What did you say? Use BLOGS as your landing pages for paid search?

Posted on December 13, 2016 Mary Merritt

Your editorial calendar, once rolling, will be a bubbling spring of engaging stories and visuals that constantly hydrates your online presence with pure vibrancy. That stuff is liquid gold! So why not re-purpose this content as much as you can? There are many purposes that a blog can serve when it comes to playing in the paid space, so read on and see if you are poised to try something different.

The first step is to get your AdWords or AdCenter (or what-have-you) account into strong order. You should have a solid structure of campaigns and ad groups that are targeting the shorter, high volume keywords that convert for your business. Additionally, it is important to always be testing 2 ads against one another (per ad group) and analyzing the results every 2 weeks. So once you have your editorial calendar rolling and your paid search accounts humming, you might want to try some more creative activities that are meant to "plant the seed" and kick off your lead process.

PEOPLE ASK GOOGLE QUESTIONS.

That's right. People just type questions into Google. Not everyone, mind you, but there is a sub-set of "question-askers" in the search engines. If you don't believe me, just type in the term: "How should I" into Google and see all of the phrases that pop up in Suggest. Those aren't there because they don't have search volume behind them!

What I am getting at is this: Do some creative keyword research to figure out the questions that your audience may be asking. Talk to your Sales Team and/or Customer Service Team to learn about the most frequently asked questions and pain points that potential customers have. Dive in, fall down the rabbit hole, and see what you come up with. The cool thing about this technique is that it will inform some solid editorial as well. Yes, this can also be used as a way to find good blog topic ideas (or good case study topics, video topics...you get the idea).

Once you have a solid list of questions from the Keyword Planner, have your team create stories and visuals around the questions. Then, once the content has launched you can build a search campaign around that very same question. As a matter of fact, you can build that campaign or ad group ahead of time and just keep it paused, then all you have to do is un-pause it when the editorial goes live.

SOME INDUSTRIES HAVE LOOOOONG LEAD TIMES.

I've got a story. We're working with a client right now who is a mega-consultant. This person helps companies from $20M to $100B build insanely complex systems for global supply chain, sales and operating processes, data centers, software interactions and all sorts of juicy, nerdy stuff. The other day, the owner said to me: "If you can get me a $1M contract off of SEARCH, I would scream from the mountain tops about the value that search can offer ANY company." Challenge ACCEPTED my friend. Hey, with "assisted conversions" in Google Analytics becoming more and more important in our reporting, we can definitely show this client just how cool search can be.

When you are working in this kind of space, your sales and operating process becomes integral to your success in landing a contract. Having a strong CRM in place so you can analyze your lead times and funnel steps is a good place to start for sure. However, if you want to try to plant a LOT of seeds, it becomes vitally important to be generating content that sets you up as a thought leader. It WILL happen. Someone in your ideal demographic will read a really relevant article that you wrote and say: "I could really use this person's help." So utilizing paid search with blog post landing pages can kick off the sales process nicely.

EVERYONE SENDS PEOPLE TO A HIGH-CONVERTING LANDING PAGE, SO WHY NOT BE DIFFERENT?

When you click on a paid ad, you generally get a little blurb about what the company does and then there is a huge call to action such as a form and/or a big phone number. Ummmm, can we have some coffee first before we get married? When you are using this advanced and creative tactic, you are essentially targeting people who are looking for INFORMATION. Nope, not information on your company, but information relevant to their search query. Give it to them. Give them all of your secrets...they will still need your help. Right off the bat, if you can prove that you are an expert who knows what you are talking about, you're ahead of the curve. Additionally, if you are generous with your experience, that builds trust early in the funnel. Those other types of landing pages are really important as well, but for THIS tactic, give them what they're looking for.

THESE LONG-TAIL TERMS WON'T HAVE A LOT OF VOLUME, BUT THE RELEVANCY WILL BE OFF THE CHARTS.

Not a lot of search volume means not a lot of clicks, which means a low investment to try something like this. It's not going to cost you an arm and a leg, so go for it! As mentioned above, the relevancy will be the key to this tactic, so it will be low volume, but potentially extremely high intent when it comes to information seekers.

While this approach can be seen as a more advanced tactic that happens long after you have your basic keywords and phrases performing in paid search, you can do this whenever you like. The key to success is going to be deep-dive phrase research and expertly-written blogs and articles. If you want, you can even have the person enter their email address to read the article...perhaps give them the first paragraph and then kindly ask them for their email address in return for your free information? It's not out of the question, and that also makes this strategy a potential list builder as well!

Be bold. Try new things. Step outside of what everyone else is doing and analyze your efforts. Failures are just as important as successes, so being averse to change and trying new things isn't going to give you an edge over your competition.