Business Development in AdWords

If you don’t have a grant, apply here. It takes about six months from the time you apply until you have an answer, but I have yet to see any arts client not get accepted. But that’s not the point of this post. The point is to discuss non-branded keywords.

The business development opportunity in keyword advertising is in non-branded keywords. In your analytics program, look at the keywords driving your site traffic. What percent contain your brand name? Meaning, if you are xyz dance company, how many of your top keywords contain xyz? The keyword report for one client we work with shows that 97 of their top non-paid 100 keywords include their brand name. This shows strong brand recognition (which is great) but even better, it presents a huge opportunity. The opportunity to drive non-branded keyword traffic like “dance performance” or “dance performance tickets” as opposed to “xyz dance” or “xyz performances.” Capturing traffic from non-branded keywords can drive significant new business. Work to craft keywords and ads to speak to users searching more generic terms. Assume these users know less about your company. These should be separate campaigns in your Adwords account.

Ad for non-branded keywords:

Modern dance fan?
XYZ Dance is NYC’s hottest new company.
Tickets for fall 2010 season start at $25.
www.xyzDance.org/DancePerformance

Ad for branded keywords:

XYZ Dance Tickets
Xyz Dance’s fall 2010 season starts
Nov. 1. Tickets start at $25. Learn more.
www.xyzDance.org

In the second ad, the branded keyword is in the headline, since users are searching for the word.

It is useful to monitor new versus returning visitors coming from keywords. You should work to increase the percentage of new keyword traffic. This shows that your efforts are driving new users to your site.