Matt Lawless - Internet Marketing Consultant

Following on from Part 1 this second and final part of the article will show you the benefit of utilising negative keywords in your Content Campaigns, and some of the strategies regarding effective ad copy.

The Benefit of Being Negative

You read last time about setting up specific content campaigns and organising your keywords and keyphrases into ‘themed’ groups. This will go a long way to getting your ad on the correct type of sites. But you can further refine this process by adding negative keywords that will inform Google about exactly which type of sites to avoid.

Taking my previous example of trying to address Wall Street readers, one of the keywords listed was ‘Stock’. Whilst the inclusion of the other terms should help to pinpoint the exact definition of ’stock’ you are attempting to address, you should consider other possible intepretations and rule these out using a negative keyword list. Two possible incorrect interpretations would be warehouse stock and stock recipes. I would therefore put both warehouse and recipeinto my negative keywords list for this AdGroup.

One of the tools best suited to helping you to identify negative keywords is Google’s Keyword Tool. Put each term into this tool and check what terms come up. Putting ‘Stock’ into the tool shows me that I should probably add a few more negatives to complete the list. I would then repeat this for each of my keywords and phrases and further add to this list.

OK. So we now can be pretty sure that our ad will be seen in all the right places. Now what? Am I done?

Strategy for Ad Copy on the Content Network

You may ask at this point whether there should be a different strategy for content adverts at all. I mean, your advertising the same thing aren’t you? Well, probably not. You see, when someone actively searches through Google, they already have an idea of what they are looking for. Your job as a copywriter therefore is to write an advert that convinces the searcher that your opportunity matches their own thought process. This does not apply in the content network.

With content advertising, you have a whole different job to do. Your ad is not shown because of a conscious thought process by the reader of the site. In many respects, your ad becomes part of the ‘chatter’ on the site. And the reader is probably involved in reading the material they have browsed to in the first place.

So your ad has to speak out, to the reader’s subconscious thought processes. It has to literally grab the reader and pull them to your ad. Whereas your search ad may simply make statements that reflect the benefits of your opportunity, I have found that asking questions works better in content placements. Ask a striking question, succinctly, and it will draw the reader’s eye. For our Wall Street readers where you are offering alternative careers, these may be appropriate:

• Worried about the Recession?
• Stress Getting Too Much?
• Tired of 12-hour Days?
• Is a Crash Coming?

Your goal here is to catch the eye and force the reader to answer the question themselves. This gives you the couple of seconds distraction needed for the reader to draw themselves to the rest of your ad copy. Questions that evoke a response from every reader will guarantee you a better CTR than ‘blobs of ad copy’.

Summary

Is this article you have learned to:

• Separate your Search campaigns from Content campaigns
• Treat AdGroups as ‘themes’ for your target markets
• Refine targeting by utilising negative keywords and phrases
• Distract your reader with hard-to-ignore questions

Using these exact techniques, I have reduced my Cost-per-Lead by 72% over the past month by addressing the content network as well as search. You can do this too!

Articles, Marketing Tips, PPC