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I’m watching the StomperNet DVDs in my car, well listening to them anyway. They contain the stage presentations from the Orlando event held earlier this year that I missed out on because I was on a plane back to Australia at the time.

While 95% of the content in the presentations isn’t teaching me anything new, in almost all presentations there’s one or two really powerful points that make watching worthwhile (some of the best stuff was about eBay selling - but that’s another story).

There’s one tip I’d like to pass on now from Dr. Mike, the real life doctor turned Internet marketer, who builds niche sites. He talked a lot about how he uses pay per click traffic to initially test his niches to see whether they can turn a profit. He covered some standard PPC stuff, like beating the Google Slaps, setting high maximum daily spend limits and choosing keywords, but there was one point that I hadn’t considered before that I thought was quite clever and something I suspect most PPC users don’t do.

How To Target High Priced Keywords Using Parallel Markets

Dr Mike called his method “Parallel Marketing”, which is a PPC technique you can use to tap into lucrative markets without paying the high per click rates.

As you probably know, Google calculates click prices factoring in demand for the phrase. If a lot of people are willing to buy certain keyword phrases then the price increases. This usually happens for the most lucrative markets, like mortgages and insurance etc. Anything where the lifetime value of a customer is high.

The Parallel method simply means to target complimentary industries using PPC at lower per click prices to attract the same type of customer who would be interested in buying the lucrative products and services.

The example Mike used was related to reverse mortgages, which are apparently targeted at seniors and retirees (must be a USA thing?). Tapping keywords related to this niche is costly due to the competition and customer value, but if you find markets where the same type of customer has an interest, you can use PPC to drive traffic and build a list at lower click prices and then sell the higher priced items.

Taking the mortgage example, seniors and retirees are often interested in RVs (campervans) for holidaying, which will have a lower click price than mortgages. In this case you build a campaign targeting PPC traffic searching for RV related information, build a list and eventually promote the higher paying mortgage related products.

Think Laterally About Your Marketing

This strategy should work in any market. If the PPC cost is high, think about other things the target market are interested in and go after the traffic there. You need to be clever in how you market your offers because the message won’t be as perfectly aligned if you use complimentary industries to tap the traffic, but if you are clever you should be able to carefully weave in related offers without turning away your audience.

Think laterally and you should be able to come up with many things your target market are interested in, then set up PPC campaigns to tap into the traffic there at a much lower cost. It’s simple, so it must work.