Skift Take
marketing events with PPC
Social Media lie in an amazing world full of lights, colours and emotions. Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising is where the money is.
Event professionals should be aware that could drive remarkable ROI. Remarkable and measurable that is.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of Social Media. Nonetheless social requires time, resources and education. You’d agree we don’t have lots of the above lately.
On the other hand, event marketing benefits from Pay per Click in a quick and effective manner. Ideally you’d combine both Social and PPC, in practice PPC event marketing will drive sign ups alone if well crafted.
Here are 25 resources to get you started:
Tools
1. Keyword Tool – Google Adwords
To fully understand the keyword tool from Google you need to do your homework. Make sure you play with it a lot and to check the resources following to fully grasp it. Remember to always select ‘Exact’ terms of search and to be as specific as possible when targeting location.
2. Soovle
Soovle is a great free tool that gives you an idea of what is currently searched on different search engines. Most PPC strategists will suggest to target 20 good keywords. Soovle gives you an idea of where to start.
3. Wordtracker
Not for free but apparently quite powerful. I’ve read good reviews and it seems to go straight to the point when you don’t have enough time to play with Google’s keyword tool.
4. Keyword Spy
Keyword Spy is not free but I liked the intelligence it gave me about my competitors. Searching for what others are doing is quite important when talking money.
5. Keyword Eye
Loved it. The handy tag cloud makes it very simple to understand volume of searches and competitiveness. Bookmarked it a while ago and now can’t live without it.
Quick TweetPlatforms
6. Google Adwords
This is your compulsory platform. Most PPC revolves around Google, because most searches revolve around Google.Make sure to read their beginners guide before starting.
7. Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads are becoming increasingly adopted with mixed results. Some say they are very expensive, others say they helped in going viral. If you use Facebook Events, Ads are a great compliment to drive sign ups.
8. Linkedin Ads
LinkedIn is the pot of gold of events’ salesforce. It is a fantastic tool for prospecting. Since the spending power is here, you may want to consider investing in it. I used the word ‘investing’ because the CPC is incredibly high.
9. StumbleUpon Ads
If you run a blog next to your event (well done my friend) you may want to use StumbleUpon ads to promote posts. Quite nice auto-targeting tool.
10. Bing Ads
I am getting a lot the fact that Bing search is actually good value for money. Since they joined forces with Yahoo, it looks like you can’t ignore them anymore.
Blogs
These are the blogs I read about the topic. I selected them because they deliver valuable information and they get updated often. Given the volume of money navigating in paid search it is increasingly difficult to find reliable information. Let me know what you think about them and if you want to suggest more, do use the comments below.
11. Search Engine Land
12. PPC Blog
13. Adwords Blog
14. PPC Hero
15. Rimm-Kaufman
Books
If you do not have a clue of where to start in PPC, these books will get you up and running. They are quite easy to understand and have good reviews on Amazon.
16. Improving Online Conversions for Dummies (Free)
17. Winning Results with Google AdWords, Second Edition (Affiliate link)
18. Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions (Affiliate link)
19. Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results (Affiliate link)
20. Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer (Affiliate link)
Presentations
I found these presentations to be quite enjoyable and fairly understandable at a beginner level. Again please do feel free to add more in the comments section.
Photo by 4rilla
