It’s good that you want to advertising with PPC. It’s an effective form of online marketing and advertisers who have tried it have come away with huge successes. But before you start your PPC campaign there is something very important you must do. Fail to do it and you will likely fail to earn any ROI from your advertising.
The most important thing to do to prepare for your PPC campaign is to ensure that your landing page is optimized and ready for conversions.
Optimization is important for obvious reasons. The optimization of your landing page must match the optimization of your PPC ad. When you sync your optimization well then you’ll have a higher quality score and a lower cost per click.
But even more important than optimization is conversion readiness. It doesn’t matter how well you optimize your landing page if you do make any sales. The conversions pay for the advertising and create your ROI. Without a conversion ready landing page there is no hope of success with your PPC campaign no matter how well written and optimize your ads are. Get your landing page ready for the close before you open your campaign.
Many PPC advertisers spend a lot of time optimizing their ad campaigns around a list of keywords and target each specific keyword to a landing page. They’ll have one ad for all of their keywords and each keyword bid based on that ad. In the past, this was an acceptable way to manage a PPC campaign, but it’s not the best way today.
If you really want to optimize your PPC campaign, increase your quality score and decrease your bid per click, you should create ad groups. It will increase your ROI.
The way to build ad groups is to take a few keywords that are related to each other and group them into one group. Then write an ad for each of your groups. Make sure each group is targeted toward a specific landing page so that you are matching a unique ad to a set of keywords, called an ad group, and simultaneously a landing page that is optimized for that list of keywords. Your ad groups should consist of a handful of keywords – I’d say no more than five to ten.
Here’s an example:
Ad Group A (5 keywords) PPC Ad A Landing Page A
Ad Group B (7 keywords) PPC Ad B Landing Page B
Ad Group C (10 keywords) PPC Ad C Landing Page C
Ad Group D (6 keywords) PPC Ad A Landing Page A
Notice the similarities between ad groups A and D? They target the same ad and landing page. That’s because the keyword list is similar, but different. The landing page is optimized around both lists of keywords and the ad as well. Your keywords may be something like this:
Ad Group A – widget, widgetize, widgeted, widgets, widgeter
Ad Group D – red widget, widgetized, widgeted for red, red widgets, widgeters
The idea is to get specific with your targeting. Drive it down so that you are targeting the specific audience you want to do business with. Increase your PPC quality score and your ROI goes up as well.
Is your landing page or your ad more important in your pay per click campaign? To be honest, it’s neither. They should work together as a team. Let’s examine what the function of each is in your PPC campaign.
Landing Page – The landing page is the place where your visitor will buy your product. It’s important that your landing page is optimized and ready to close sales. It should have a strong call to action and sell the benefits of your offer. The landing page also plays a big part in the quality score of your ad. If it receives a lot of bounces then your quality score will suffer so the importance of your landing page cannot be overstressed.
Ad Content – On the other hand, your ad is what gets people to the landing page from the search results page. It is very important that your ad target the right keywords and that it includes a strong call to action. Without a strong call to action, no one will click your ad and no one will see your landing page or buy your product.
Both your landing page and your ad are integral parts of your PPC campaign. They should work together. They are a team. Neither is more important than the other. Such thinking is what leads to the fall of great teams in sports, business, and marriage. When one partner thinks he is the glue that holds the team together, there’s a problem. Make your ad and your landing page work as a team.
For most companies, a well-crafted and managed pay per click campaign can build real significant results into their online marketing plans. This is an area of online business that requires some critical thought. You don’t want to just jump in with both feet and a big budget and nonchalantly start tossing money away. There is a strategy to consider.
When you first start your pay-per-click campaign, do so lightly. Run a test. Initially, you want to test your keywords and landing pages. No sense in throwing thousands of dollars into a marketing campaign for a website that isn’t ready to close sales. So run a moderate test to see what kind of results you can get before you go all out with your marketing campaign.
When you run your initial test, you are looking for three things:
- Is your landing page optimized well enough to receive traffic and close sales?
- Are your keywords the right keywords for reaching your target market?
- Is your ad content written well enough to attract click throughs?
If you can answer yes to those three questions then you are ready to start your pay per click campaign. If your answer to any of these questions after you run your test is “no” then you need to tweak and retest.
One can perform search, social media and pay per click optimization all day long, but without a properly designed and optimized landing page, your conversion rate will be far lower than your campaigns are working to achieve. Here are some tips for creating a good landing page for your site, and in turn, increasing your ROI.
- Create Multiple Landing Pages- This is often overlooked because most people simply assume that a user will take it upon them self to find what they’re looking for. Sure, a well constructed site will make it easier to browse a site, but for anyone searching for specific products, services or information, they more than likely will prefer to be taken straight to what they are looking for. If you’re running an SEO campaign, your title, header and body tags will assist the search engines in finding the appropriate page to return in the result. For a Pay-Per-Click campaign, however, it is up to you to determine which ad brings the user to which page. This is why it is important to optimize your entire site, so that each product or service page can act as a landing page for those keywords specific to the product / service.
- Call To Action- Informative ads are great, but a lot of times, ensuring your customer they can take action is a better way to get conversions. The difference between “Brand Name Toasters” and “Get Brand Name Toasters” can be great. Also, using more than one call to action within your site’s landing page can help your conversion rate. It is important as well to choose less abrasive calls to action, such as a “Try it Now” button instead of a simple “Buy” button.
- Make it Easy to Contact You- We’ve found that a lot of times, users want information before buying, and furthermore, they don’t want to read your entire website in order to get that information. For things like quotes, price comparisons, etc., it may be a good idea to have an easy to find form on your landing page, which will encourage the user to make their inquiry right then and there. Just be sure not to ask for too much personal information, since many users are careful about what they reveal about themselves online.
- Make Browsing an Enjoyable Experience – While the main goal is to take users directly to that for which they are searching, many times, they will want to see what else you have to offer. In this case, it is crucial to have a site that functions well, looks great and does not bombard the user with ads, flash movies and annoying images / sounds. Concerning sounds, there are very few reasons to ever play a sound on your website, and off the top of my head, the only one I can think of is to play music that the user is searching for, in which case there should be a fully functional player that can be stopped, or paused.
- User Control – Just as important as the enjoyability of browsing your site, for a user to be able to browse the way they prefer is a good way to ensure they will not become annoyed and leave. There should be nothing upon landing that prevents the user from clicking links, scrolling, or reading information – including load time. It is good to keep your site simple, but if you must offer a flashy presentation about your product, link the user from the landing page. Your landing page should offer only essential information and graphics, with a link to those interested in learning more or viewing more relavant images. Otherwise, the user may feel forced, leave your site, and never come back
- Thank You – This is key after the conversion. I’ve purchased products on sites that had no thank you message, and simply took me back to the product page after I purchased the item. This can confuse the user, and perhaps make them wonder if they even purchased the product. Additionally, saying thank you lets the user know you appreciate their business, and you can even add a polite call to action like “Please shop online again with us soon.” The key to the Thank You page is polite and, well, thankful.
