Incrementality is a term that is associated with how many PPC ad clicks are caused by a lack of similar organic results. In other words, if you have a PPC ad that targets a specific keyword phrase and you receive 100 ad clicks in the absence of an associated organic result, 50 of those are said to be incrememntal if they are not replaced by clicks on organic results when those organic results are present.
Let’s take a concrete example.
Let’s say you are targeting the keyword phrase “red banana.” If you have a PPC ad that you run periodically targeting that phrase and you get 100 clicks a day on that ad when there is no organic search result for your landing page, we’ll consider that your base of comparison. Now, let’s say you have an organic search result that appears alongside your PPC ad. If you get 50 clicks on the organic search result when it is present and 50 clicks on the PPC ad, then you do not have any incremental clicks on the ad. However, if you only get 25 clicks on the organic result and 50 clicks on the PPC ad, then 25% of your ad clicks are said to be incremental.
Google recently performed a study concerning incrementality on ad clicks.
The interesting thing about this study is that it shows that 50% of ad clicks are incremental when the advertiser has the top ranking for the targeted keyword phrase. If your organic result is in the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th positions, then advertisers’ incrementality rate is 81%. The incrementality rate is 96% for advertisers whose organic rankings are in the 5th position or lower.
While Google is careful to point out that individual advertisers will have differing results, this is a telling study. For one thing, it illustrates the importance of high organic search rankings. But it also says that PPC advertising is more important when your organic search rankings are lower.
It used to be that all you had to think about when building your landing pages was how to optimize your titles and headlines, images through alt tags, keyword usage, and a having strong call to action. Is that all you have to think about today or is there more to it now?
I think that landing page optimization has changed and primarily it has changed because users are more savvy now than they used to be.
For sure, Internet users overall care more about design and layout today than they used to. At one time an ugly landing page could still make money, but because most niches now are embattled in some pretty stiff competition, if your web pages don’t meet a certain design standard, then your competition is going to win. Users will bounce from an ugly site to a more attractive site and make a purchase there even if your product is better.
For that reason, web design is much more important today. You want your site to be optimized well and have a strong call to action, but you want it to be beautiful too.
Aside from that, you also want to pay much more attention to metrics. What are you measuring, and are you sure you’re measuring the right things?
For starters, you should know how much of your traffic is converting. You should also measure your social signals, e-mail opt-ins, and anything else that could potentially lead to a conversion. You have to know what web design elements are working for you and eliminate any that aren’t. This often requires A/B testing or multivariate testing in some form.
By testing your landing pages for better optimization and conversion you signal to the world, and your in-house team, that you are serious about building your brand. It all starts with effective web design.
Is there ever a time when you should stop your PPC campaign? Absolutely. But when is that time?
Obviously, you don’t want to stop something that is working. So if you have a PPC campaign that is bringing you an ROI, then that’s not a campaign you want to stop. But you do want to stop those campaigns that are not working.
How long should you let your pay per click campaigns go before you decide to stop them? You don’t want them to go on too long.
It depends on how much money you have invested, but if you aren’t experiencing enough click throughs or the click throughs you are getting aren’t converting, then that’s when you want to put your PPC ads on pause and redirect your advertising efforts.
CTR is an important metric. How many click throughs is enough? It’s different for every campaign, but if your click throughs don’t match your expectations, then it’s time to find out why. You can pause your campaign long enough to tweak your ads and see if that increases your CTR.
Conversion rate is another problem. If your PPC ads aren’t converting, it’s likely your landing pages. Have you tested them? If not, then you should pause your PPC campaign and engage in a little multivariate testing of your landing pages. Find out what works, then restart your pay per click campaigns when you have the kinks worked out.
Managing your own website can be difficult when faced with issues such as time limitations, and perhaps even a lack of advanced skills. In these situations, website owners often try to take shortcuts. One of those shortcuts involves the optimization of web pages for search.
It can be an easy escape to simply optimize the home page and perhaps one or two landing pages, after all, that is where you want your traffic coming in – hence the term ‘landing pages’. That approach makes the assumption that the only traffic you want is from buyers – if you’re in business, then that makes sense.
The approach can be misguided. First, while your landing pages are optimized for search, your customers are not. They tend to use a wide range of search phrases, and no matter how well optimized your landing pages are, they cannot hope to cover every single search term. Your secondary pages, on the other hand, can be optimized for a wide range of search terms – in fact, the more pages, the more search phrases covered.
Taking short cuts when optimizing your website means you are short changing yourself when it comes to traffic. Every visitor that lands on one of your pages is a potential customer, no matter which page they actually arrive on. The more pages you have indexed and ranking well in search, the more traffic you are likely to receive.
Search engine optimization is a process that takes into account each page – it also takes into account your web site as a whole. Rather than taking shortcuts, spend some time optimizing every page. Over time, you will experience more traffic coming into your website, and a higher sales turnover to match.
Gaining traffic from social media is one thing, converting that traffic into dollars is quite another. One of the hardest tasks for any new business is that of converting traffic into sales. Terms such as ‘targeted traffic’ is often mentioned in this context and it is one of the most important starting points. It’s not the only issue to consider, however.
There are four components to consider if you want to convert traffic from social media to sales. These are:
Context: The context of your content is important. You can provide content on a social media site that sparks and interest in finding out more about you, or you can provide content that sparks an interest in buying your products or services. They are both important. The first can help boost your brand and reputation, but it is the second we are interested in here – providing content that sparks an interest to buy.
Landing Pages: Once you have sparked that interest to buy you must have a landing page that closes the deal. To begin with, you may need several versions of the one landing page and a system that tests each of those pages.
Split Testing: One of the most under-utilized components of marketing is split testing. Often, this involves having several different landing pages then testing each one under similar circumstances. This provides an insight into which landing page has the highest conversion and profit rates.
Tracking: Being able to track a campaign is equally important. You need to know how well it is performing, what sort of conversion rates you are achieving, and what factors may be affecting your conversion rates.
Social media optimization is becoming an important aspect of online business. It’s no longer good enough to have lots of traffic. These days, you needs lot’s of the right sort of traffic – that is, traffic that converts in sales.
Before you begin a pay per click campaign it is always a good idea to get a PPC evaluation, which is a way for your PPC manager to see what you’ve done, how it’s affected your ROI, what worked, what didn’t, etc. There are 5 key elements to a good PPC evaluation.
- Website Evaluation – There are certain aspects to your website that are important for consideration when you use PPC to drive traffic to it. First is usability. Do your visitors find your website usable or is it difficult to navigate? How about conversion optimization? Are your landing pages ready to receive orders? And we’ll also take a look at your page load times to ensure that your PPC ads have a high quality score.
- Existing PPC Accounts – Do you have existing accounts? How effectively were they managed? What potential issues are there in those accounts, what are your missed opportunities, are you targeting the right keywords, etc.?
- New PPC Accounts – You’ll need to outline your PPC strategy, estimate your average cost per click on each keyword, set your monthly budget, and define your marketing channels.
- Google Analytics Account – Do you have one? We’ll set one up for you. You also need to set goals and establish lead funnels.
- Custom Pricing – Finally, you’ll need to get your pricing set for your campaigns. Not a one-size-fits-all budget, but the cost for your campaign.
If you’ve been struggling with PPC and you’re ready to take on a campaign that will be successful, get a PPC evaluation.
You may feel your search engine marketing efforts are paying off and all is going well – they could be too. However, you should always be reviewing your activities to ensure you are get the most out of your campaigns.
Search Engine Journal has a timely post that provides seven tips to increasing your landing page conversions – we could all use an increase in conversions, even at the best of times. Consider reviewing the following in relation to your landing pages:
- Call to Actions Matter – is your call to action clear
- Digestible content – is your content scanable
- Minimize choice – don’t confuse things with too many choices
- Keep It SIMPLE – create simple pages
- Keep form length to a minimum – only collect the data you need
- Avoid marketing speak – use every day language
- Envoke Trust – if I trust your site, I will buy from you
Although very obvious areas to review, over time our pages get out of hand – reign them in and with luck, your conversions will start to climb. The post makes one point that is worth repeating:
Landing pages are becoming overly complicated data dumps where the short attention spanned consumer is left to sort through the pop-ups, multiple focus points, talking heads and flashing pictures. No wonder bounce rates are astronomical on most sights. Let’s stop blaming poor market conditions….
Now go back and look at your landing pages in relation to that description. How does it measure up? Many don’t measure up and by trimming them back you can make them lean, mean conversion machines.
