Best Practices for “Push-through” Pay-per-Click Marketing

In our last Marketing Tips, we outlined the best practices for “pull-through” pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. This week’s Tip will focus on “push-through” PPC advertising.

What is “Push-through” PPC Marketing?

“Push-through” PPC marketing refers to online advertising that “appears” to a consumer based on the consumer’s location, behavior, interests or demographic information. Unlike “pull-through” advertisements, the consumer is NOT entering keywords into a search box. Rather, the website is using information about the consumer to determine whether the ad should appear.

For example, Facebook members will self-report facts such as their location, age, interests, etc. Based on this information, advertisers can request that their ad appears only to the Facebook members who fit a specific profile (demographic, geographic or behavioral).

Other sites, like Yahoo! can target individuals based on the location of the consumer’s computer, past sites the consumer has visited (behavioral) or demographic information.

In other words, an advertisement is “pushed” to an individual based on selected criteria on the belief that the ad will be relevant to the individual. This creates the opportunity for highly targeted advertising programs. However, similar to the “pull-through” PPC advertisements, the advertiser only pays if a consumer clicks on the ad and back-end reports provides valuable analytics.

Best Practice Tips

Many of the “Best Practices” outlined in our last Tips applies here as well:

o Consumers who click on the advertisements should be driven to a narrowly focused micro-website. This site can be used to collect information about the respondent, deliver documents and ultimately drive them to a “main” website.
o Micro-websites should be linked to a contact management system to collect the respondent’s contact information, and provide an opportunity for follow-up communications.
o Set up analytic reports for all steps in the advertising and selling process to track activities and provide a comprehensive view of the marketing environment.
o Support your PPC campaign with phone support so respondents who are interested and ready can talk to a person before making a purchase.
o As always, integrating a PPC advertising campaign with other online and offline advertising initiatives generally provides the best overall results.

To discuss “push-through” PPC marketing, or other forms of direct-response marketing, contact us at DMC Advertising. We are specialists in highly targeted and measurable marketing programs.