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When formulating your Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing strategy, I suggest “casting the net wider.” Some may be confused by this notion. With online marketing, you can take advantage of any kind of targeting your heart desires, why wouldn’t you?

Here is my response: Proven results.

Like a CPL reduced by $40 and conversion rates as high as 8%. These are some of the improvements we have seen with three recent campaigns. The campaigns, which are running on Google, drive traffic to landing pages where visitors are encouraged to sign up for email with incentives ranging from whitepapers to free consultations. With these campaigns the “wider net” comes in two different manifestations - the Google content network and an expanded geo target.

Take Advantage of the Content Network

In March we ran a campaign promoting a healthcare facility.  We placed text ads on Google’s search network and on their content network. With the search network, the ads are only shown when a person types one of the campaign keywords into a search engine; whereas on the content network, the ads are shown on websites that have relevant editorial content. This is a scary proposition in that people aren’t searching when your ads are served. The venture into the content network is made scarier when you see click rates that are more in line with display advertising than with SEM. (The click rate of the content network ads were 32 times lower than the search network ads.) BUT, you have to remember you aren’t paying for the impression, you pay for the click. And taking advantage of the content network has proven successful time after time.

Having a presence on the content network expands the campaign’s reach to potential customers even if they aren’t currently hand-raisers.
Over the course of the campaign, 48% of the total clicks were generated from the content network. So had we not included the content network, we would have limited our potential lead base by half. But that isn’t even the best part. The cost per lead on the content network was 21% lower than the cost per lead on the search network. Extending your reach while simultaneously reducing your cost per lead is a great combination.

Campaign Responses

In April, we launched a campaign on Google to promote a Nashville based business. We targeted Metropolitan Nashville as we wanted to reach the highest concentration of potential patients, and we weren’t sure if people would be motivated to travel from outside of the middle Tennessee area. The campaign did well - we saw strong click and conversion rates but the traffic was lacking. We were generating leads but the volume was low. We kept waiting for the campaign to gain traction but we never saw the spike in traffic, clicks and conversions that we expected.

During the same time, we were running a campaign promoting a similar Nashville based company. This campaign also began with a Metropolitan Nashville target. After the first couple of weeks, we decided to expand the geographic target to cities in the surrounding region. This decision was made without hesitation, as this company was more well known and attracted visitors from all over the Southeast.  We immediately saw results. Conversions increased from 1 the week prior to the change, to 16 the following week and 24 the week after that.

These encouraging results prompted us to move forward with the expanded geo-target for the other Nashville targeted campaign.After implementing the change, the conversion rate climbed from 5% to 8%. We saw the average cost per conversion decrease nearly $40. We also saw the position of the ads increase.

Interestingly, the increased volume of leads are not just coming from outside of Nashville, where the widened net was cast. By increasing the overall visibility of the campaign we improved the productivity of the campaign as a whole.

So, I encourage you to loosen the reigns and release the net to see what you can catch.

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