Adwords
For several years I have argued that the way to use the internet as a method of marketing is not to use Google’s Adwords and the like, but instead to put up lots of relevant content on the internet and so capture the passing reader.
As an example I have tried to do this myself by creating some 20 or more separate websites to do with different aspects of direct mail, while running blogs, and the four newsgroups (Direct Mail Secrets and the like). At the same time we ran a series of Google Ad Words, following every detail of their advice to maximise hit rate and lower the cost. We also spent about 4 hours on the phone to Google, going through the pros and cons of the ads we were placing.
We ended up getting about 4 hits a day, which cost us on average 70p per hit.
Meanwhile one of the blogs I wrote reached 2000 hits in one day, and on average gained around 1200 hits a day. Other blogs took longer to get going, but even the slowest most specialist blog was able to pick up 20 hits a day.
We arranged matters so that the blogs were able to re-use news and information that was also used elsewhere in the business, so we did not have to spend too long on each one. A small amount of additional time was used responding to other web sites and blogs in an intelligent way and mentioning that the topic was covered more fully on our blog or website.
The conclusion was obviious - we got far more pound for pound via the blogs than we did on Google Ad Words.
And that is where the story stayed until in one of the most excellent pieces of research I have ever seen relating to selling on the internet MarketingExperiments.com have compared the hiring an employee to blog, create content, and in general work to drive traffic to sites, with the much simpler approach of using Google Adwords to drive targeted traffic to the web site.
The research took place over 12 months and in summary the research showed that the blogs / text / discussion approach yielded more than 93,000 visits to the site.
This was compared with a 30-day test of Google Adwords, bidding up to 75 cents per click on a variety of keywords related to the test websites which drove 2,047 users to the site at a cost of $1,250 (£625). So this compares with the “word-of-mouth” efforts which yielded 93,207 unique visitors at a cost of $3600 (£1800).
Thus as Marketing Experiments.com points out, the word of mouth approach yielded a 1427% greater return on investment than the GoogleAd approach.
As the report says, however, pay-per-click advertising was a much easier to run and was much quicker, but it was much more expensive and gave a much lower return on investment. It doesn’t say it, but in essence, all you need to do is hire someone to do the work - so its not that much harder. I personally think this is a really informative piece of research and I would urge everyone to look at it.
I am so grateful to Marketing Experiments Journal because at last we have some firm evidence for the notion that maximising content is the way forward. A reference is given at the end.
If you would like to see some of the blogs we created - many of which are still evolving take a look at
www.blog.hamilton-house.com
www.blog.schools.co.uk
www.blog.admin.org.uk
www.blog.toppled.info
There are many more, but this will give you a clue as to what we have done in our experiments. If you would like to talk to me about this project please do call 01536 399 000.
Marketing Experiments - who undertook the detailed research mentioned above.
Digital Trust Inc. 412 First Street North Jacksonville Beach, FL 32250, USA
Mailing Information Service -a range of websites created by Hamilton House Mailings plc.