The Liverpool Languages in the Limelight event was organized by the Career and Employment Services department of the University. It was mainly attended by students who were studying languages in the University. The Career and Employment services department told us that the students who were studying languages were very confused about what kind of job market is available to them apart from the obvious ones of being a teacher or translator. They were very pleased that Latitude Digital Marketing could offer opportunities to these students. At Latitude we have people from all over the world speaking various languages like German, Polish, Spanish, Arabic and many more. Latitude has clients all over Europe and hence needs people who can speak in different languages to build the PPC campaigns for different countries.

The whole event was extremely successful because we got to interact with so many students from different backgrounds who were so eager to take their first step into the professional world. They were all very keen and asked loads of questions and some of them also clicked pictures with Eddie, who was the star of the event. The refreshments provided by the university were also a highlight because there was a very good lunch buffet that they had organized for all the exhibitors. There were several big companies who were present at the fair, like Ernst and Young, Kelloggs and many more besides us.

If you attended the event and would like to discuss opportunities at latitude, get in touch by logging on to our Facebook page or drop us a line on Twitter.

Though you may be at the top of the natural search rankings, or close to it, through lots of work on search engine optimisation and link building, you may not actually be top of the search results page. This is because Google will still allow possibly 3 PPC adverts to appear above you, giving companies opportunity to essentially steal a user who is looking to buy from you, right under your nose.

One such example of this which has been in the news recently is the competition between Marks & Spencer’s & Interflora.

The above image shows a typical consumers buying cycle, with the following stages;

Interest

This is the initial stage at which a user will start to something which they want, for example “flowers delivered”

Research

Following identifying their need, they will continue to research online, starting with generics and then focusing on more and more on the finer details.

For example, flowers delivered – flowers delivered next day delivery

Your advert may be appearing for all of these terms, and the user may be noting them as they could be seeing different call to actions and unique selling points from various adverts.

Further Research

After several searches, they may choose to research your company more to access your website as they know your name but not the URL.

This could also be the case for if a user has seen or heard of other advertising medium with your brand name included in it.

Purchase

Having found you, the user will then complete their enquiry or order.

However, it is between points 3 and 4 that you could lose a user should you choose to not target brand keywords within a PPC account.

Yes, the user is looking for you in the final part, but with possibly 3 adverts appearing above you this is the final point at which a competitor could show an advert with a better offer and so snatch the user away from you.

Following on from the previous example, we can see Interflora have offered order by 3pm for same day delivery, but if it is after 3pm Marks and Spencer’s offer next day delivery if ordered by 6pm. This could be all it needs for a user to be persuaded to order their flowers through Marks & Spencer’s and not Interflora, as they had been searching for.

In targeting brand within a PPC account, the traditional returns are;

• Low average CPC’s

• Increased CTR’s

• High quality scores

• Increase in conversions through PPC advertising

• Top positions on search engine results pages

One of the other aspects to consider in deciding whether to bid on brand keywords is that in creating adverts, you put what you want to be shown on the SQRP’s.  When a user finds you via organic rankings, they will see your meta-title and meta-description (or if Google feel’s some webpage content is more relevant it will show this), which will not often contain calls to actions, offers or prices (Google does not often show prices within the meta-description).  If a competitor is bidding on your brand and has an advert above your ranking position, if they were to show a discount offer this could result in the user purchasing from them and not you.

Also, advert changes can be made instantly so any new offers and sales can be shown immediately rather than waiting for the website to be indexed again – an excellent opportunity to tie in with increased traffic as a result of any other advertising medium and promotions (i.e. national press advertising, radio and TV spots.

So apart from ensuring that you have a greater chance of appearing at the top of the SQRP, it improves your brand presence as the user will see that you have 2 listings above the fold and also if site link extensions are utilised properly this will increase the ads presence and number of different products/services which are sold – giving an even greater chance of turning a consumer into a customer.

In creating optimised campaigns to target mobile devices, this is one step in the right direction for all PPC advertisers, especially for those advertising local businesses and companies who want to focus on getting consumers to phone them directly or visit their shops.

However, a stumbling block which may hurt your PPC advertising performance is how your actual website behaves on a mobile device. Your website may work well on desktops, but as mobile devices behave in a slightly different manner, not all of you website may work on them.

The iPhone is one of the leading sellers in the market, and one of the problem this device has is that it does not render flash images – so you could have flash images on your website showing strong USP’s and calls to actions, but a mobile user might not see these and so not have the incentive to interact with the website.

Another problem is the size of the website, with some mobile contracts/packages having restrictive data allowances, if a user can see that the website is taking a long time to load or has a lot of images then they may be more likely to return to the search engine to try and use less data.

If your website is attempting to drive enquiries, this is easy enough to do on a computer as you can easily select the correct boxes to tick and also write contact details using the keyboard, on a mobile though, this can be a little more tricky depending on the size of the boxes and also navigating the screen to find out what else needs to be completed.

To help with the performance of Mobile Device targeted campaigns, Google has given the incentive to create mobile optimised websites by announcing that mobile optimisation of a website will be a factor in calculating the quality score. This means that a little work can lead to improved quality scores, and will therefore lead to higher ad ranks at reduced average CPC’s.

Some of the suggestions for improving a website to target mobile devices include;

• Keeping it simple – show the user what they are looking for and how they can go about interacting with the website, keeping all other elements to minimal content.

• Prioritize content – select what you want to make available on the website, minimise content to be more focused and create specific mobile optimised webpages for each product/service you wish to offer.

• Easier navigation – remember that a mobile device user will be using fingers and thumbs, a lot less accurate than a mouse, and as such may require larger & clearer buttons to select them.

• Make interaction easier – with someone buying or enquiring on a mobile device, if it’s possible, make it easier to complete a transaction by reducing and minimizing the number of steps required.

Though this sounds like a lot of work, and possibly expensive if employing someone to create these webpages for you, but Google has offered a helping hand with this in creating the service “Mobilize your business” which helps you create mobile optimised landing pages – FOR FREE!

With search’s made on mobile devices expected to exceed that of computers over the coming years, it is advisable to get started with this and reap the benefits of an improved quality score, mobile campaign performance and consumer interaction sooner rather than later.

 The most important person who accompanied us was our very own mascot Express Eddie; he was the centre of attraction in the event and was an instant star amongst the students. There were several organisations that attended the fair besides Latitude, like L’Oreal, Ernst and Young, Unilever, IBM and many more. The fair was very busy with a lot of international students as well from China, India, UAE, and Europe. Latitude was the only Digital Marketing Company present in the fair offering 3 months, 6 months and 10 months placement, so we attracted a lot of students to our stall. Overall it was a great experience to interact and chat with the students.

You can find the pictures of the fair on the Latitude Express Facebook page ( https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.228945570525237.57524.191540267599101&type=3).

There are a number of ways in which combined PPC and SEO strategies complement each other:

• Running SEO and PPC simultaneously increases exposure on the search engine results pages (SERPs) which will greatly increase traffic, build your brand awareness and give a more established presence in the market.

Screen-grab shows ‘Latitude Express’ dominating the SERP

• A combined PPC SEO strategy enables you to achieve both short and long term results; PPC delivers quick results with long-term benefits where as SEO is all about the long term and sustaining good results listings.

• Combining SEO and PPC efforts generates double the data which can be used to analyse and determine the best converting keywords; this information can then be used to optimize both campaigns and your overall search marketing strategy.

• In addition you can use your learnings from your PPC campaign and transfer them across to SEO as generally what works for PPC works for SEO. By determining which PPC keywords and ads convert the most, you will have a good idea how to create title tags, meta descriptions and page content for the search terms that you wish to rank organically for.

Something to note, it is thought that by running PPC alongside SEO can cause cannibalization of traffic, this is not the case and was proven by the Google research team during a study last summer. The study can be found here.

Out With The Old

The biggest change has been the removal of the custom shape function. Previously advertisers could create a “custom shape” by selecting different map points until the area they wanted to target was covered.

This appealed to many small companies who may have only operated in small specific areas as it allowed them to be precise in making sure their adverts only appeared to people within the area they serviced.

Another change which has made the process of setting up location targeting more time consuming is the removal of the bundle option. Here Google grouped together certain areas and provided them as targeting options such as; Europe, South Asia, East Asia, Latin America. As shown in the screenshot below.

However if this was now to be set up each individual country would have to be manually inputted rather than a simple click as was previously the case. Obviously there may have been some countries which were not required but these could easily be removed by clicking the red cross and if opting to target the majority of Europe this process was quicker than the new one of having to manually enter the countries you do want to target.

In With The New

Google now provide estimates on the amount of users you can potentially reach for each location targeting. The estimates are calculated based on unique cookies seen on Google products, the number of devices each person uses and the number of web browsers used by each person within each geographical location.

The numbers shown should only be used as a guide and not as the amount of impressions you can expect to receive other tools such as the Google Keyword Tool are still needed for this, but the reach function here provides a good insight into showing that there is a market in the areas you are targeting.

Due to the new linking with Google Maps the new location targeting provides more location suggestions when setting up your targeting.

Here it can be seen that when targeting Manchester you are presented with the reach information of nearby places to the area you are targeting. This new function is a positive one as it alerts people that areas you think might be covered by selecting a particular city but are actually not. For example Stockport and Salford are so closely associated to Manchester many may expect them to be included with the Manchester targeting option but based on the above image they are excluded. With them added the area targeted becomes the one below.

Ultimately the new function of suggesting nearby places is designed to alert people to expand their targeting options by making them think “oh that place is pretty close to where we want to target lets add it.” However must be careful not to expand too much as don’t want to target areas you can’t cover just because it’s been suggested.

Targeting by a radius has remained fairly consistent and only changed a little. The change is that now when setting up radius targeting you are shown all locations covered within the radius and their estimated reach. From this the radius as shown can be added as the targeting option or each individual location within the radius can be added.

The above is showing targeting by just selecting the original radius option. Below shows how each individual location can be added.

This new function also allows you to exclude locations with the radius.

Combined with the new targeting options there is now also a geographic report which can be run to highlight which areas are most popular to you. This helps with determining which locations you should be targeting. The report also allows you to see if certain locations are not performing well for for example generating clicks but no conversions if this is the case then the location in question can be excluded from your targeting options.

Issues

There are two main issues to the changes introduced and both centre around the ability to be specific with targeting. Custom shape targeting was a major tool which was very popular and no matter how detailed all the new changes are they do not allow the specific detailed targeting like custom shape targeting did. Similar to this postcode targeting is no longer an option again this is reducing the scope for really detailed and granular targeting.

Why It Should Be Used

Location targeting should be used as it can drive lower CPC’s because by targeting smaller areas the completion may not be as strong meaning CPC’s have not been pushed up. Better leads can also be generated as a result of location targeting which means less time wasted dealing with poor leads and more time dealing with potential customer because if only targeting the areas you operate in then it is likely that all leads you receive will be from potential customers and not from people outside your desired target area.

With it, came a whole new ability to change dynamically and aim at the people who you wanted to target rather than hoping that your advert got there – now you know it can.

The comparison I made before stands true in the respect that the world of marketing has changed somewhat in the past 60 years. Yes, its the same game – but now its a whole new animal. With the ability to target your advertising towards people interested in your products – its just an ability that can’t be done with print.

Example; you sell protein supplements. You can have an advert in “Men’s Health” – because these people are interested in your ad. So far so good. But realistically, if you’ve not bought Men’s Health, you’re never going to get to see that advertisement. However, if you type in “Protein Supplements” into Google, you’re effectively asking to be advertised to.

That’s the beauty of digital marketing.

Print marketing is also very expensive, and very difficult to change. Once the ad has been printed and has been released, thats it for the ad. If you find it hasn’t worked, you’re never going to find out why – the data shown from such a campaign is poor. However, with Digital Marketing, for example pay per click marketing,  you will get information that people have seen your product, their activity on your website with Google Analytics together with if they’ve bought as a direct result of your digital marketing.

They’re things you just can’t measure with print marketing. You also can’t change an advert if you’ve sold out of a certain item or you also can’t display every item you sell – its brand or a couple of items in the hope that people make further purchases. With Digital you’re hitting a more defined market, with dynamic reaction to your business as well as being able to anticipate changes in the market, and your advertising rarely if ever becomes out dated.

It’s a simple choice as to where my budget would go.

Having a facebook business profile or facebook fan page has many benefits – it enables a business to promote their website; advertise their products &/or services; engage with and grow their customer base; it’s inexpensive; plus it is an SEO boost as Google now indexes content from facebook.

In addition Latitude Express will also set-up and run a facebook advertising campaign to help further increase brand exposure and drive traffic to your facebook page. For facebook fan pages the “Like” button will be used to increase the influence of your adverts; not only does this generate “Likes” but this information is then shared across users’ networks i.e. when the user clicks the ‘Like’ button on your site, a story then appears in the user’s friends’ News Feed with a link back to your facebook fan page.

Latitude Express are managing the Facebook fan page for ‘Naio Nails’. We set-up the vanity URL www.facebook.com/NaioNailsUK; created a custom fan page with blogging interaction and full social integration including Twitter and YouTube; set-up F-Commerce shop so that the client can sell through facebook; added the facebook application ‘eKomi’ enabling customers to leave reviews; set-up a facebook advertising campaign focused on driving “Likes”; and continually optimise and manage both the facebook fan page and facebook advertising.

In addition the client is now able to interact directly with their audience through status posts, updates on new products and sharing beauty tips which encourages fans to visit their fan page regularly as well as ‘sharing’ the information with their friends.

Naio Nails facebook fan page and facebook shop:

For more information on Latitude Express facebook page management see –

http://www.latitude-express.com/services/additional/social-media-marketing/facebook-pages

The biggest trend at the moment is making sure you have a mobile friendly version of your website; Google recently released a site dedicated to this drive. We highly recommend visiting www.howtogomo.com. With more and more smartphones not only being sold but also becoming less expensive and a easier option than having a laptop or PC, a huge market is beginning to take form. Mobile devices accounted for 9.8% of internet sales during Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving), compared to 3.2% in 2010.

So more than ever it’s important to have a mobile site, although with the way technology moves. I foresee these sites beginning to evolve into something new within 5 years, as handheld devices such as smartphones and tablets become more powerful, viewing websites will no longer be an issue. As more and more people are able to have these devices, websites as a whole will need to evolve into something that combines the best features of both normal and mobile sites.

The whole functionality of mobile sites and the smartphones themselves are going to really change search and how we do it. GPS has become a big factor as SERP’s are tailoring to you physical location. A quick search on my phone and I can find the nearest coffee shop wherever I am in the world, unless of course I’m in the middle of a jungle or desert or with certain phone networks!

Next is voice search, we can now speak to our phones and as of December our games consoles too, as Xbox 360 brings Bing to its console and voice search to its Kinect add on device. Voice search is going to become a huge trend over the next 12 months.

Searches made with our voice search is more likely to use sentences or longer tail phrases. Human beings are lazy in a sense, when we have to type in a search query we only type the bare minimum that we have too. Speaking is completely different, we are more likely to ask a question, if for example we wanted to find a coffee shop in Bolton, we would say something like “where is the nearest coffee shop in Bolton”, yet we would type either “coffee shop” or coffee shop Bolton” into the search bar. People will adapt eventually and again will relearn how to search using speech, no doubt cutting down what they say or even to start using text speak which is popular in our current youth culture…init

The social aspect is also changing, now you can have Facebook and other such sites on the go, updating your status, tweeting what a great night out your having or just +1’ing your favourite sites from the palm of your hand. Being logged into your Google account allows Google to tailor the results to the individual, if you search a particular site a lot, it will start to appear higher in your tailored search results page.

Looking at trends and understanding how people search, interact socially and use their devices online will become another large factor in campaigns and how sites are marketed to incorporate this. Search engine marketing as a whole is going to become a more complex process, not only will keyword research be more important than ever, the psychological, social, speech and behavioural patterns of your audience will also start to be play an important factor in driving traffic to your site.

Search is about to become even more exciting and challenging, a new landscape is emerging and I can’t wait to explore and tame this new wild digital frontier!

Modified Broad match

Modified Broad Match gives you more flexibility and a wider reach than Phrase Match whilst providing more control on quality than standard broad match. It allows additional words to be contained in the search term and doesn’t restrict the sequence of the words. At the same time it gives you more control over the search terms that trigger your ads and potentially drives more relevant traffic to your website.

Practical use and Examples

In order to use the modifier you need to put a plus sign in front of the word/s that you want to be contained in the search query and set as broad match.

Eg.: For the phrase “book hotel london” you can use modified broad match:

+book +hotel +london

book +hotel +London

or

book hotel +london

depending how closely related matches you wish.

The plus sign also includes misspellings, singular/plural forms, abbreviations and acronyms, and stemmings (like “book” and “booking”).

So if you have previously used:

“hotel london book”

“book hotel London”

“book a hotel in london”

“booking hotel in london”

“hotel london booking”

You can get additional relevant clicks using the modifier now:

+book +hotel +london.

Insight tricks

The downside of using this match type is that it is more time consuming as there isn’t a drop down option in editor. However there is a useful tool which will do it for you:

http://www.acquisio.com/ppc/google-adwords-modified-broad-match-keyword-tool/

Overall, using the “modified broad match” keyword option has the potential to increase impressions without having to sacrifice relevancy to the campaign or the searcher. It might be a bit more “fiddly” to set up in the beginning but it will certainly be worth your time and effort!