Hold the marketing presses!
I might have found a new Rosetta Stone moment in the history of online marketing.
Here's the story.
I'm trying Yahoo's pay for ad placement service, which is similar the Google AdWords.
I am promoting a free teleconferencing service and needed to choose the appropriate keywords. With the help of my Yahoo Editor (a real person who creates a real report and speaks to you on the phone and with email), we decided on 5 out of 50 keywords selected.
After a few days, I noticed that four of the keyword were related to "free teleconferences" and one was for "cheap teleconference." The cost for the "cheap teleconference" was $1.01 and placed me in the 8th position, which is pretty low. The cost for the "free teleconference" ranged from 35 cents to 75 cents and placed me much higher in the listings!
This seemed a bit odd, so I asked my editor what he thought.
He said that maybe people didn't believe that free was really free. Maybe there was a catch. Or maybe if it was free it wasn't good. So people place a higher value on "cheap" because they know they have to pay.
Also, ironically, the top bid for "cheap teleconference" was about $9 per click! That's a LOT of money. I doubt anyone would bid that high if they didn't make sales! So I am assuming it must work. The next closest bids were for $8, $7, etc. Still pretty darn high!
I'm still testing to see what happens. It is truly a fascinating process.
What does this mean for you?
Maybe all the messages you are sending out for free teleseminars and free offers are winding up in the spam bin because they flag the word free. Maybe a different word would get through the filters and actually reach your readers. Maybe if you charge just $1 for the seminar, you'll get a higher attendance rate because more people will see the message so they can act on it, and maybe they will value it more because it isn't free! Just testing. If you have ideas, please let me know.
If you're interested in getting your own free teleconferences, yes, no strings attached, and yes, a good quality phone line, I invite you click here:
http://www.myfreeteleconference.com/promo/
At least it won't cost me ad dollars. <g>
Dan Janal
Your Fearless PR LEADER
www.prleads.com
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