expertSEM

Any type of marketing campaign, no matter what medium, should not be a stand-alone effort. Marketing messages should be universal, spanning across print ads, billboards, television and radio spots, online banner ads and PPC management campaigns. We often refer to this process as “media piggybacking” and it requires continuous monitoring of our client’s other media placements and frequent communication with their internal marketing departments. But watching the media for mention of client’s name or products shouldn’t start after they’ve signed on the dotted line—you should be aware of their media presence much sooner than that.

As early as the sales stage, monitoring media placements can assist you with better understanding your clients industry, brand positioning and specific product or service to be marketed. Checking out the press surrounding each prospective client can help you decide whether to even take on an account. If there is a substantial amount of bad or controversial press, you should evaluate the potential effects on the ad campaign. Similarly, if the spotlight on your client casts a heavenly glow, there are a number of ways this can strengthen any ad campaign and improve results.

For the purpose of this article, my focus is online marketing, specifically search marketing campaigns. Knowing what other print ads, press releases and radio or TV spots the client is running can help fit the search campaign message into the clients’ overall marketing portfolio. Maintaining consistency with regards to the message reinforces branding throughout each medium, and increases the potential for search traffic. Ideally, the client is your best source for discovering what other marketing and advertising campaigns are currently running. We strive to act as an extension of our client’s internal marketing team.

In addition to a direct client relationship, tools such as Google Alerts can help you stay on top of media placements related to the client. Google Alerts are customized email updates based on a specific search term, with results that are pulled from News, Web, Blogs or Groups.

The alert query is similar to a search query, so it’s important to be sure that your terms are specific yet broad enough to generate the results you want. To keep current on your client, brand terms are, of course, a good place to start. But if your client’s brand name has a potentially broad meaning (e.g. Citizen, a jean company) then you may want to narrow it down. A potential alert query for our example would be “Citizen jeans.” Be sure to use quotation marks to tie the words together; this helps in avoiding articles related to becoming a U.S. citizen or other citizen-related topic. Try a sample search first to see if you are happy with the results.

Once you are set up to receive this information, the next and more important step is applying it to boost your campaign performance. Here are three ways this could be applied to a search marketing campaign:

1. Keyword Builds

Reading up on articles related to your client’s brand and business trends can help a search marketer uncover new terms. Perhaps there is a context in which their brand is being referenced that you had not previously considered. For example, the client has a large Hispanic customer base and they are being referenced in Spanish articles. You may want to develop a Hispanic marketing campaign utilizing Spanish-language keywords. Whatever is revealed to you by Google Alerts, maintaining consistency with regards to terminology ensures that when people type in a keyword related to a press release they just read, they’ll see your client’s ads and are more likely to click through.

1. More Tailored Ad Copy

Search marketers can adjust the ad copy to keep the message consistent with press releases and other media placements. The title line in particular can help reinforce the same message already out there and increase top-of-mind awareness, relevancy and branding.

1. Bid Adjustments

If the search marketer is able to anticipate a particular media placement, bids can also be adjusted according to when spots hit. For example, you want to be on top of the search listings for your client’s brand terms the day after they run a Super Bowl ad.

Media piggybacking is a simple, effective way to improve campaign performance and expand your services, and Google Alerts is a very beneficial tool for this strategy. Now that you know the basics of incorporating cross-channel integration into your PPC management campaign, you should look for other mediums. Working in tandem with other forms of advertising can provide additional exposure beyond your day-to-day search campaign, which is now tied into other media placement themes.