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ALICIA: Hi everyone.
My name is Alicia, and I'm an optimization specialist on the
automotive team.
Today I'll be guiding you through a webinar on capturing
an interested economic stimulus audience.
For the next half hour or so, I'll be going over a
high-level, comprehensive strategy that our team has put
together to attract a new audience
that's engaged online.
But before we move into the bread and butter of the
presentation, I'd like to give you a quick background on why
we're presenting on this topic today.
When we heard news that the automotive industry was
included in the economic stimulus plan, our brains
immediately perked up.
All the news we've been hearing about the auto
industry has been negative and, frankly, downright
depressing.
With consumers, dealers, and enthusiasts having a gray
cloud above their heads, we really saw this addition to
the stimulus as a silver lining.
At this point, anything that is encouraging consumers to
purchase new cars, and to restore faith in our economy,
is something that we want to move on.
When we looked at Search trends for February, and found
that users are responding greatly to the new automotive
tax credits, we knew that our automotive AdWords clients
could benefit from this, and we found a
way to get you started.
I hope you're all as excited to see this information as I
am to share it with you today.
So without further ado, let's dive into the strategy.
In order to best understand how to rev up your AdWords
account for this audience, it's really important to go
through what's actually included in the
stimulus for consumers.
Tax credits are available on purchases of new cars, light
trucks, motorcycles, and motor home vehicles.
Most domestic and foreign makes are included.
The tax deductions are for local and state sales tax, and
only go on purchases of up to $49,500.
These deductions are above the line, which means that it
reduces the amount of a filer's taxable income.
There are some income requirements here
to take note of.
$125K for individuals, and $250K for families.
But just to note, this is the modified,
adjusted gross income.
Consumers looking to purchase a plug-in electric vehicle can
receive up to $7,500 in credit, and those looking at a
2-3 wheel vehicle, such as scooters, can receive a 10%
credit, up to $2,500.
Another thing I want to point out, is that to qualify for
these credits, the purchase must be made during 2009.
And all this information you see here was taken from the
plan itself at recovery.org.
Here's an overview of the integrated online strategy
that we put together.
We'll be going over each of these items in more detail,
but just to give you a little bit of a preview, the first
component is utilizing the Google Search and Google
Search Networks to be present where and
when users are searching.
The second component is to take advantage of our partner
sites within the Google Content Network, to be present
where users are engaged.
And the last component is to make your landing page
relevant, to close the sale, and make sure you're the only
one that they want to do business with.
So let's focus in on being present when and where users
are searching.
To make the most efficient use of Google Search capabilities,
we recommend creating a new Search campaign.
The important part here is to include all possible keyword
variations that include the words tax, and car, and auto.
I've included a few samples here, but when we used a few
of our tools, we found that there were hundreds of keyword
variations that users are actually searching for.
A lot of these keywords are long tail keywords, or obscure
terms that not many advertisers are bidding on.
This is great news because it means there are fewer ads in
the space and more actions to call users to your ad.
Aside from including all possible keywords to make sure
you're reaching all possible searches and searchers, we
recommend experimenting and using highly
compelling ad creative.
As you see in the example from the next slide, that the key
is to use questions to draw users in and entice them with
the tax credit that's being offered.
Please note that we don't want to mislead users by having ad
text that is unrelated to what you're offering on your
website, but we'll discuss this a little bit later on.
Here are a few sample ads we created to call out some of
our best practices.
First, have a headline that is really relevant to what the
user is searching for.
Headlines that are descriptive about the tax stimulus would
be more relevant than an ad text that is offering a car
loan, for example.
Second, using a question mark can really grab a user's
attention and draw them in.
Third, explicitly explain to the user what you are looking
for them to do.
This may sound self-explanatory, but if your
headline talks about the stimulus, and your landing
[INAUDIBLE], really use the ad text as an opportunity to
explain to users how the stimulus ties into what you
have to offer them.
Next, dollar signs and numbers are a great
way to attract attention.
Showing the magnitude of the credit that's being offered is
also a great way to create a compelling message.
And finally, you can use vanity URLs.
Some folks love 'em, some folks hate 'em.
But the advantage here is that if the user is searching for
one of the terms in your vanity URL, the word will be
bolded and will call extra attention to your ad.
Before we got started, I mentioned that we'd been
looking at our search trends for stimulus and car
tax-related keywords.
You can take a look at this data from Google
Insights for Search.
A couple of important things, though, that I
want to point out.
Here, I've highlighted by the red circle, the Senate added
tax credits for new car buyers to the stimulus.
You can see that traffic immediately starts to perk up.
One search term that I want to point out is the term "car tax
stimulus." It's hard to view with the blue line, so here
I've highlighted it in red.
It's exciting to see that this term had virtually no traffic
before the auto stimulus was added to the bill.
And after, this term is rising in search popularity.
Let's take a look at a google.com search for one of
these terms. This search was done on a national basis, and
I think it's quite apparent that the competition in this
space is nearly non-existent.
There's a lot of open white space on the right-side of the
page, which indicates a lot of opportunity for ad exposure.
Another thing to mention is that this search was done on a
national level.
Advertisers targeting on a regional basis have a greater
opportunity to own this space.
Now that we've covered opportunities on the Search
Network, let's dive into what's available on our
partner's sites within the Google Content Network.
To make the most out of managing your advertising on
the Google Content Network, we recommend using a separate,
content-only campaign.
The advantage here is that you can target a different
audience than the one that is actively searching on
google.com.
Let me take a second to explain
why this is so important.
In the online world, we have what's considered hand-raisers
and lean-forwards.
Hand-raisers are those who know what they are looking for
and are actively searching for it on a search engine.
Lean-forwards, on the other hand, aren't quite ready to
search, or don't know what to search for.
So they're active on content pages, leaning forward, or
looking to gain more information.
It's critical not to ignore these lean-forwards, because
they are interested in what you have to offer, but they
just don't quite know what to search for.
The best way to reach all interested audiences on the
Content Network is to use contextually targetted ad
groups to put your ads on relevant content pages, and
have an active presence where users are hanging out online.
This includes blogs, news articles, forums--
I think you get the idea here.
A few of these ad groups concepts can include things
such as green cars or hybrid cars, the economic stimulus or
the recovery plan, saving money tips or ways to cut
cost, and the automotive or Big 3 bailout.
The second key to having an effective content campaign is
in the type of creative variations that you use.
The great thing about the Content Network is the wide
variety of ad formats that you have available.
Image ads, splash ads, and even gadget ads can be more
appealing and compelling to the eye than a
standard text ad.
If you're going to go it alone with standard text ads, you'll
need to ensure that your headlines are catchy enough to
draw the user's eye away from the content, and that the
message is compelling enough to encourage them to click.
Here's that same search snapshot I showed you
previously when we were talking
about the Search Network.
Lean-forwards, or those engaged in the Content
Network, will be visiting sites similar to these that
are circled in red.
These are articles or forums that appear in the natural
search results, or that the user may have already
bookmarked in their browser.
The content is still relevant to your bottom-line objective,
but the method in which you need to reach these users is
clearly different.
Here's a vivid example of what a lean-forward would be doing
on the Content Network.
You have a forum post with a news article about the tax
credit for new car buyers.
On this page alone, there are four opportunities to have
your ad appear.
I've highlighted three, and one to emphasize the
difference between the standard text ad, which you
see at the bottom, and the eye-catching image ads you see
at the top and right-hand sides of the page.
This is another example of how your ad can reach an
interested audience on the Content Network.
You have an article about ways to cut costs.
So you know that users that are on this page are
interested in looking for ways to save money.
Creating an ad here, with a relevant message that ties
into the type of page you're appearing on, is a great way
to reach the user.
The final component of this integrated strategy is to
ensure that you are the one that users want
to do business with.
There are two ways in which you can do this.
The first--
if you have the time and the budget--
is to create a page that ties in the economic stimulus to
what you're offering consumers.
You really want to give them a reason not
to go anywhere else.
So, perhaps include an overview of what's included in
the stimulus, or tips on how to use the stimulus for the
product or service that you're offering on your web page.
If you don't have the ability to alter your landing page,
you'll need to be crafty with the ad text.
Be explicit about the action you want users to perform, and
how this ties in with the tax stimulus or the keywords that
you're advertising on.
It may require a little more thought and some creative
brainstorming, but the extra time is worth preventing
bounces from your page.
The main point here is to think about, what is the best
option for preventing bounces from your landing page?
What do users want to see when they get to your website?
What would they expect to see after reading your ad text?
As obvious as it is, the fewer bumps above your site, the
more likely your user will lead to a successful
conversion.
Let's take one last look at the search results from the
previous two sections.
Here we have two ads that show up for our search query on new
car tax credit.
Let's click on the first link, www.shophonda.com, and see
where we get.
For a few seconds, take a look at this landing page, and
think about the following questions.
Is this landing page compelling?
Is it what you expected to find after clicking on the ad?
Let's look at the second landing page, from the
nadaguides.com ad.
Again, think about the following questions.
Is this landing page compelling, or more compelling
than the previous?
Is it more relevant?
Is this what you expected to find after clicking on the ad?
The goal of showing you these landing pages isn't to develop
thoughts about these sites in specific, but to really think
about the importance of a relevant landing page, and how
it can drastically change the way a user behaves after
clicking on your ad.
And on that note, that wraps up our strategy
recommendations on how you can capture and engage the new
economic stimulus audience.
I thank you for your attention and participation today, and I
really hope that you found this webinar insightful and
useful in planning your online marketing strategy.
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please
address them to your support team here at Google.
I know that they're all ready and willing to help you
implement these plans as you see fit for
your advertising goals.
Thank you again, and have a great afternoon.