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Practical RSS Marketing Strategies, Part I: Advertising
This is the first in a new three part series about RSS advertising and marketing. In each article, I’ll take a look at RSS marketing from a different perspective - the first is advertising, the second publishing, and finally, I’ll talk about using RSS as a direct marketing vehicle. Each article will be in the context of a real-life case study and give some takeaway advice to help you start or improve your RSS marketing strategies.
Advertising in RSS feeds offers advertisers several advantages over other forms of online and offline advertising. For example, RSS feed advertising is very targeted, relatively low-cost and can yield higher click-through rates than many other forms of online advertising. But, to achieve these results, certain strategies and best practices need to be followed to help advertisers optimize RSS ad campaigns.
PriceRunner, an online price-comparison shopping engine, has taken some interesting steps into RSS advertising (disclosure: PriceRunner is a Pheedo client). Originally founded in 1999, PriceRunner has grown to become one of the largest websites of its kind with much of its traffic coming from advertising efforts across many online marketing mediums.
About a year ago, PriceRunner chose to test RSS ads to assess the medium and decide if RSS advertising campaigns could help with their overall marketing goal: to drive quality traffic to the PriceRunner website.
Analyze Your Target Audience
PriceRunner’s creative advertises a certain product or product category and offers price comparison services once the ad is clicked. What makes these ads effective is the logical targeting. The topic of the blog and the demographics of the audience are analyzed and appropriate products are placed in the ads that will gain the most interest.
For example, Dooce.com is a popular blog that features photographs taken by the blogger, Heather Armstrong, in addition to the written blog content. Though not a photography blog, these photos make up a large portion of the blog content. Many of the readers are everyday people who see the documentation of Heather’s life through her photographs and can’t help but be inspired. PriceRunner tapped into this by advertising digital cameras and other imaging products, such as photo printers, in Dooce’s high-traffic RSS feeds, and has seen great results from this out-of-the-box contextual targeting strategy.
Tell Your Story
Another key strategy employed by PriceRunner in its RSS efforts is the concept of “telling not selling.” PriceRunner could have easily placed ads that simply stated “compare PDA prices at PriceRunner.com.” This form of selling is not effective in RSS feeds - but for many advertisers is similar to the creative used in search ads, such as AdSense. Consumers of RSS feeds are there for the content. Over-promotion in advertisements adds nothing of value for the reader, and is generally ineffective. Telling a story, on the other hand, has proven to be effective and necessary in developing RSS ad creative that works with the audience.
The Gadgeteer is a gadget review site that covers consumer technologies such as cameras, PDAs and printers. PriceRunner’s ads in The Gadgeteer blog offer a headline stating what it offers: “Compare Before You Buy Webcams.” The headline is then followed by useful information, giving the user a glimpse of how they can benefit from clicking through to the PriceRunner site: “Find the Best Deal on TRENDnet IP201W Wireless Internet Camera Webcams: Lowest Price at Amazon Marketplace $148.99 as of 6/17/06.” Overall, this ad tells the user quite a bit of useful information in a short amount of copy. The reader knows he can compare webcam prices, find the lowest price on a specific webcam and that the prices are compared in real-time to the sites they refer to.
In fact, as soon as Pricerunner finds a new lower price for the advertised product, the ad creative is updated automatically and a new ad unit is inserted into the RSS feeds. RSS ads can be dynamically updated on the fly, unlike an AdSense ad where the creative is set, then remains static.
PriceRunner has targeted the right audience, told a story and offered its value proposition, all in a short RSS advertisement. This is a step above many other forms of online advertising, and part of the reason RSS often performs better than other online marketing mediums.
Strategy is Key
RSS has been a fruitful medium for many companies’ marketing efforts, including PriceRunner. As discussed, RSS offers many advantages over other online marketing mediums, but just having potential does not guarantee success. PriceRunner put several best practices and innovative thinking to use in its RSS campaigns, and received increased website traffic as a result, ultimately leading to revenue growth. The characteristics of RSS contributed to part of their success, but effective execution of the right strategies is ultimately what will help advertisers obtain the results they want from RSS marketing campaigns.
Key Takeaways:
- Good execution of RSS advertising can lead to higher-click through, lower cost and better targeting than most other forms of online advertising.
- Analyze your RSS feed audience and target them with relevant and interesting creative.
- Tell a story, do not sell a product - RSS readers want content!
- RSS ads let advertisers dynamically change ad creative on the fly.
- Employing RSS advertising best practices leads to more ad clicks and increased revenue.
The next installation of this three part series will discuss marketing strategies on the publisher side, and how content producers can use RSS as a powerful marketing vehicle.
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