PPC advertising in Google Ads (formerly AdWords) can often feel like a guessing game in which you’re made to gamble with your marketing budget. In order to make the most out of your ad dollars, you’ll first need to understand what users are searching for so you can refine your ad targeting and make your campaigns more effective.

Thankfully, you don’t have to go at it blindly: CallRail’s Automation Rules and Call Highlights features can help you figure out what kinds of search keywords are driving calls to your business, so you can ensure your PPC budget is serving ads to a relevant and motivated audience.

With CallRail Transcriptions activated, you can identify critical words and phrases that may have surfaced when bidding on PPC keywords. From there, Automation Rules enables you to predefine a set of words or phrases you want CallRail to identify in your calls, while Call Highlights will simultaneously highlight any relevant and actionable keywords or phrases.

With the power of Automation Rules and Call Highlights, you’ll have the data you need to effectively bid on keywords and reach your audience, no matter whether how broad or precise(or anywhere in between).

If you’re a savvy digital marketer, you’re likely already familiar with Google’s classic “women’s hats” keyword match type explanation. If not, check out the guide below for an abbreviated breakdown of the different categories of PPC keywords you can bid on, and how best to leverage your call tracking data to maximize the effectiveness of your Ads campaigns.

Broad Match Modifier

• Reach of Broad Match with more control around what searches trigger your ads
• Allows you to “lock” a certain word so that Google will only display your ad when that word appears
• Search can be in any order, but that one word must be included
• Must know what your target audience is searching for (pro tip: Automation Rules and Call Highlights can help)

Phrase Match

• Ability to customize the exact keywords that need to be searched for
• Flexibility to have your ad appear when additional words are added at the beginning or end of the query
• Query must be in the exact order you’ve set

Exact Match

• Total control around when your ads will will show up: only when the exact keyword phrase is searched
• “Close Variant Matching” will now trigger your ads, despite misspellings and abbreviations
• Least amount of reach