Google AdWords™ For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Improving Offline Marketing

Although digital media may be way cooler than traditional offline media, most of the money is still made offline. No matter how much SEO or social media exposure your business gets, it's still a small fraction of what's available via media that were around before Justin Bieber was born.

Offline marketing can also be categorized as permission or interruption, depending on whether the prospect is actively searching for commercial information or is served commercial messages while consuming other content. Lessons from the AdWords Search network apply to permission marketing media, and Display network results are relevant to offline interruption marketing.

A quick case study to give you a sense of the potential here. A few years ago, Joel was approached by a division of one of the world's largest candy makers, who asked him to manage a surprisingly modest AdWords spend of around $1,000 per month, offering him $5,000 per month for his services. We predict that the AdWords professionals reading that last sentence just needed to be revived with smelling salts because the typical management fee ranges from 10–20 percent of spend, but this company was offering Joel 500 percent of spend. Why?

Joel discovered the reason one night in front of his television. He saw a commercial for this company, and he thought the language sounded familiar.

After checking the AdWords account, Joel realized that he had written those words for what turned out to be the winning ad ...