When you mention Pay Per Click advertising, most people think of the Google search network.  Want to appear when a user does a google search for “Dallas Lawyer”?  Then simply bid on the keyword “Dallas lawyer” and you’ll start getting visitors and hopefully new clients.  Usually though, the keywords that are most relevant to your business are also the ones that are the most competitive and the most expensive.  So, what do you do when the keywords you’re targeting are beyond your budget?  One strategy is to try the adwords content network.

According to Google, their content network reaches 76% of US internet users and 80% of internet users worldwide. It is the largest ad network and is larger than any single website including google.com.  The content network consists of hundreds of thousands of websites around the world on every subject imaginable. Advertising on the content network is easy — in fact it is enabled by default on all Google search campaigns.  However, getting good results from the content network is more difficult.  The following are best practices to keep in mind when advertising on the Google content network.

• Set Up a Separate Content Network Campaign. The Search and Content networks are different animals and require different strategies for success.  Therefore, it’s essential that you separate the two networks into individual campaigns.  In Adwords, under “Settings -> Networks and Devices” click the “Edit” link next to Networks and make sure that only “Content Network” is selected for your campaign.  If you’re also running a Search campaign, be sure to update the Networks settings to Search Only on this campaign too.
• Think About a Website’s Content, not Search Terms.  When picking keywords for your content network campaign, don’t focus on the most searched keywords.  Instead, think about the content that will appear on your ideal site.  For instance, if you’re a lawyer, you may have success running ads on sites that “how to” legal advice.  Keywords like “law help”, or “how to file” will help your ads to appear on legal themed websites and will expose your ads to a broad range of potential clients.
• Start with low bids and set budget caps.  When you start your campaign, it’s usually best to use low cost per click amounts and set a daily budget.  Because of the massive size of the content network, it’s easy for campaigns to quickly amass a large number of clicks.  Protect yourself by setting a low cost per click bid and using a daily budget cap.  Depending on your industry and geography, this could be as low as $0.05 per click and $10 per day.  After a few days, if you’re not seeing any impressions or clicks, increase your bids gradually until you start seeing traffic.
• Use Google’s Tracking and Targeting Features. Just like in Search, Google allows you to track conversions for your content network ads.  Also, content network ads can be targeted to users in specific geographic locations.  Both of these features are essential to successful campaigns.  In addition to geo-targeting, content network campaigns have “audience” targeting which allows you to target users who previously visited your site.  This feature is often referred to as “remarketing” or “retargeting” and it can be a great method to target users who were not ready to convert before but may be ready now.
• Analyze Networks and Manage Placements.   Once your ads have started getting impressions and clicks, it’s time to analyze where your traffic is coming from.  On the “Networks” tab in your campaign, you can see a list of all websites where your ads appeared.  Scan the list looking for the good and the bad.  Sites that are sending  you clicks and most importantly conversions should be added as “managed” placements.  Sites that are not relevant to yours should be excluded or paused.

Running a successful content network campaign is easy if you keep the simple rules above in mind.  Good luck and if you have specific questions we’ll try to answer in the comments section below.

Tags: Advertising, Advertising network, Business, Google, Pay Per Click, Search Engines, Searching, Website

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 at 3:26 pm and is filed under Lead Generation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.