Marketing to the Long Tail: A Result Overview

O.k. here comes the juice. I have been working for the last few months on a new project that I can not disclose here but I will share the results I have been getting. Let’s just say that this kept me excited for quite some time as I see the traffic going up dramatically from one campaign after another that I have been optimizing. This is a case study that I am hoping to present to the next CaseCamp Vancouver, the tech marketing non-conference that happens twice a year. 

In Search Marketing, especially paid search, you need to have a really deep understanding of your keywords, your ad copy, your bidding rules and it must be well supported with strong web analytics in order to provide a good, great or outstanding ROI (Return on Investment). If you are not sure about what I mean by targeting the tail of search queries, may I suggest you read my article: Targeting the tail: how to get the most out of every marketing dollar. This will give you an overview on how important this topic is. This morning, I also came across a great article on this, called: Marketing to the long tail, which also focuses on the same topic which is worth the read. As the average click cost is constantly increasing as more competitors are getting into it, most business owners have no choice but to be smarter on how they invest their budget online, and this is one aspect they can use to get more value for their dollar. 

So, I took over a project 4 months ago on a major online advertiser who spends about $1.2 Millions per year. They are in the travel business and they have winter, summer and specific campaigns. We are using all 3 main search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN.

By simply adding the ALL the keywords included in the long tail of search queries for each ad group (and a few other tricks in my arsenal), here is an overview of what happened:

That’s right. The Client gets on average 4 times more value for every dollar they invest online. Whereas the average page view per visitor used to be $0.25 before I jump on board, it is now more like $0.06. Please note that the user engagement actually increased while the average cost per click dropped dramatically. As a result, the combination of the search term contained within the tail with a corresponding ad copy defines more of the quality of the user that the keyword itself. 

What most people underestimate is the time it takes to actually provide this kind of added value. In this case, it took me 4 months solid, but with 1 Million more page views per month, it is well worth the effort. If you are not sure if your paid program is actually providing what you expect, feel free to get in touch with me, I will make your paid search campaign, not good, not even better, I will make it stellar. And the beauty is that I only charge a small fraction of the cost to manage it. 

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