Small Niche

Targeted placement on broader niche sites?

[Lee56]

I'm fairly new to Adwords and have been studying their articles and reading threads here, but can't seem to find anything on my question, so here goes...

I have a small niche. Main pages on site rank high in Google for main keywords (sales page #1 for main keywords for over two years), but there are few searches for relevant keywords. The sales page converts average so I hear for an ebook (1%), but with only about 15 unique visits a day, it's not doing much.

So I then tried Adwords, which of course isn't bringing in much either. The two ads I'm using after some hit and miss are averaging 14% click through rate, but there are few impressions given the narrow niche.

The keywords relevant to the broader niches that would also serve my niche are too pricey for the price of my product. And even if I raised the price, there's just not enough traffic or clicks to sell much.

So I'm wondering if targeted site placement on the content network might be an answer.

I could then place the ads on sites that serve the broader niches and not rely just on searches for my narrow niche?
I think I would need to write ads that pique interest in my given niche rather than focusing on the actual product.

So, just for example, a parent looking at a widget site might see my widgetssmadeasy course ad and click. The sales letter is already written to not only sell the informational product/online course but to first sell the benefits of the niche itself, which is what I have in mind for the Adwords ads.

In other words parents searching for homeschool activities, creative activities, best widgets for kids, etc. might already have some interest in my how-to niche or become interested when they see the ad.

Does this sound like a viable plan?

[thinker]

The less targeted your campaign is, the less likely you'll be making sales. I'm no expert, but why not try it with a limited budget. Track it with analytics, and you'll have the answer to your question very soon.

Personally, I think it is difficult to sell a product to a person who is not highly motivated to obtain it. So if the campaign is not highly targeted, it would be a tough sell.

[Lee56]

Thanks Thinker - Well I'm thinking the less targeted the lower the click through rate and the lower the sales conversion but more sales overall because more traffic - targeted traffic if I write my new ads well. Although lower CTR can mean higher cost of my ads, perhaps...still learning.

Yes, a tougher sell. Thankfully I wrote the sales letter to sell the niche as well as the product.

It's worth a try. Have Analytics.

I tried editing my post but I'm too late. I wrote something rather lame:

"The keywords relevant to the broader niches that would also serve my niche are too pricey for the price of my product. And even if I raised the price, there's just not enough traffic or clicks to sell much."

I meant to write that I wouldn't be able to raise the price enough to cover the more spendy ads.

But anyway, thanks for your input.

Has anyone here had any success with what I am attempting?
Not looking for your secrets, just if it's been done successfully...

Thanks again!

[edited by: Lee56 at 8:42 pm (utc) on Mar. 14, 2009]

[eWhisper]

I love placement campaigns for small sites, and enhanced campaigns (placement + keywords) for refining placements on larger sites.

I've seen excellent returns with placement campaigns. I'd recommend setting a test budget, choosing the best sites in your niche, and seeing what happens.

If there are a lot of sites in your niche, you can also create an ideal customer profile and then refine those sites with ad planner.

I'm also a fan of using images on placements. Images have higher recall and CTR. It's worth not just testing placements, but testing images, interactive, or video ads as well.

[edited by: eWhisper at 3:06 pm (utc) on Mar. 17, 2009]

[Lee56]

Thanks eWhisper. I think I'll try that placement+keywords idea as I have thus far only been able to get placement on sites but not on specific pages I wanted on those sites.

This might be the only way to get my small niche adverts seen more.

To clarify there are two different projects. One is my own eBook series developed four years before I knew anything about online marketing and choosing niches. In other words I chose it out of interest/experience and just a gut feeling. It's more of a niche within a niche,and the larger niche has become quite popular as I thought it would, and I think looking at the industry trends mine will also in time...

The other project is for a client who had paid me to write his eBooks after he decided on his niche. At the time he was working with a marketing consultant, and I was just the writer. He has since decided to not work with that consultant, so I started doing some market research and discovered that the best keywords for his niches (also niches within a wider, quite good niche) are totaling getting less than 12 searches a day (Wordtracker)!

I think a good niche would have around or more than 100 and consistently (give or take for seasonal markets).

I did find two are more popular niches at Amazon than keyword searches. Still not great...probably 10 sales a week for the one I researched there, according to the sales rank and a graph I'm using to estimate sales.

I've only written one of the three books so far (fortunately the better niche of the three), and I've recommended we do one in the broader niche before the other two, if we do them at all.

This broader niche is doable from what I see in the estimated CPC at Adwords and from what I've seen others doing (three eBooks with Adwords advert in this broader niche, and out there for over 6 months). We could then market to the smaller niches to the customer list.

Still, I'd like to get more traffic to this itsy bitsy niche first...and perhaps placement/keywords will help boost some of that. The Adwords CTR and sales page conversion is certainly encouraging, as is the CPC.

We could ditch the projects, but we'd like to realize some profit from all the effort.