Connecting Pay-per-click and off-line marketing: Google Borders for coupon

Now that many of us (but sadly not all) have realized the impact pay-per-click marketing has on acquiring new customers, it is a good time to look beyond online marketing.

There are vast arrays of opportunities for pay per click marketing that are not being utilized.

I recently saw several print ads for Borders. The ad was very simple. It consisted of a quick catchy phrase, which I can’t recall at this moment. That was followed by a line that said

“Google Borders for a coupon”

As a marketer (and lemming), I did what they ad told me to do. The Google result for “borders” was very interesting. The first 3 natural listings were all Borders owned sites. However, the paid listings were even more interested. I should say listing, because there was only one.

The PPC ad for “borders” takes the consumers to a page where they could print a 20% off coupon. Simple, Clean, straight to the point.

This is a brilliant concept, because it provides so much data for future marketing strategies. Now, Borders has the following information when the coupon is used:

* The keywords the user typed in the search box
* Location of customers
* Time and Day the coupon was printed vs. when it was used

Plus, the ad has a quick expire date. My hunch is that the date changes often, but the consumer does not realize that. They have to spend now before the 20% off is gone.

As much as I like that concept, there is one slight tweak that would result in even more marketing knowledge.

How does Borders distinguish consumers who found the coupon by initially looking for Borders vs. consumers who found the coupon because of the original print ad? And maybe in the big scheme of things that is not a big deal, I can completely see that.

One suggestion may be instead of having customers Google “borders”, how about a specific coupon code? A code so random and unique that the CPC would be extremely low and the competition would also be non existent. That would directly tie a search to an off-line campaign. And even better why not make that an on-line only coupon?

This Borders example is just one small example of pay-per-click marketing being used in other ways. There are large un-tapped marketing possibilities out there in the PPC area; we are only at the beginning stages.