Does Google broad match work for everyone?

Jonathan Bowers, October 8th 2007, 10:06AM

Google offers marketers a number of keyword matching options through its PPC AdWords centre. Broad match is the default option and it allows you to appear in results when any single word from your keyword phrase appears, but does it work for everyone?

Recently I saw a good example of positive broad matching when searching for ‘Manchester digital.’ Appearing top in the sponsored links was Jet2. As many of its services operate out of Manchester airport it is likely to have chosen to broad match with a possible key phrase of ‘Manchester Flights’.

You might point out that people searching for Manchester Digital are not looking for flights. But we know that searching for a city nearly always indicates proximity. We also know that people love to fly and love to fly cheaply – so Jet2 are reminding us that they fly from Manchester and by placing the text ‘Flights start at £19.99’ in the ad it offers at the very least a mental note for the next time we need a cheap flight.

Because of the lack of relevance to the full search term the likelihood of people clicking on the link without the intention to find flights is negligible. So those who click are interested and those who don’t are contributing to brand awareness and cost nothing. And because they are appearing in another subject arena there is no competition for the click so it’s cost effective too.

But does this work because Jet2 offers a service that every consumer wants? Would companies with more niche products find success with broad match. Google claims that broad match can work for anyone but I’d like to hear your stories on this topic. In my mind it is quite tailored to those with a large consumer base which counts out a vast number of businesses.

Tags: adwords, google, marketing
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Analysing a client base geographically

Jonathan Bowers, September 6th 2007, 10:00AM

Every six months I take a look at where our new clients are coming from geographically and try to ascertain any factors that are leading them to choose their server hosting in Manchester. Naturally, the findings can help us with our marketing but the figures alone can also be quite interesting.

Yesterday I mentioned that 33 per cent of our new enterprise clients are coming from overseas and today I'm going to look at some other useful stats. It's not surprising that more dedicated server installs were undertaken for London companies than any other area but the capital is also the only area where over 95% of new solutions were for brand new clients.

Other areas such as the East of England were more notable in the first half of 2007 for existing clients buying extra servers to strengthen their solutions. And while the North West has historically been the second fastest growing region for clients, the South West is now bucking this trend in its favour.

As internet marketing becomes more and more sophisticated it plays its part in connecting us with new businesses across the UK and beyond and it will be interesting to see how we use the knowledge gained in early 2007 to influence the figures that we see in early 2008.

I'd be interested to hear from others who are using similar statistics to strategise for future growth and what successes they're experiencing.

Tags: client_analysis, marketing
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Direct response marketing is big for b2b

Jonathan Bowers, April 20th 2007, 4:49PM

The Direct Marketing Association in the US has done its first major survey focussed on the b2b sector, discovering that the biggest single area of spend is direct response communications.

The most interesting finding for me is that the US statistics separate off online marketing and online PR (termed new media). Within direct response communications, online marketing is now the second largest focus taking 18.8 per cent of the budgets. While Online PR has a much smaller budget and appears as the smallest area mentioned (at 1.5 per cent) it is great news that companies are taking blogs and RSS and other such tools seriously enough to acknowledge its worth.

I doubt that we would find such a statistic in the UK just yet but am sure from talking to businesses and PR professionals that we are quickly moving in that direction.

Tags: marketing, pr
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Hitwise reports - always worth analysing

Jonathan Bowers, March 28th 2007, 2:38PM

As a business online there are few more important things to discover than how your competition is doing and where you place in comparison to them.

It's not cheap to become a fully fledged client of the Online marketing analyst Hitwise but you can find out more about them and dip your toe in the water by having a look at the data they offer on their website. At the moment there's a great opportunity to find out details of the UK's top 10 websites in over 45 different categories.

It's worth searching for your industry and taking a look at what those featuring in the top ten are doing that you might not be. Consider the wealth of content and choice on their sites, the amount of PPC they might be doing and see if you can ascertain the disparity between number one and number 10.

One increase I notice is the domination of traditional companies and supermarkets such as Tesco. To further improve the quality of the information, you can cross reference certain elements of the lists with Hitwise's most recent Hot Shops List. Searching under Shopping and Classifieds - Grocery and Alcohol gives the impression that Tesco and Asda (1st and 2nd) could well be close rivals online. However, the Hot Shops List places Tesco in 3rd place overall and ASDA in 47th. So this gives a better indication of Tesco's lead in the sector.

The one company that seems to rise up the ranks every time I see a new survey is Argos, which now appears to be the most popular UK owned e-commerce site.

Tags: hitwise, marketing
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Power of social networking for businesses

Jonathan Bowers, March 1st 2007, 4:04PM

Heather Hopkins at Hitwise has an excellent piece of research on her blog about the strength of MySpace within TopShop's marketing strategy.

It seems that MySpace is now sending more traffic to TopShop than MSN and Yahoo Search combined. If you ever needed a sign that social networking could lead to dramatic traffic generation, this is a clear indicator.

Hitwise is a very useful tool, which doesn't come cheap but the competitive advantage you can have with their statistics behind you is considerable. At the very least, I would recommend subscribing to Heather's blog.

Heather was one of the panellists on last years Optimising Your Online Presence seminar which we also spoke at along with others including Yahoo.

Tags: marketing
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