A lot of people seem to believe that targeting "product name" keywords, or "product name + review", "product name + scam" combos is a sure-shot way of making lots of sales: Apparently those keywords are supposed to be magical, and right at the end of the buying cycle. Personally, I think that's just fairy-tale guru talk. I've done some organic tests with a couple of products. For little known products it actually seems to produce results - moderate results, nothing extravagant. As far as popular info products go, I think aiming for these keywords is a terrible idea. Simply because they're mostly researched by fellow marketers who have been fed the exact same concept. ex: I ran some organic tests for "earth4energy review" using mostly article marketing. After doing quite a bit of work, I actually landed in the first page of google results for that keyword, for a couple of days. Those are competitive keywords, and it took quite a bit of work! As far as results go... 300-400 hops were generated, and not a single order form impression, much less a sale! My impression is that such keywords tend to be mostly researched by marketers checking out the competition :-/ I'm not saying it's always a bad idea going after product name keywords; but it should work much better in specific niches, particularly when the estimated search volume clearly surpasses the volume of affiliates promoting that product, as indicated by the product's gravity. Remember, people who buy info products are generally quite technically challenged. If they were the kind of people who actually does some research, they would just dig deeper and find the info they need for free, without feeling the least willingness to fork out a few dozen bucks for an e-book.
i have some "product name" keywords that convert higher than any other keyword in that campaign. it all depends on the product, ad copy, landing page, etc etc etc
Re-think what you are saying, for me "product name + buying keyword" works like magic. Its not just a marketing guru's Bull s***t. It works and it works really well.
From my own experience as a vendor my "brand name" keywords convert 3x higher than any others - i.e. converting at 20-25% beating my best other keywords which convert around 4-8% - tested over a long period on PPC. A lot of other affiliate programs where you get a little more control over your affiliates activities ban the practice of brand name / product name PPC - and with good reason - the vendor will usually be top anyway, and they convert like crazy as they are previous customers who already know the brand name, or people on the edge of coverting.
Smitten, these keywords did convert well but I think they have now become too competitive. Better to choose something else that the lemmings are not chasing.
This technique and definitely be very profitable if done right. Like someone else already said. People who search for "product name + review/scam" are right on the edge of buying and just need a little bump to get them to buy
Product names are almost the only keywords I target. I said almost! I really make it good with them. I think it will depend on the niche you are working with. One thing though is that most buyers who use product names as a search query do not just type the plain name. I have noticed that they type something before the name or after the name. eg best ....,. downland......,. is the ...... good?. and stuff like that. Maybe it works different for other people, but that is how i see it.