UrsuAke
Power Member
- Sep 28, 2011
- 750
- 1,045
Disclaimer: Don't try this method for a long term business or venture, that's why I posted this on the Lounge. You have been warned.
This is an informal case study/method, this isn't some groundbreaking discovery and I don't know how much it will help the BHW community but I felt like sharing this information. I will not disclose names because I don't want to advertise anything (not even indirectly), also no printscreen or other proof will be provided. That being said, let's get on with it: two months or so ago, a friend of mine asked if I could help him with marketing some digital products via PPC. Can't say the exact niche but it's related to marketing, I can only say that the products are legit and helpful.
So, besides posting those products on clickbank, amazon and other places, we started with PPC advertising for his landing pages. Here's what we did.
Step 1: Google Adwords, legit campaign, straightforward stuff, nothing unusual.
Step 2: Other PPC Ad networks.
This is where it gets interesting and this is where the method is. The networks aren't important, any PPC network that can deliver targeted real human clicks will do, but you need to check with them how much you can get away with regarding the message displayed.
First off we started with choosing the niches of the sites we were going to place banners on. Of course we needed marketing related blogs and sites. Secondly we used a similar campaign to Google Display as in call to action. We optimized the campaign for a lower CPC than the Google Adwords display campaign. Nothing WOW so far...
We did some A/B testing with multiple banners and ran some mini tests for about a week. We chose the best working campaign profile and put it on full throttle.
The results after 1 week:
So the results were decent given the budget spent, but the stats were lower than the Adwords campaign.
One evening we got together to see what we could improve on the campaign, and due to the fact that the ladies were out, we ended up getting pissed drunk. So we started talking and discussing all sorts of moronic and retarded ideas. One of which was "dude, what if we make our banners ridiculously disrespectful and insulting to users"... and one thing led to another. The point is that, next morning we had a display campaign for one product in particular, live on those PPC networks with messages like:
"Hey... psst... YO! You suck! Click Here and tell us a thing or two!!!"
"From all the morons out there, you're the only one dumb enough to click this banner"
"You put the "tard" in retard! Click here and find out why"
And so on... I have to mention that we didn't use curses or very graphical language and the first sentence in the landing page would be a spin. For example, for the "tard" banner we would start with something like: "Well ok, you're not a "tard". You're actually very clever, and this is why...." (bold and big fonts for that opening statement).
Once we got sober and saw that campaign, we got stressed that we're pissing money away but somehow we managed to agree just to leave the campaign until it gets shutdown by the network or until a certain budget is consumed. Also, we thought really hard if we want to run this products for a long term or if we care about the negative rep we'll get for those products if we market them this way, the conclusion was, we couldn't be bothered. The campaign never got shut down by the network.
So the campaign ran for about 5 days, here are the results:
We were speechless. Of course we ran similar campaigns ASAP on the rest of the products, we saw improvements on CTR and conversion rate but nothing that dramatic (an average was at around 6-9% CTR and 1.5-2 conversion rate).
So, here it is. Hope it helps you guys in a distantly remote way. If not, at least this thread is not made to ask advices on why my wife isn't talking to me or how to invest x.xxx$ in IM.
Keep your monkeys in your papal YO and never stop playing. IM is all about testing ludicrous ideas and thinking outside the box.
This is an informal case study/method, this isn't some groundbreaking discovery and I don't know how much it will help the BHW community but I felt like sharing this information. I will not disclose names because I don't want to advertise anything (not even indirectly), also no printscreen or other proof will be provided. That being said, let's get on with it: two months or so ago, a friend of mine asked if I could help him with marketing some digital products via PPC. Can't say the exact niche but it's related to marketing, I can only say that the products are legit and helpful.
So, besides posting those products on clickbank, amazon and other places, we started with PPC advertising for his landing pages. Here's what we did.
Step 1: Google Adwords, legit campaign, straightforward stuff, nothing unusual.
Step 2: Other PPC Ad networks.
This is where it gets interesting and this is where the method is. The networks aren't important, any PPC network that can deliver targeted real human clicks will do, but you need to check with them how much you can get away with regarding the message displayed.
First off we started with choosing the niches of the sites we were going to place banners on. Of course we needed marketing related blogs and sites. Secondly we used a similar campaign to Google Display as in call to action. We optimized the campaign for a lower CPC than the Google Adwords display campaign. Nothing WOW so far...
We did some A/B testing with multiple banners and ran some mini tests for about a week. We chose the best working campaign profile and put it on full throttle.
The results after 1 week:
- around 750.000 views
- around 0.07 CTR
- 0.05 conversion rate from those 52k-53k clicks -> around 2500 conversions
So the results were decent given the budget spent, but the stats were lower than the Adwords campaign.
One evening we got together to see what we could improve on the campaign, and due to the fact that the ladies were out, we ended up getting pissed drunk. So we started talking and discussing all sorts of moronic and retarded ideas. One of which was "dude, what if we make our banners ridiculously disrespectful and insulting to users"... and one thing led to another. The point is that, next morning we had a display campaign for one product in particular, live on those PPC networks with messages like:
"Hey... psst... YO! You suck! Click Here and tell us a thing or two!!!"
"From all the morons out there, you're the only one dumb enough to click this banner"
"You put the "tard" in retard! Click here and find out why"
And so on... I have to mention that we didn't use curses or very graphical language and the first sentence in the landing page would be a spin. For example, for the "tard" banner we would start with something like: "Well ok, you're not a "tard". You're actually very clever, and this is why...." (bold and big fonts for that opening statement).
Once we got sober and saw that campaign, we got stressed that we're pissing money away but somehow we managed to agree just to leave the campaign until it gets shutdown by the network or until a certain budget is consumed. Also, we thought really hard if we want to run this products for a long term or if we care about the negative rep we'll get for those products if we market them this way, the conclusion was, we couldn't be bothered. The campaign never got shut down by the network.
So the campaign ran for about 5 days, here are the results:
- around 550.000 views
- around 12% CTR!!!!
- around 3.4 conversion rate
We were speechless. Of course we ran similar campaigns ASAP on the rest of the products, we saw improvements on CTR and conversion rate but nothing that dramatic (an average was at around 6-9% CTR and 1.5-2 conversion rate).
So, here it is. Hope it helps you guys in a distantly remote way. If not, at least this thread is not made to ask advices on why my wife isn't talking to me or how to invest x.xxx$ in IM.
Keep your monkeys in your papal YO and never stop playing. IM is all about testing ludicrous ideas and thinking outside the box.
