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GMail Ads … Saving Grace or PPC Sink Hole?

OK, some of you that know me probably know that I’m a pretty big proponent of Adwords Alternatives when it comes to PPC advertising.

This pretty much comes from my own experience with attempting to champion quality scores and rising bid costs to appease the Google elves. Usually to no avail.

I still hold true to that principle, for now at least. To some extent I see the recent slaps as “house cleaning” in the house of G … and personally I’d rather not be the baby thrown out with the bath water whilst the shenanigans continue.

However …
Recently I’ve come across a little technique that we’ve playing with that may bring my Adwords account back to life (drum roll please) … GMail.

Yes … Gmail Ads.
Maybe this is old hat for some of you, but for those of you who just crinkled your nose, squinted your eyes and muttered a gentled “huh?” This is for you.

Next time you’re logged into Gmail, open one of your emails and pay attention to the left side of the screen. What do you see? Adwords ads. What do you notice about those ads? Do they seem to reflect the topical  conversation within the email you’re reading? Kinda clever huh?
Wanna know how they do it?

Option 1 – Instant Gratification:
This is for the Jedi Master Marketer that’s kickin ass and takin’ names.
Watch the quick video that explains it all, buy the course and start CrushingIt Right Now!.

“Gmail Ads ~ the Ninja Strategies”

Option 2 – DIY:

First let me start with a quick video explanation from Austin Lau.
Austin is an Agency Media Planner at Google in San Francisco, California.

Click Here to Watch a Gmail Ads Overview by Austin Lau

Targeting Gmail in Adwords basically comes down to running a Targeted Placement campaign.
What’s that you might ask?

Here’s a quick word from Google on the privacy concerns of Ads in Gmail in case you’re wondering.

So let’s start by quickly looking at the Adwords program and what you can do with it.

Adwords has several campaign options …
Search, Content Network and Placement.
Most of you are probably familiar with Search; these are the ads you run which are shown to the left of search results on Google.

The Content Network is where your ads show on 3rd party websites, like blogs and shopping sites, where your ads are mixed into the content of a page on that site.

Placement ads are where you target specific sites that you want your ads to run.
So for instance, let’s say you have a nutrition product that you sell through your network marketing business. You could compile a list of blogs and other sites which have Adwords implemented in their content and that have a target audience that would be interested in learning about your product and setup a placement campaign to have your ads run on those sites.

The same can be done targeting GMail as your Placement preference.

Imagine this …

Josh writes an email to his friend Eric talking about he’s been looking for ways to make money online and wondering what Eric’s been doing to get by in this tough economy. He pushes send and voila! … Your ad shows up saying something like …

Make Money Online
Economy got you down? Learn to make some extra cash in your spare time.
or something like that.

The point is, as soon as Josh hits send you have a highly relevant, super targeted ad that shows up instantly, and appears to magically address the exact topic in his email.

Example
Here is a real example of an email sent. Lets look at what shows up in the Gmail Adword’s Ad.
For those, that can’t see the image below, the email says, “call a carpet cleaner before the holidays – thx!”

click image for larger view

What if the ‘Funbox’ ad said this instead…?

Carpet Cleaners [your city] – CarpetCleaningXXX.com – 10% OFF if you mention “Gmail Ad”.  Call Now 416 XXX XXX to save!

Are you starting to see how powerful this could be for your business?

Here’s some tips on how to put this together …

1. Make it a Separate Campaign.
An important thing to keep in mind is to not to mix this with the rest of your content ads and search campaigns. Run your Gmail campaign as a separate Adwords campaign to allow for proper tracking.

This is a unique strategy so you want to know precisely how effective it is as well as keeping your overall campaign CTR isolated for better performance in all your campaigns.

2. Know Your Target Market
Another important element here is mindset.
In order to leverage this you must have the right mind set.
Your prospects are in their email. What are they thinking about?

5 Quick Tips For Writing Better Performing Ads
1. Always include a strong keyword in the title
2. Make your title relevant and compelling
3. Use short words
4. Be relevant and specific
5. Be aware of the larger picture, and keep testing

Here are my Top 10 favorite keyword research tools:
1. Google keyword tool
2. Keyword Index
3. SEO Book Keyword Tool
4. Google Wonder Wheel
Do a search in Google. Click “Show options…” On the left of the page under Standard View choose “Wonder wheel”
5. KeywordPot
6. Quantcast.com
7. Amazon.com
8. Shopping.com
9. Magazines.com
10. Clickbank.com

You can also look into software such as Market Samurai to streamline your research and gather additional data.

For more detailed techniques and a step by step process for maximizing the Gmail Adwords process check this out …

Ryan Deiss discovered a HUGE backdoor into
Google advertising that cuts costs by up to 90%
and boosts conversions 10X.

There is one little downside…
He’ll explain it on this 13 minute video
How to Crush It With Gmail Ads

Live Long and Prosper.
~ Richard
 

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Image Credit:smallbusinessonlinecoach.com
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution