You've heard of the 5 W's--who, what, when where and why--possibly in relation to writing or analyzing news stories or press releases. The 5 W's are also applicable to choosing keywords and sites for AdWords keyword or site-targeted advertising. For example, considering how these five dimensions relate to potential customers for CaRP (my RSS to HTML conversion tool), I get:

  • Who: webmasters (especially PHP users) and the sites they visit
  • What: RSS, PHP, webpages, websites, content, etc.
  • When: Daily, hourly, regularly, frequently, when you're on vacation, while you're sleeping (CaRP updates your site automatically on a continuous basis)
  • Where: Websites (potential customers' sites and the sites they visit)
  • Why: SEO, design, convenience, time saving, profits, ...

Some of these may not yield useful keywords or words to use for searching for target sites. But forcing yourself to consider all possible angles can reveal less obvious, but potentially effective, approaches to advertising.

For example, I almost skipped over "when" in the list above. My first thought was that "when" applied when advertising an event, or a product related to an event (commute time and books on tape, bedtime and white noise CDs, etc.) But by forcing myself to think a little harder, I realized that there are time-related aspects to CaRP. With a little more though, I should be able to come up with ways to use them in my advertising.

Having seen what a little extra thought produced in the "when" section, I think I spend a little more time brainstorming on the other 4 W's...