The ad campaign to capitalize on the Unitarian Jihad buzz continues apace. I checked but couldn’t find any restrictions about telling you the details, but I’ll be somewhat vague on the money end, just in case.
Thanks to four small donations, we launched a Google ad campaign on April 13 to pick up folks searching or blogging about the UJ. The ads point to this page on UUWiki (which points several other places) and is aimed an English language web pages.
With Google ads you only pay for actual clicks on your ad, and you can set the max you’re willing to pay for a click. Our clicks average at a cost of a small coin. Our ad has shown over 8,000 times, and it’s closing in on 400 clicks now. That gives it a click-through rate that’s better than four times the rate you’d expect from a direct mail piece, for instance. And for about the cost of a DVD.
Obviously, we’re talking about micro-advertising here. Both the cost and the return are quite low compared to traditional advertising, but I think worth it all the more. The high click-through rate tells me we’re reaching folks who already want to know more. A cleverly targeted ad campaign for a local church would probably yield a small but steady trickle of visitors coming through the door.
I have had a local “unitarian jihad” ad in the MD/DC area since April 12. The rate per click is so low (as have been the clicks) that it hasn’t added up yet to a single bill. That’s not my only ad, though. Our visitors just say they found us on the web, so I’m not sure how exactly. If we’ve helped people become familiar with Unitarian Universalism, it is worth it.
You just have to ask how they found you. And then ask if that was easy or hard.
You might try a broader set of terms in addition to “UJ.” Might get more hits that way (or at least more impressions).