Building a successful PPC advertising campaign doesn’t have to be constricted to your domain. After all, there are so many creative methods to help your business succeed through pay-per-click.
So, if you’re looking for a campaign that stands out, we can help.
In this article, we’ve found five successful PPC campaigns that show us some masterful marketing. Feel free to learn what you can from these amazing ideas, and we’ll go into some more detail about what each company did.
Of course, everyone has a different reason for using PPC in their campaigns. In most cases, you want to draw attention to your business, but you want to afford it too.
Major businesses can spend lots of cash when they’re targeting a wide range of keywords, but if you’re strapped for cash, you need to be clever. We’ll show you how some major businesses have utilized PPC and how you can use it on a smaller scale.
With these examples, you’ll be inspired to make your own successful campaign for yourself and your business.
1. Converse “Domaination”
Converse shoes are recognizable and are one of the most popular brands for young people. But they wanted to stand out amongst their competitors.
That’s where Anomoly comes in. Anomoly is a marketing agency that they sought out to come up with a fun and innovative way to increase online engagement with their teenage audience. But how did they manage to increase teenage traffic for Converse?
Well, they intended to start “converse-ations” with their customers. These started with Anomoly using Google AdWords to establish what their target audience was searching for.
Using these, they could buy domains to make their own little microsites appear when they searched specific terms. So, what do you think teenagers were searching for?
Well, the keywords they found were:
Spelling bee
First day of summer
How to talk to girls
How to kiss
Of course, these were only a small number of items that teenagers looked for on Google. Seeing that other brands weren’t using these terms, Anomoly bought keywords that would bring Converse a lower level of competition.
They used these keywords that teenagers would search for to create specific microsites that would cater to each search. Then, they would direct them to another site, much like a game.
Launching a new site each week, Anomoly increased traffic to Google using the first peer-branded campaign. With this campaign, Converse increased its online engagement and got a series of new and interested customers.
You can see just how successful Converse was, as they didn’t just lead them to adverts but to a more meaningful experience that gave more content to their customers.
2. The BP Oil Spill
Back in 2010, the BP Oil Spill occurred off the coast of the U.S. in the Gulf of Mexico. It was one of the worst environmental disasters America had ever faced.
BP faced a huge backlash to its reputation, and it worked on a PPC campaign to regain it. While their reputation still suffered, the campaign itself was pretty clever.
BP bid on over a thousand search terms related to oil spills and ranked first for most of them. So, to rectify the situation, they bought a paid ad that led the public to the Gulf of Mexico Response homepage, explaining how they were fixing the situation.
Except, they didn’t understand what the public wanted to hear.
BP’s tone of voice was completely off. They essentially got their lawyers to explain what they were doing, and because of that, they filled it with industry jargon.
While they could have made more humane comments about how they planned to amend the situation, they just confused everyone.
They spent nearly $1 million on these ads. The good news is that it gained the attention they wanted for all the wrong reasons.
If they got the tone of voice right, they could have redeemed themselves better, but in a way, they made the situation worse for them. Due to the lack of understanding of how PPC works, BP was accused of manipulating their search results.
As you can see, this is a real case of a great idea but poor execution.
3. The Perfume Shop
The Perfume Shop collaborated with Net Media Planet to overlay adverts for celebrity perfumes on YouTube to match videos specifically featuring that celebrity.
But how did they do this? Usually, PPC doesn’t work nearly as well on YouTube as on Google, but this has changed. With the assistance of the YouTube Targeting Tool, ads can target specific videos instead of the whole site.
They placed ads on these specific celebrity videos using the YouTube Targeting Tool and Mercury technology platform.
Previously, Net Media Planet had found out that many of The Perfume Shop’s customers adored celebrity culture, and so they found the celebrity videos that their target audience was watching.
When they did this, they targeted thousands of relevant YouTube videos to place the ads, and they managed to beat their search engine sales.
These ads made a significant return on The Perfume Shop’s investment in the PPC campaign, with 236% of their investment returned to them. This campaign was a great way to utilize your target audience and the type of content they consume.
Understanding this can be a great way to get your product to the right consumer.
4. Snickers “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry.”
Everyone knows about Snickers and their “You’re not you when you’re hungry” campaign. The slogan has been used on TV for years, and you know that the phrase will immediately make you think of enjoying a Snickers bar.
So, it’s no surprise that Snickers, with the help of the AMV BBDO ad agency and Google, found a list of the top 500 search terms and generated thousands of misspellings for each one.
If you want an exact number, it’s 25,381. All these misspellings led to the yourenotyouwhenyourhungry.com domain, where they were encouraged to buy Snickers.
Their ad focused on the description: “Yu cant spel properlie wen hungry Grab yourself a Snikkers” to get more customers.
Over 5000 visitors headed over to the microsite, with 558,589 ad impressions. However, no one understands how they managed to get this campaign to work.
Google’s ad policies have a strict rule against running ads that don’t use spelling and grammar correctly.
While you might be tempted to mimic this campaign’s success, you need to spell everything correctly because Google probably won’t expect you to have the same level of success as Snickers did.
Everything about Snickers campaigns is knowing that you can’t function properly without food. Seeing how this worked, Snickers and AMV BBDO were most likely able to talk to Google about why this campaign would work.
While it won’t work for everyone, this was a great way to continue with Snickers’ established reputation.
6. How to Use PPC to Get Your Dream Job
Have you ever tried to stand out to your employer and let them know your skills? Well, Alec Brownstein did just that in 2009. As a senior copywriter, Alec decided that he wanted to find a new job.
But how would he do this? Well, he looked at five creative directors he wanted to work for and used PPC to target their names in Google searches. After all, we’ve all sat there and searched for our names on Google.
Naturally, he expected them to do the same.
Each click only cost him $0.13 because he was the only person bidding on their names. Then, once he made the ad, he linked it to his website. The entire campaign cost him $6 and was a great way to show that he understood how marketing works.
But how successful was this campaign?
With Alec targeting five of New York’s best creative directors, he managed to get the attention of four of them. These four offered him an interview, with half of them offering him a job.
This campaign was a massive success for Alec, and it’s no wonder why. It’s a great way of understanding what people do and how you can use it to your advantage.
Alec’s campaign is a great way to use your knowledge and behavior. It also shows that you don’t need to spend much on your campaign, just enough to get your message across.
Final Thoughts
These campaigns all work as PPC campaigns because they stand out. They’re not just about using ad space but carefully curating the searches they’ll appear on.
Buying ad space won’t necessarily get you customers, but these campaigns are about getting your interest.
Of course, not every message has come across as intended, but learning from successful campaigns or those that haven’t entirely done so, can be a great way to understand how to launch your own.
Now that you know what can bring success to your campaign, you should find it easy to figure out how to maximize your PPC ads.
These days, everything is online. You can’t get your business anywhere without a great online presence. With search engines forever changing, it’s difficult to stay on top of it all! That’s where I’ll come in.
Hello, my name is Jack O’Neil and I have been in the marketing industry for almost 10 years. I focus on online marketing, SEO, advertising, and more.
