workings

Google Ads Integration: Optimize Ads Using Marketo Offline Conversion Data
https://www.marketo.com/cheat-sheets/google-adwords-integration-optimize-ads-using-marketo-offline-conversion-data/

Do you need assistance integrating your Marketing Automation Platform and CRM with Google Ads? We can help. Request a free consultation here.

For digital marketing case studies, go here.

By John Thyfault
Vice President of Search and Social Media Marketing
Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc.

The post 10 Steps to Integrate Marketing Automation Platforms and CRMs with Google Ads appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., a full service direct and online marketing agency, is selected by Got It, Inc., to provide digital marketing services. The initial work will involve managing paid advertising on Google Ads, Google Display Network, Facebook and LinkedIn.

About Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., is known for bringing the latest marketing strategies to online and direct marketing. Beasley provides services in inbound and outbound marketing including:  content creation, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), print advertising, social media advertising, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, Amazon Marketing Services (AMS), website design, media planning/public relations, direct mail marketing, lead generation and nurture campaigns, and database management. Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., helps clients in both B2B and B2C marketing and is privately held and headquartered in the Silicon Valley suburb of Morgan Hill, California. For more information, go to www.BeasleyDirect.com.

About Got It, Inc.

Serial entrepreneurs Peter Relan and Hung Tran with their YouWeb incubator have launched a “knowledge-as-a-service” (KaaS) company, Got It, Inc. Got It is a web platform to connect (human) experts with professionals seeking the answer to specific tech tool-related problems. The platform helps professionals, learners, and consumers quickly and affordably get personalized, interactive solutions to their questions. Got It matches a user with an expert to solve the user’s problem in a one-on-one chat session within a fixed time period, with a service guarantee.

In the first instance the target users are professionals wrangling Excel and Google Sheets. But the wider ambition is to be able to use its expertise-ranking algorithms to intelligently assess more categories of tech knowledge by connecting relevant experts with different professionals to solve them.

Get started with a free PPC Advertising audit. Contact us for a free consultation!

Find case studies and white papers at https://beasleydirect.com/resources/white-papers

The post Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., is Selected to Provide Digital Marketing Services to Got It, Inc. appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., a Northern California-based full-service direct and online marketing agency, has been awarded Google Premier Partner status for achieving the highest requirements to manage client Google Ads accounts. Google Ads awarded us Premier Status based on successful client account performance, ad spend, up-to-date knowledge of and certification in Google Ads. We have specialists in Search Advertising, Display Advertising and Mobile Advertising.

About Google Ads

Google Ads is Google’s digital advertising platform that allows businesses and non-profits to reach their target audiences with their message. Google Ads offers Search, Display, Video and App ads. Ads can be targeted based on:

Audience:

• Demographics
• Affinity
• In-market
• Custom intent
• Similar audiences
• Remarketing

and/or, Content:

• Topics
• Placement
• Content keywords
• Display expansion for search

About Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., is known for bringing the latest marketing strategies to online and direct marketing. We provide services in inbound and outbound marketing including: content creation, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), print advertising, social media advertising, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, Amazon Marketing Services (AMS), website design, media planning/public relations, direct mail marketing, lead generation and nurture campaigns, and database management. We help clients in both B2B and B2C marketing and are privately held and headquartered in the Silicon Valley suburb of Morgan Hill, California. For more information, go here.

For a Free Google Ads (Pay-per-Click) PPC audit, click here.

The post Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., Becomes a Google Premier Partner for Google Ads appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

A Broad Match Modifier is a variation on the traditional Broad Match for your keyword matching options. They can drive an improved reach and ROI. We’ll illustrate in a case study for a community bank client later in this blog. First, some basics on how the Broad Match Modifier works.

The Broad Match Modifier as Your Ultimate Reach: How it Works

When setting up your keyword match types, Broad Match gives you the most reach and variability in the searches your ad can appear on. In addition, the keyword’s cost-per-click (CPC) tends to be lower than using phrase or exact match. For example, if you have set up the keyword “men’s shoes” as a broad match, your ad can appear whenever Google Ads thinks it’s relevant. The ad could be triggered by searches like “shoes for men,” “men’s tennis shoes,” “dress shoes for men” or “loafers for guys.” It can appear on any synonym, plural or variation Google Ads thinks is appropriate.

This results in a wide reach to a lot of different searchers. However, often times the reach is too wide and you are getting clicks (each one costing you money) from searchers who are not looking for your particular product. You are selling dress shoes and your ad is appearing in searches for tennis shoes.

Phrase and Exact Match will focus your ads to appear in front of a much more limited set of searchers. Often times, they narrow the search down too much. The result is you don’t achieve the necessary impression volume you need to reach your marketing goals. What you need is a better balance of reaching a larger audience and yet focusing in on your product – and the Broad Match Modifier affords you exactly this balance.

What is Broad Match Modifier and how does it differ from straight Broad Match?

Broad Match Modifier will allow you to maintain a larger reach for different searches, while giving you some ability to focus the searches that your ad appears upon.

When Broad Match Modifier is used, a “+” is placed in front of a keyword, telling Google Ads to include that word “as is” in the search. Then the keyword can appear in any order in the actual search query, but the modified word or a close variation (plurals, stems, etc.) must be included.

For example:

The keyphrase “+women’s hats” could trigger an ad to appear when the searcher types in “women’s caps,” “white hats for women” or “women’s red caps.” It would not appear on “girl’s hats” because the modifier keyword “women’s” (or a close variation) was not included in the search.

In addition, you can use Broad Match Modifier to modify multiple words in your larger keyphrase you are bidding on:

The keyphrase “+women’s +hats” will trigger your ad when the searchers enter “women’s hats,” “hats for women,” “women’s blue hats” or “lacy women’s hats.” Your ad would not be triggered without both “women’s” and “hats” included in the search. Remember that the order of the words does not matter. This allows for a broader reach than phrase match where the order is maintained.

Case Study: Broad Match Modifier for a Community Bank’s Google Ads Campaigns

One of our clients, a community bank, wished to target real estate investors searching for multi-family properties. After developing an initial keyword list with a split of 30% broad match, 30% phrase match and 40% exact match, the campaign was launched. We targeted three medium size cities and six counties.

After one week’s worth of traffic, we analyzed the results, both from a conversion-to-lead basis and from a search query basis. The phrase and exact match traffic was very low. The traffic we did see performed well but at too low volume to meet the client’s goals.

Broad match generated plenty of traffic volume but a very low conversion rate. When we reviewed the search queries (Search Terms Report) that were driving the clicks, we saw a lot of consumer-based traffic. Terms being bid upon, such as “apartment building loan,” were triggering the client’s ads for terms such as “loans for apartment” and “loans to buy an apartment.” Traffic from these searches would land on the site and exit after it became apparent the bank was offering loans to purchase apartment buildings, not just one apartment. The Broad Match traffic was converting to a lead at less than a 0.5% rate.

Modifying the Broad Match List

We worked with the client to modify the Broad Match list into a more focused Broad Match Modifier list. Some of the terms were updated to Broad Match Modifier, for example:

“apartment building loan” became “+apartment+building+loan.” This had our client showing up for more relevant searches, such as “loans for apartment buildings” and “loans to buy apartment building.”

Results: CTR went from 1.85% to 3.99% in the first week. Conversion rates jumped from 1.78% to 5.10%.

“financing rental units” became “financing+rental+units.” The client’s ads began showing for searches on “best rates for financing rental units” and “banks who finance rental units purchase,” among others.

Results: CTR went from 2.57% to 3.77% in the first week. Conversion rates jumped from 0.78% to 4.22%.

A Winning Campaign

Over the course of two weeks across the entire campaign, we saw the traffic from the Broad Match list (now a Broad Match Modifier list) improve its conversion-to-lead rate to 4.1% while still maintaining a strong volume. The search queries driving the clicks were much more relevant to the ideal customer profile we had developed at the start of the engagement.

We were also able to add to our Phrase and Exact Match list based on analyzing the post-change search queries. We found a series of phrases that were not originally identified and added them to the appropriate ad groups.

Broad Match Modifier allowed our client to run ads in a limited geographic area with a more specific set of targeting options that resulted in improved conversion rates.

By John Thyfault, Vice President of Search Engine and Social Media Marketing, Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc.

Read more digital marketing case studies in Resources.

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The post Broad Match Modifiers: How We Greatly Improved the Click-Through and Conversion Rates for a Community Bank Using Broad Match Modifiers in Google Ads appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.