Below are four recommended negative keyword targeting methods that will help you better target your B2B ad campaigns.

Utilize Both Campaign & Ad Group Level Negatives

You can apply negatives at the campaign level or at the ad group level in Google AdWords.

Campaign-level negatives apply to every ad group in your entire campaign. Use campaign negatives for broad-based, general, undesirable words, phrases and concepts.

For example, many B2B marketers who are selling high-priced, high-consideration products or services use campaign-level negatives for words like: free, used and cheap.

Ad group-level negatives only apply to a single group of words. I recommend that you use Ad Group negatives for more granular and specific undesirable words and phrases.

For example, if you sell commercial doors, home would be a good negative keyword to add to your Commercial Garage Door Ad Group.

Include All Forms Of The Negative Keyword

When implementing negatives, don’t forget to consider all variations of the keyword. This is the only way to ensure you weed out all undesirable queries. Specifically, I recommend that you:

•  Include both the singular and plural variations of the negative keyword
•  Include common misspellings

Actual B2B search query data shows that PPC ads are often times erroneously displayed for commonly misspelled undesirable) keywords. Why? B2B marketers forget to add misspellings to their negative list.

For example, to prevent your ads from showing on search queries that include the word foreign, add the following words to your negative list:

- Forinn

- Forieng

- foriegn

Use Google’s Search Query Tool to find variations, derivatives and misspellings of non-desirable words and phrases.

Include Phrase & Exact Match Negatives

When including negatives, it may be easy to determine several broad match keywords you would want to add (such as “home” from earlier example). But, you should also know that both “phrase” and [exact] match negatives can be included in your Negative KW list(s), which is often a good idea.

Phrase match negatives should be included in “quotes”. These negatives will prevent your ads from being displayed when this phrase is included in a search query (in the exact order).

For example, if you sell commercial pet supplies, add the phrase “denver broncos” as a phrase match negative keyword.

Exact match negatives should be included in [brackets]. Google will not show your ads when someone searches for the exact word or phrase you include as a negative.

• If you don’t want to run PPC ads to promote a white paper – you can add an exact match negative keyword: [white paper].
• Or if you’d like to maintain your company as a premium provider, include brackets around keywords such as [bargain][closeout], and [discount].

Include Domain Name Negatives

When analyzing website search queries you’ll likely find several domain names. For non-relevant domains that you don’t want to trigger you ads, add the domain as a negative. Here’s how to do this:

• Periods (and dashes) are ignored by AdWords, so this domain: laptopcomputers.com will actually be depicted as laptopcomputers com in your search query report. (Notice the space where the period used to be located).
• Based on how AdWords treats periods, you should use a phrase match negative keyword like this: laptopcomputers com
• In addition, you should also include a second negative keyword using the period (i.e. laptopcomputers.com) – to ensure all desired negative keywords are included.

Target Your Investment

Keyword targeting is extremely important for B2B marketers… especially firms investing a significant amount in lead generation and customer acquisition. When you’re paying $10 – $20 per click and over $100 per lead, you need to make sure the searchers’ intent is aligned with your marketing objectives.

Test these four proven negative keyword methods to improve your PPC ad targeting methods and results.

Today, social media offers B2B marketers significant, quantifiable and predictable results. This column explores the top four reasons B2B marketers should engage in a proactive, social media program, and offers specific tips on getting started.

1. Influence Your Online Reputation

Social media represents an open forum. Whether you participate or not — your industry, and probably your business, are being discussed online. You may not like it, but customers definitely have the power to share their opinions, and they do: the good, the bad and the ugly.

At a minimum, all businesses should monitor this conversation. This is a great way to “keep your thumb on the pulse” of your customers’ thoughts, feelings needs and desires.

If you’re new to social media, the best advice is to start small. Google Alerts, BlogPulse, and Technorati are a few examples of simple (and free) social monitoring tools.

2. Better Position Your Brand

Even if users aren’t directly engaging with your brand online, social networks provide a significant opportunity to build B2B brand awareness, improve your market positioning, and increase purchase intent.

According to a recent eMarketer article, 70% of experienced social marketers track the number of brand mentions across social networks as a key marketing success metric.

A study conducted by DDB Worldwide and OpinionWay Research indicates that 36% of people who follow a brand on Facebook are more likely to purchase from that brand than before.

3. Engage Prospects & Customers

In addition to brand building, social networks are a great place to engage with prospects and customers.

Forrester has published a report on B2B social marketing, and has been blogging on this topic as well. Their research indicates: business buyers are increasingly “going social” when they first realize that they have a problem and are looking to learn from and interact with experts in their problem space.

This means that B2B marketers should use social media to interact with prospects earlier in their problem-solving cycles in order to demonstrate thought-leadership and expertise.

Another way for B2B marketers to engage with prospects is via highly-targeted social advertising channels. For example, LinkedIn’s DirectAds Program allows you to target professionals by industry, company size, seniority, job function, location and more.

While this type of ad targeting generates significantly fewer impressions and clicks than traditional PPC advertising (on Google, for example)… respondents tend to be much more qualified and many B2B marketers realize a superior ROI.

4. Improve Customer Service

Social media channels allow your company to monitor opinions, reach out to customers on a personal level, and let them know their feedback (whether positive or negative) is always being taken into consideration.

Here are four suggestions for handling negative customer feedback obtained via social channels:

1. Be completely transparent and honest (i.e. admit your mistake)
2. Do something remarkable to rectify the situation.
3. Proactively respond. Try to recreate a similar story and conclude with a better outcome.
4. Don’t make the same mistake twice!

Don’t Miss Your Social Opportunity

Social Media is definitely maturing as a legitimate B2B marketing tool. If you’re still ignoring this channel, you’re missing out on a terrific way to cost-effectively build your brand, improve your reputation, engage with prospects and customers, and improve your overall customer service.

B2B marketers… it’s time to get social.