UPDATE: The prize is an Amazon gift certificate. Minimum of 10 people have to enter in order to trigger a prize. Seriously, that's a low threshold, if you enter you basically have a 10% chance, since I doubt more than 10 people will. However, that is an incentive for those of you in marketing to spread this on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn, so that your marketing peers will contribute and trigger the prize!
Further, 10 entries makes it a $25 prize, but the value will increase with the number of entries, so spread the word!
Ok, so let's pretend that I only have $100 with which to advertise on Google. What would be your approach to maximizing this tiny budget in paid search? Day parting? Only run on one highly relevant keyword? Conversely, run on a bunch of really cheap, long-tail keywords? You have all dealt with budget issues, so take your solutions to their logical extreme!
Remember, this is Google only, so if your advice is to blow it all on Facebook ads, it will not be actionable.
Get creative. Leave a comment.
Here's the kicker (I just came up with it): Contest! Best response wins a real-life prize.*
*when I figure out the prize, I will update this post. Also "best" is going to be ill-defined, but like pornography, I will know it when I see it.
Geotargeted to a specific region to minimize impression levels.
ReplyDeleteSmall adgroups with 3-10 actionable (buy, find etc) keywords with exact matching.
3 Pieces of adcopy per adgroup directly speaking to the actionable keywords.
Max CPC slowly reduced as QS score starts to factor in hopefully of course with an optimized landing page.
take your hundred dollar bill, write the name of the brand on it with a black sharpie. find one of those free newspaper boxes near a large, obvious landmark, and put it in the front panel. take a picture with your phone, post it to G+ (where you have a billion friends). everybody's like, dang, I know where that is! and then BOOM: you're sitting on your A, that company is famous, making millions on a single hundo, everyone else on the train is like hey, where'd all this gravy come from?
ReplyDeleteTarget a small set of the most relevant keywords to the most lucrative searchers. In other words, focus only on lower funnel terms. Let organic have the aimless researchers. Bid to position 4 so your ad is showing on the right rail or bottom of the SERP.
ReplyDeleteThis will give you manageable CPCs while maximizing impressions. Since most searchers consider the top ads and organic first, your clicks should be well-vetted.
In regards to the contest, quit "grouponing" me...it's working.
@Fil Lourenco: Geotarget to what specific location? This is the internet, so I can be read from anywhere (nod to Bulgaria/Thailand). How do you choose what city/region?
ReplyDeleteAlso, you may have noticed that I sell nothing. My only product is wisdom, and I am giving it away for free. So my CTA would be "Expand Your Brain Volume 3X" or something like that.
@Brian: Sadly, my blog doesn't currently rank for most organic searches. In fact, even if you Search "SEMiotic5 blog" you mostly get Tweets and specific posts, not the homepage (why is that, SEO people? Total lack of optimization?)
ReplyDeleteKeywords would be things like "online marketing blog," etc., not much of a funnel here. This is not an established site, this is a question of "can PPC advertising get you the traffic you need to become an established site."
I am also willing to just become known for giving away prizes. I should have promised an iPad 2, then found a loophole to not deliver. Consumers like that, right?
@Beanbag America: I might have to give away 2 prizes, because your post on viral marketing clearly exceeds the boundaries of brilliance and good taste.
ReplyDeleteI am going to have to set up a G+ and Facebook account, clearly. I hope that I can count on your internet friendship.
@SEMiotic5
ReplyDeleteThink about the audience you want. And Narrow it down. Want a US audience? Which Market? And Move from there.
Since we want to share brainpower... Let's bid on buzz words. Longer tail the better as long as there is search traffic.