While working on a blog post for one of my long-stand clients, Disruptive Advertising, I was trying to find an interesting way to discuss some of the challenges that advertisers face in PPC advertising.
PPC advertising can be really frustrating. It seems like something you should be able to just set up and run, but things never quite seem to work out that simply.
As I was mulling over this concept and how to communicate it in an interesting way, I kept running into the same roadblock: how do you get people excited about fixing problems in their PPC advertising account? It just isn’t very interesting.
To revitalize an old, stressful, frustrating topic, I needed to characterize things in a new way.
Then it occurred to me: everyone wants to be the hero, the person who conquered evil and saved the day. This is especially true for PPC advertisers, who tend to be a little more in tune with pop culture icons like Marvel heroes, Star Wars, zombies, monsters and vampires.
Suddenly, I had an idea. Many of these fantasy monsters had a lot in common with the problems advertisers faced in running PPC campaigns. If I could connect the two in a fun, compelling way that positioned Disruptive Advertising as an expert, it just might grab people’s interest get them excited about an old, boring topic.
And who was the classic expert at defeating fantasy monsters? Abraham Van Helsing, the original vampire hunter from Bram Stoker’s classic: Dracula.
Over the years, Van Helsing’s name has become a synonym for monster hunting. There was a new action-horror series airing with the name, Hugh Jackman even played the character in a cult classic back in 2004—Van Helsing was an ideal character to connect the worlds of fantasy and online advertising.
With that, the idea for Van Helsing’s Guide to PPC advertising was born.
I pitched the concept to Disruptive and they loved it. With Halloween coming up in a few months, it was a great way to connect with businesses with a stand-out, different marketing campaign.
To really sell the idea, I created a backstory: over time, legendary monsters like vampires, zombies, skeletons and werewolves had adapted to changes in technology. Many were now lurking in the recesses of the internet, particularly within PPC advertising accounts…
Van Helsing had been battling these monsters all along, but now they had become so pervasive that he couldn’t keep up. He needed help, so he asked Disruptive Advertising to spread his message and rally advertisers to fight the good fight.
It was all very cheeky and fun, but the guide was written from Van Helsing’s perspective and heavily styled to help make the world feel real. The landing page for the guide, the ads we ran for it, the blog posts I wrote, the email drip campaign—everything was designed to bring our audience into this world and make them feel like heroes.
To really bring this concept home, we threw together a little action-horror video ad showing how Disruptive got ahold of Van Helsing’s guide. Filmed on the cheap at Disruptive’s office (and even featuring yours truly), it was a fun little ad that helped set up the rest of the campaign.
Here’s a little teaser trailer for the eBook:
In addition to video ads, we created infographics, blog posts, Facebook image ads—we ran an entire content campaign in support of the eBook. The angle turned out to be so good that I was able to get industry-leading publishers like Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal and SpyFu to pick it up.
And, it all worked. People (including current clients) loved the content so much that they reached out directly just to say how much they liked it. The follow-up drip campaign of weekly emails that I put together had an average open rate of 87%.
Yes, you read that right. The entire campaign maintained almost 90% open rates—an almost unheard-of figure.
In the end, this eBook became one of my all-time favorite projects and was a perfect example of how well a creative, well-executed, multi-channel marketing campaign can work.