facebook

Useful tools for Paid Search and keyword research tips from BrightonSEO

This Autumn’s BrightonSEO delivered yet another profound agenda for the super friendly digital marketing crowd at the Brighton Centre - including our very own Becky Rowland who offers her account of some of day's key presentations...

For me, it was my first time at the events’ new huge venue and oh my goodness was it packed, I’d never seen so many SEO lovers in one place before!

After having a quick look around the exhibitors varied and rather interactive offerings, I managed to bag myself a seat in the Paid Search forum which was kick started by Jeroen Maljers with “Top 10 Adwords Tactics for B2B Lead Gen Campaigns”, who also shared some excellent Bonus Tactics. Here are what I deem to be key points for Google PPC campaigns:

Before you set up the campaign…

  • Make sure you know your target market’s intentions and create persona profiles
  • Consider search terms of competitor offerings; are they solving issues or just pushing?
  • Research your client’s clients
  • Define what your core customer Lifetime Value (LTV) dimensions are (view this great Kissmetrics infographic for how to calculate LTV)
  • Update your Google My Business profiles and locations

Wise up on keyword research…

  • Choose keywords that start with problem you want to solve
  • When writing ad copy be mindful of generic phrases, don’t use industry jargon and focus on normal language and solving issues
  • Retargeting supports influence on B2B decision making as it takes much longer than B2C
  • Avoid visitor disappointment by ensuring that your landing page corresponds with ad copy
  • Bonus tactics – consider using relevant emojis in copy and running Gmail sponsored ads

When running campaigns…

  • Avoid broad match unless you’re seeking inspiration. Have a separate budget and run these keywords for an hour a day to avoid overspend
  • Check for negative keywords daily to create a general list, then per ad group and focus on opening and end times of client searches
  • Use Dynamic Search ads for B2B shops to determine what time people search to solve problems
  • Monitor and act upon auction insights helpful to see who is irrelevant. For instance, check on competitors – if you notice that they’re in the wrong space, you could get in touch with them to ask them to reconfigure their campaigns as their activity is pushing up CPC cost needlessly.
  • Use phone number and text ad extensions

Saija Mahon’s presentation came up next, which focused on what remarketing tactics to use as a conversion rate optimisation (CRO) tool with which to activate and enhance client retention. Her primary advice is to not forget existing clients but instead continuously nurture existing communities via Google PPC bid strategies and SEO, social media and e-shots – obviously without becoming annoying.

Remarketing is especially effective when combined with Facebook, LinkedIn and Adwords pixel code on your website, as it will allow you to create audiences by sector based on product interests so that you can tailor ad strategy according to customer behaviour with relevant content and variety of ad sizes. Saija also recommended evaluating what upselling and cross selling opportunities there are for single sale transactions, as well as understanding what your high intent keywords are.

I then joined the Advanced Keyword Research group in the main Auditorium Hall (which was ace!) to enhance my SEO knowledge with tactical and practical tips from Stacey MacNaught, Sophie Coley and Kelvin Newman. Here is what I found most interesting:

  • By 2020 50% of all searches will be voice so do more than add keywords, include phrases from longtail searches – here’s why:

BrightonSEO

  • Search engines compete with product marketplaces (e.g. YouTube and Amazon) and publishers (e.g. trade media) so incorporate these channels in your own strategy
  • Think beyond immediate organic sales searches to get to people before they’re about to shop & identify triggers
  • Useful tools for keyword research – free com or pay for BuzzSumo’s Question Analyser
  • Look at market leader reviews in Facebook for example, filter by 5 star and identify positive experiences – use phrases and keywords to experiment with your own page titles
  • Use insights into search phrases and questions with https://answerthepublic.com
  • Consider how your team can help influence customers where they search
  • Create word cloud results to question if you’ve talked about other relevant topics for buyers and the buying process
  • 81% would tell people of their experiences, so influence and inspire behaviour which evokes emotions
  • Visual content generally gets greater engagement scores, so use interactive 360 degree photos and short videos for low cost ROI

One of my other favourite speakers of the day was Rebecca Brown of Builtvisible who was in the Onsite Content line up. Her advice included understanding consumer journeys and what you’re up against. A great tip from Rebecca was to hack your brand into a post by reviewing age and type of the content and then collaborating with top ranking posts.

Finally, I must also commend Jon Myers on his rather entertaining and educational presentation about The Search Universe – it really is quite fun so take a look here.

So over all, digital marketing efforts should focus on answering an individual’s search questions with relevant content in the right medium, rather than simply pushing the same message out to everyone across the same channel.


How can we help?

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.