As an online marketing consulting company, we often have an opportunity to eat our own dogfood. As we are conducting more webinars and seminars, we are applying best-practices for online marketing ourselves.
Tip 1: Identify who you want to attend your event and use the features in Google adwords to reach them.
Tip 2: Within the segment, seek impression before clicks.
Tip 3: Go local.
Tip 4: Focus on the information that matters.
Tip 5: Find the passengers as well as the pilots.
Tip 1:Identify who you want to attend your event and use the features in Google adwords to reach them and conduct Keyword Research accordingly.
Know who you want to attend the event. If you are looking for decision makers in a given industry, think of the problems that they are trying to solve related to your goods or services. Use these types of keywords to present your event. If you sell a software for example that is meant for Director’s of Information Technology or Chief Marketing Officers for example, then the keyword research that you conduct, and that you should bid on will be different than say the programmer or the marketing analyst who reports to them.
Tip 2: Within the segment, seek impression before clicks.
Remember that the purpose of most pay per click advertising is to generate awareness. By definition, the ad should provide enough information to get folks to click to learn more. If they are interested in the more full explanation, they will click again (sending them into the “Interest” phase of the digital marketing and sales cycle”. If they bounce from the website, meaning that they click on the back button, they only went to “Consideration”. It is important to conduct thorough Keyword Research and using a tool such as Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery can pay back big returns over the long term. Don’t worry (and this is an exception to the rule) about lower click through rates when advertising events since our purpose here is to cast the widest net possible to the given segment. However, this strategy works in this case, and would not be advisable when using Pay Per Click or Search Engine Marketing (SEM) for selling products, services or content.
Tip 3: Go local.
Google Adwords has a little feature called Ad Extensions. For companies that have added their company address to the Google Local program, they can display their address in the advertisement. While that may not appear to be very useful, this address actually offers the advantage against all of the other ads because local companies are able to show to local users that they are indeed nearby with the fifth line (example below shows the 200 S Broad Street address). To someone searching for an “Online Marketing Consultant” in Philadelphia, this is relevant information. It’s better than a webpage, this is an event in their neighborhood about a topic they are actively searching for.
Tip 4: Focus on the information that matters.
In your ad, avoid placing logistics information and focus on the topic of the event. Do not enter phone numbers, dates or times. If folks are interested in the topic, we want them to click on the event. Do not provide information that gets them to disregard your advertisement. Let them find out the details with a more full explanation about the event. If they are really interested in the topic, they may call and ask for the slides, or better yet, they may send someone else in their organization.
Tip 5: Find the passengers as well as the pilots.
We all have various profiles in terms of how we use the internet. When Google came out, they made a conscious decision to go after “Pilots” and that’s how they landed with a hole; that is the search field, in the middle of the page. A pilot is an internet surfer who wants to direct the information they pursue. They operate like hunters, they have an idea of the information they want and they scan (not read) pages until they get close to the information they want. There is some terrific research about how the internet has actually changed the way that folks read on screens. “Passengers” browse. Think about what the homepage of Yahoo! looked like a few years ago – for that matter today. There are tons of links with interesting articles about nearly every topic. Browsers are gatherers searching for the information that might surprise them or interest them. So, we need to appeal to both types. To pursue pilots, use the keyword search feature in Google Adwords and use keywords that have to do with the problems your clients may be facing. For example, a Health Insurance company might use “health insurance laid off” instead of “health insurance transition”. This is the Search Network product from Google Adwords and your ads will appear in cases where internet users type in one of the keywords that you have identified.
To appeal to passengers, use the content network and site networks in Google Adwords. You can use the Placement-targeted ads on the Content Network sometimes also referred to as the Site Network. Advertisers can select specific websites where they want their ads to show and even select the typical profile of the type of user that may visit that type of site.
Pay Per Click advertising is kind of like (and please excuse the analogy to Soccer, but with World Cup fever in the air, it’s hard to resist) soccer. As they say about the beautiful game, it’s easy to play, but difficult to master. For those who are relentless in their testing, it pays off handsomely because advertisers learn what works and are positioned to repeat those successes in future campaigns, both in the digital space and the traditional advertising world.
How to use Google Adwords to promote events
