The Energy Action Coalition is a web-savvy non-profit that makes effective use of social media in its viral Internet marketing campaigns. In these campaigns, motivated individuals actively reach out to engage others to advocate for clean and green energy policy.

Search marketing presents a somewhat different challenge. Marketers must determine how members of their target segment express themselves through search terms and use that information to write four line text ads that will make these searchers click.

As outlined in the attached presentation, our students, who worked with Energy Action Coalition to build out a Google Grants AdWords marketing program, found the following:

• There was a large segment of people searching for "facts" and information on specific topics covered by the Energy Action Coalition.
• Campaigns targeted at these information needs, especially for global warming, wind energy, and fossil fuels could be highly effective.
• Having settled the ad campaigns, a good next step would be to test campaign web page designs that incorporated the keywords and appeals that had been demonstrated to work.

Overall, by focusing on what would appeal to specific search segments, students were able to add 11,000 new monthly visitors to the Energy Action Coalition website.

The student team for this project in Fall 2009 included:

• Gordon Kangas
• Jeff Hehr
• Ryan McGuckin
• Kyle Elkins