Marketing Apprenticeship

Keyword Match Types For Digital Marketers

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Google ads background photo

You’ve almost certainly heard of Google Ads. After all, it’s why you’ve come. However, you may be perplexed as to how Google Ads generates customers for your company and how exactly do they work. Google Ads is a paid ad platform that falls within the pay-per-click (PPC) marketing channel, in which advertisers pay per click or per impression (CPM) on an ad. This guide will explain the different keyword match types digital marketers utilise to reach their goals.

Keyword match types

Keywords are words or phrases that are used to match advertisements to the terms that people are searching for. These ads are found at the top and bottom of SERPs. The keyword match types specify how closely the term must match the user’s search query for the ad to be considered for the auction. You may utilise broad match to offer your ad to a broader range of user searches, or exact match to target specific user searches. You can choose a broad match, phrase match, or exact match for your keyword match type when designing a text ad in your PPC campaign. Each form of match type in your Google Ads account has its own set of benefits and drawbacks.

Broad match

While Googles machine learning and Algorithms have got smarter, broad match provides the least amount of restriction, matching your ads with a wide variety of search terms. When you choose broad match, your ad will show up whenever a user’s search query contains any word from your key phrase, regardless of the sequence. If you use broad match on “wedding guest dress,” for example, your ad may appear when someone searches “occasion dress,” “wedding outfits,” or “jumpsuits for weddings.” Google may also use synonyms to match your ad to searches such as matching “sundresses” to the keyword “summer dresses”

The broad match type is a great way to drive traffic however you should keep a close eye on your search terms report as costs can rise quickly.

Phrase match

Phrase match gives you a little more control than broad match but not as much as exact match; your ad will only appear if someone searches for your key phrase exactly as you typed it, even if there is other text before or after it. There has also been a recent adjustment, with broad match modifier being deleted and phrase match being simplified by merging phrase match’s control with broad match modifier’s wider reach. If you select phrase match on “summer dresses,” your ad can show up when someone searches for “mini summer dresses” or “summer dresses.”

Exact match

Exact match is the last of the three match types and thus provides the most control. It has evolved over the last few years and has become smarter in matching user internet. Previously, if you were bidding on the term “black maxi dress” it would only match that specific term and not a search like “formal black maxi dress”. Now the algorithm allows for plurals and variations of the keyword. Exact math can help with keeping conversions and ROI high due to a closer search intent but can have less traffic.

Person using google on laptop.

Negative keywords

Unfortunately, most campaigns end up spending more money on search terms that do not convert than we intended. Negative keywords use the same three match types as positive keywords. The big distinction is that if you want to eliminate a keyword, you must include all synonyms and nearby variations. By tightening up ad groups and campaigns with negative keywords, you can significantly enhance CTR and conversion rates and improve your paid search strategy.

Conclusion

Google Ads should be a component of your paid strategy because of its reach and authority. Start with doing your keyword research by using tools such as keywordtool.io and Google trends and test different keywords match types and strategies to find what works best for your business.

If you found this article useful, click here for more digital marketing guides and blogs.

How Canva Can Help You Shine As A Level 3 Digital Marketing Apprentice

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Level 3 Digital Marketing Apprentice

Introduction

Learn more about our favourite marketing tool Canva, and how it can help you shine as a Level 3 Digital Marketing Apprentice.

Like many occupations, Digital marketing is, well… Digital. We’re almost certain you’ve seen a plethora of advertisements for various task management services, designed to streamline workflow within a digital environment. Asana, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet are examples of these services. These platforms excel at what they do due to the need of a stable method of communication and task management within a digital organisation.

It’s safe to say, demand for these platforms has increased dramatically in the past 15 months, with the current times having a huge effect on everyone’s working situation. Infact, Microsoft teams alone saw a 50% increase in daily users in the first 6 months of the global pandemic, most likely due to the large percentage of employees working remotely.


Using Canva As A Level 3 Digital Marketing Apprentice

With over 30 million active monthly users, Canva is a well established, industry standard web tool primarily used for content creation and digital marketing strategies. It’s been made even more accessible recently with the addition of a downloadable app version I can access from my desktop and mobile device. 

Used to create social media graphics, presentations, printable documents, animated and other visual content, Canva offers users a platform for marketers to create digital content easily with in-built assistance.

Because of its unrivalled ease of use and low stress, this is a perfect tool for learners, as well as professionals.


What Is Canva Pro?

“It is essential to have good tools, but it also essential that the tools are used in the right way” – Wallace D. Wattles

Digital tools are absolutely vital for a level 3 digital marketing apprentice, and professionals. One of the most popular has unquestionably been Canva Pro, a digital marketing tool used by new and established businesses as an alternative to heavy, expensive software with a much higher skill ceiling.

Canva Pro is the paid-subscription version of Canva, which brings a number of additions at a reasonable price of £99 per year, including:

  • 75+ million premium stock photos, videos, audio and graphics
  • 420,000+ free templates with new designs daily
  • Create 1 Brand Kit and upload your own fonts and logos
  • Unlimited use of Background Remover
  • Resize designs infinitely with Magic Resize
  • Save designs as templates for your team to use
  • 100GB of cloud storage
  • Schedule social media content to 7 platforms
Digital Marketing Apprentice

Top 5 Uses For Canva Pro


75+ million premium stock photos, videos, audio and graphics

Finding the right stock photo for a project can be a time consuming and sometimes pricey investment, however with Canva Pro’s large bank of stock images, you’ll be able to find the perfect image, 100% of the time. By entering simple keywords into the search bar, you can find exactly what you’re looking for all in one location.


Unlimited use of Background Remover

Want to be able to remove an entire background from an image? Well Canva gives you the option to do that with 1 click…pretty good right? Well Canva Pro removes the limit cap on this function, allowing you to remove as many backgrounds as I want!


Upload your own fonts

A disadvantage about the regular Canva compared to Canva Pro, is the inability to upload user fonts. This can be particularly problematic when a client has specifically requested a font for a piece of marketing, ruling Canva out of the question as a resource tool. Canva Pro removes this issue by allowing users to create a Brand Kit, adding logos and fonts to the application without restriction.


Instagram Stories

With 1 billion monthly Instagram users and over 500 million daily story users, engagement has never been more important on the platform. With the sheer amount of traffic, incorporating stories into your strategy is a great way to advertise to consumers, and take up all that screen space. Stories aren’t the easiest thing to design, that’s where Canva comes in. With tons of story templates you’ll be able to harness this digital tool to save me time, and create relevant content.


Content Planner

Exclusive to Canva Pro and Canva Enterprise, introduced in 2021 is the content planner feature. If you’re familiar with content planners such as Buffer and Hootsuite, then this feature needs no explanation. However if you’re not familiar, we will provide an explanation here at ApprenticeTips.

This feature turns Canva from a tool which focuses on content curation, into a platform capable of publishing content directly to social media accounts from the application. By simply linking an account to the right project folder, with a few simple clicks we can add images to a calendar, picking and choosing the dates and times for our freshly created content to be published out to the world wide web. 


Conclusion

If you’re an aspiring or professional digital marketer, I advise this tool over many of the others. It combines versatility with ease of use, removing the stigma that good visual content can’t be achieved without heavy duty software. While Canva is a free to use application, the amount of assists and benefits the Pro Subscription brings will certainly help you shine as an apprentice!

To learn more about the Level 3 Digtial Marketing Apprentice course in its entirety, click this link.


To discover more about Canva Pro, you can visit the website here.

Not what you were looking for? We at ApprenticeTips publish regular blogs about tools and best practices for learners. We also offer training programs and apprenticeships from a huge library of options, including the level 3 digital marketing apprentice.

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Digital Marketing: Do’s and don’ts of Facebook ads

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There is few a tool more powerful in any digital marketer’s arsenal than Facebook. Despite the rise of newer social media channels, Facebook and Instagram (which are integrated on the same ads manager) remain unbeatable social media giants. 44% of the UK population have a Facebook account and 32.4% are on Instagram. That’s a lot of people to potentially reach! Therefore, a key component of digital marketing is running an engaging and impactful Facebook campaign. I’ve compiled this list of do’s and don’ts to help you make the most of Facebook and maximise your campaigns.  

Digital Marketing mobile

The do’s of digital marketing on Facebook  

DO define & refine your audience 

With almost half the UK population on Facebook, you don’t want your brand message to be lost into the ether. Instead, take time planning who you want your ad to reach and what stage of the customer lifecycle they are at (see Understanding The Customer Life Cycle). Facebook’s targeting options are the best in the digital marketing industry, so make sure you play around with narrowing your audiences based on location, age, gender, interests and language.  

DO carry out split tests  

Split testing is the simplest way of improving your campaign performance. Often referred to as A/B split tests, they allow you to change variables (e.g. creative, copy, audience) to see which variation of your ad delivers the best results. Although it may be tedious at first, split tests can boost your ROI by 10x when done properly. Best practice is to focus on a single metric to determine success of your split test and compare performance accurately.   

DO report weekly & optimise 

Campaign optimisation is a necessary step if you want to decrease costs, increase ROI and boost engagement. The easiest way to do this is to check your campaign consistently by pulling a weekly report and analysing your metrics. Is one audience segment engaging with your ad more than the other? Optimise toward them. Are one of your creatives underperforming? Turn it off and shift spend to a better performer. Facebook is incredibly competitive so optimisation is essential to compete with big brands.  

Digital marketing desktop

The dont’s of digital marketing on Facebook 

DON’T stop organic social posts  

While Facebook paid ads are a great method of driving engagements and sales, they should be seen as an addition to organic posts. When someone sees your ad, they will most likely view your other social media before they make a purchase. You should post regularly on organic channels and also use non-paid social to interact with your audience in ways that you can’t with paid ads. This maintains your brand image and builds a sense of community that paid ads cannot.  

DON’T use engagement bait  

Engagement bait is a tactic used to goad users into interacting with your post (think “share this post to win ££”). Facebook has a strict policy in place against engagement baiting and there are rules to ensure that it is not done. Not only does this deceive the customer, but it also harms your brand. The key to good digital marketing is to keep your posts authentic and then your target audience will engage with you without being goaded.  

DON’T overdo it on the copy  

It’s easy to think that because you’re paying for your ad, you want to get the most bang for your buck and fill it with copy. However, the average human attention span is only 8 seconds and on Facebook people spend an average of 1.7 seconds looking at a piece of content. Don’t waste your time writing long copy for no one to read, instead invest in your creatives. An engaging, thumb-stopping creative will be more impactful than lengthy copy.  

Conclusion  

When done correctly, paid ads on Facebook can reach your target audience and boost your ROI. Facebook and social media are always evolving so what works one week may not work the next. You should consider these do’s and don’ts as a general guideline of Facebook paid social best practice to navigate this ever-changing landscape. Now you’re ready to explore Facebook ad manager for yourself!