2 Ways to Get More Out of Your Back-to-School Search Marketing Campaign

Back to School time has turned into a marketing bonanza for multiple industries now including retail, grocery, fast food, private education, and child care, just to name a few. Here at Web Ad.vantage, it may only be July but we are in the midst of ramping up our annual back-to-school marketing efforts for a few of our clients…which means ever-attentive focus on students, families, and moms, particularly busy working mothers. As Google recently shared with us, families are working harder than ever to use search engines to find quality, affordable products and services, including options for their children’s educational needs. In order to broaden our horizons and assist our clients in being visible and competitive in all the far reaches of the Internet, it is important to spend time working with our search partners to expand our client’s reach in the most effective, affordable way during the hectic back-to-school season.

As Google continues to dominate the search market in terms of lowest cost and most reach, it has proven to be extremely beneficial to us to continue to find ways through Google to cast the widest net possible during the crucial back-to-school month of August. Below we list two strong ways to find more search inventory via Google to reach students, parents, and busy moms as they search and browse the web seeking information on schools, curriculums, and support for the new school year.

Google Search-Based Keyword Tool

As we learned recently from Google, search engine usage continues to grow. Ordinary searchers, however, are becoming more and more sophisticated in their search methods and are also spending more time refining their search engine queries. Google is currently offering a next generation tool to augment their basic keyword suggestion tool. The basic keyword suggestion tool allows a user to enter a keyword list and Google provides suggested keyword variants based on the list the user types in. Google has launched its next generation keyword tool, the Google Search-Based Keyword Tool, by which it provides improved suggestions for keywords based on web site content and actual Google web searches.

This tool allows a user to provide Google a list of vetted keywords and Google can return suggested keywords based on web site content on competitors, directories, or other web sites in your vertical. The tool allows the user to type in any web site domain and Google will return relevant keywords not currently used in our campaigns. Google also uses data from actual Google searches to provide keyword traffic volume and cost estimates. The tool allows a more thorough way to keep on top of competitor keywords and pick up on new variants, language, slang, or common vernacular keywords that might be growing in usage unbeknownst to the consumer. With this tool, we can make sure we’re continuing to add the most pertinent variants, long-tail, and current keywords to reach a client’s search audience in the most complete way.

Google Site Placements

Web Ad.vantage was invited by Google a few years ago to come to Mountain View and provide feedback on the Google Content Network. At that time, one of our main issues was the lack of transparency in the Google Content Network and the lack of ability for us to understand which web sites in the Content Network were providing the most leads for our clients. Much to our happiness, Google solved these problems by allowing us to see all the referring URLs for the Content Network, as well as providing a new service called Google Site Placements.

Google Site Placements allows us to pick and choose targeted web sites within the Google network to serve text ads. By using Site Placement we can choose relevant web sites, and we can select which section or channel of the web site is most targeted for your audience. By monitoring clicks and conversions, we can quickly learn what web sites are producing quality conversions in real-time.

These two useful tools are great…if you really know how to use them to plumb deeper and deeper into Google’s vast inventory to find the most appropriate existing and new web sites as they come online. The web can be a fickle place with great shifts in audience from year to year as users continue to browse for new content, deals, and opportunities. It’s more important than ever to spend additional time seeking out new keyword variants and new web site inventory instead of resting on the laurels of a campaign you may believe is “doing the best it can.”

Click here to learn more about our PPC Management Services.

 back to top