Time To Include Online Advertising In Your Marketing Plan?

Ten years ago, people began making big predictions about video and its potential to change the way we were marketing our products. Fast forward to today and video has become a staple—accessible and affordable, a tool that helps attract audiences, explain products, and communicate with both internal and external clients. 

Videos contribute to search engine optimization (SEO), helping you show up in search. And YouTube, owned by Google, is the world’s second most-used search engine. Just as Google online advertising (PPC) has become a huge business, so has YouTube’s. 

Developing a video advertising campaign on YouTube 

I’m working with a client to develop a series of ten-12 animated explainer videos. For each of these videos, I’m writing a script, and we’ll have our videographer develop these videos. We’re using both explainer videos and white-board videos. Because our subject matter can be complex, the video explainer concept is ideal for breaking down complicated thoughts into easily understand ideas in a few frames. 

Identify a strong call to action 

When people see our explainer videos on YouTube, we want them to click on the call to action button, then hit the coordinated landing page on our website. While we’d like a sale, this is not realistic. None of us buys on the first pass. We shop around, check prices, quality and reviews. Our team is realistic about this and we know that we’re building a relationship. Ours is a long-term effort. Conversion for us means signing up for our monthly newsletter. This is how we will measure ROI and the success of our campaign. 

We’ll also be using Google Analytics 

Our Google Analytics report will show what kind of traffic we’re getting from our YouTube channels. We should be seeing increased traffic to our site—even if users do not sign up for our newsletter. As with any purchase, we hope that those users come back again and make a purchase. That’s what the sales cycle is all about. 

Creating a landing page in Unbounce

I’m using an app called Unbounce that is very easy to use and has a variety of templates from which to choose. While the landing page needs to be specific to each video, we can use the same design and swap out the text and images for each video. 

A critical part of our campaign will be identifying keywords and keyword groups

For any PPC campaign, identifying keywords and keyword phrases is fundamental to the process. We must also identify our YouTube audience. With more than 30 million YouTube channels, we need to identify those channels where we think our ideal clients will most likely be hanging out. 

Continue to monitor and adjust

PPC advertising works. Google rakes in more than $100M/day. Many are using this channel successfully, but each campaign needs to be monitored and adjusted. A carefully matched ad and landing page will help your campaign succeed.

Are you considering online/PPC advertising for your business but need some help?

 Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and content marketing experts. 

Keywords: It’s Where the Online Journey Begins

Our economy has moved online and those businesses that can’t be found online will be challenged to succeed. Keywords are the building blocks that are fundamental to every journey that results in our landing on a website.

Here are some ways that keywords are deployed.

1. For Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This is the most obvious–we need keyword research to optimize for organic search. Organic search is what we do a gazillion times/day; we key a word or phrase into a search engine such as Google, hoping to get an answer to our question. SEO helps Google bots crawl and index our websites to rank on search engine results pages (SERPs). One of the ways that search engines decide what to rank is by crawling for keywords that show the relationship between the user’s search query and the content on a corresponding website.

2. For maximizing content strategy

We’ve all been told about the relationship between SEO and content. Without content on your website, strong SEO will not follow. Building a comprehensive presence in the online space means updating your website and social media sites with fresh content.

“Effective content strategies start with keyword research,” says Search Engine Land columnist Nate Dame. “Modern keyword research provides significant insight into what audiences want and need.”

Content should have a relationship to keywords

Every single piece of content on your site—a 300-word blog post or 5,000-word white paper, should be related to keywords that strike the right balance between high search volume and competition. To keep in mind: Maybe you did keyword research four or five years ago when you created your website. It might be time to redo this. Google changes its algorithms some 500 times/year and this affects search terms and competition.

3: For Paid Campaigns/Pay-per-Click (PPC)

Paid campaigns–PPC ads, display ads, remarketing or social media campaigns–are also keyword focused. Paid search is an auction where you bid on individual keywords

Keywords once again are the building blocks that make up ad groups, and these ad groups are the basis of campaigns. If your keywords have low search volume, then your ads are going to get little or no traction. If your keywords aren’t relevant to your target audience, you won’t be attracting the audience you’re courting–completely wasting your marketing dollars.

The bottom line: Keyword research is ground zero for all search marketing campaigns

But more than that, identifying your keywords and using them throughout all of your online communications is critical to their success.

Do you need help with your PPC or other online marketing program? Talk to us at Top of Mind Marketing. We’re internet marketing specialists.