In this tutorial, I will show you how you can use the online news media and just a few paid banner ads to change your whole market’s perception about the things you offer, so you can sell more of your products and services.
The basic idea behind this strategy is this:
Any time we find an article online where someone has said anything that could attract a buyer in our market to something we sell,
we will use these opportunities to communicate with as many prospects close to purchase we possibly can.
Then for every person we can get in touch with to click our ads, we increase our chances of doing business with each person by 800 percent or more.
But Corey …
Why do our chances to get people to purchase from us rise so much just by getting them to read our content?
That answer is simple …
I am going to quote Mintel data when I explain this:
“72 percent of our prospects will need at least some advice from an industry outsider before they will move to finalize any purchase decision.”
Given we know most people in our market at some point will be seeking information from a non-biased party right before they make a purchase of what we sell, we can take control of that situation to give these prospects exactly what we figure they want and before they even get there.
In order to track exactly where our prospects will end up, just go to Facebook and start using their social search bar to capture all the people finding content/information that way, as about one-third of people will do.
From Indirect Competitors Who Refer Third-Party Sources
Then, we will head over to Google and start using their own search bar to capture all the people finding content/information that way, as about two-thirds of people will do.
Then, when we find all the articles we know our prospects can find, such as what is listed on this sample I have found,
we will place an ad on those articles every time they allow paid advertisers to do that (which is over half the time).
Strategizing What Content Buyers Actually Want to Read
The best way I can explain how to use this campaign strategy to generate sales and figure out how to say the right things to the right people is just to share a campaign I have run like this before, where I explain the process step by step.
Below is an article I indirectly used to sell some home DNA tests:
If you read the article, you can see the author has clearly sent the message to the reader that as a whole, mothers lie and you can’t trust what they say without a DNA test I need to capture the people with this mindset, as these are precisely the ones I can get to buy from us instead.
To get started doing this, I will create a headline for the pre-purchase readers who are really interested in buying a test to draw them in, and we will reference the actual product mentioned in that article to do it.
Then, once I have earned their attention and gotten them to click my ad, I start out by relating to the original article as promised in the ad but quickly move to what else they need to make an informed decision about buying a DNA test to actually buy one.
In the copywriting world, this method of writing copy is called the problem, solution, reaction method.
The call to action where you ask the small number of prospects that will be ready to buy right then will look like a normal editorial link embedded within your landing page copy like this.
Because you can’t really write something like this yourself if you are speaking in the first person with your copy without getting yourself in a little trouble eventually, I recommend you pay off your customers to endorse this writing that matches the usual demographic of your reader.
The closer you match the demographic of the end consumer you get the reader you hire for this, the more effective that copy will be.
If you choose not to speak to potential buyers in the first person, which is still what I recommend you do as it also works the best, you can alternatively speak as the voice of the CEO who also went through the same process they did at one time and which you used as inspiration to start your company. This generally works just as good as the first option if you can write one well enough.
About the Importance of Looking Impartial
If you read the description for the campaign I ran for the DNA tests, you are probably wondering why I take my user, who for the most part is ready to buy a DNA test, to another news article when they click my ads …
The reason for that is also very simple:
Putting that content on an actual news site and making it look like a real news or other trade publication will generate a 400 percent higher response than if that same content were just simply published on our own site.
Publishing your content so it really does exist elsewhere is a bit trickier, however …
To do this, I would simply recommend purchasing your own niche publication site so you can publish your endorsed copy on your own site anytime you need to, as many articles as you need to, and can have full control in how that content looks / is shown to your prospects when you run these campaigns.
Buy a Trade Pub at Flippa.com for Publishing Your Landing Page Content
You can also alternatively pay someone to sponsor your posts if that is what you prefer to do instead:
Rates for publishing a sponsored post vary by the profile of the niche sites you are on and the vertical you are in.
Ad Positioning
Another important thing to consider when running these campaigns is to decide where you want these ads to show up within the pages themselves where you are advertising.
Since the strategy we use here builds on the information listed in the article, I can only recommend advertising your ads either within the content itself or near the bottom of the page to ensure they have had time to read a bit of the article before they click on your ads.
You can usually control where your ads show up on the page just by submitting horizontal ads instead of vertical ones, since that is the characteristic of the ads that fit the spaces you want.
Categories of Content to Advertise On
I have compiled a general list of categories of content you can advertise on to make some money and influence some customers.
While it may not be 100 percent complete, I can assure they all work because I have used each one of them before at one point or another.
Positive Press About Competitors
– PR Stunts of their own
– Awards
Negative Press About Competitors
– Scandals
– Closings
– Bad Personal Reviews
– Celebrity Mentions
Locating This Content to Advertise On
To find these marketing opportunities I have listed for you as soon as they come out, Google Alerts is the one service I know that can help you do it.
Simply enter your keywords of interest into their search console, such as:
Your Competitors’:
- brand names
- trademarks
Products You:
- manage
- service
- sell
Including:
- trade names
- model numbers
And watch the opportunities show up in your inbox each day as a result of setting this up.
Campaign Setup
Once you are actually ready to start running your ads, head over to your Google AdWords account to set up your new campaigns.
Google allows you to set ads to wind up on just the articles you want them to show up on by layering the targeting option in their platform on top of another to get the exact level of targeting you need.
Adding one ad group for each article you wish to target and from within that, one set of targeting filters to narrow down where you want it shown is all done within the AdWords dashboard as shown:
The campaign settings are a demonstration of a campaign I set up to target pages about PPC for my own firm, just to use as an example of what I do to reach readers on search engine marketing news sites, which I will get more into on my next post.
- The domain you want to advertise on
2. The page you want to advertise on
3. And the ad block you want to advertise on (if it is available)
Pro Tip:
What system Google uses to do contextual advertising on their display network as seen above works similar to Google Alerts to find articles on a niche topic by keyword.
As a result, if you end up using Google Alerts to find all the articles you will be advertising on, then you can just use the keyword list you came up for the one to use in the other.
Remarketing to Those Who Bounce
In most of the cases where you are purchasing traffic from news sites when using the method I listed above, you should usually also run a good follow-up strategy with that (remarketing campaign) to maximize the amount of opportunities you end up with.
To really maximize your sales opportunities running ads in the media, then I also recommend offering your “non-converters” a little bit more than the usual branded remarketing ad everyone uses.
Using my “rebuttal” remarketing ad strategy I show below,
Implies Use By Common Class
Need For Idolization
Rationalization By User (Excuse)
we can about double our response from our initial campaign, as these people will have multiple opportunities to engage with us before they make their purchase decision instead of just the one.
Measuring Your Results
If you wish to see what your overall return on investment was from all your campaign efforts, you can do that through the “top conversion paths” report in Analytics or even the AdWords “placement” report in either AdWords or Analytics to see the exact level of performance each ad placement you are paying for is giving you.
Adjusting your campaign for profitability is simply a function of applying a series of bid adjustments to every ad placement you are running, so you are getting an acceptable return on each one.
Different bids will allow you to show up more or less frequently on the pages you are requesting to advertise on by affecting the ad impression share obtained for those ad placements.
