Case Study 4 - Landing Pages in Your PPC Campaign - Deciding What to Use & How

So, just to quickly recap on what we've done so far, before I continue with the whole process and what is the topic of the 4th case study of this series.

So far, we've:

• Chosen our target market, and product.
• We've done our market and customer research, and have found out what the customer wants, and what language they use to find what they want.
• We've got our kwd list and split it into tightly targeted groups.
• We've written at least two ads for each of our ad group.

Now we're about to decide on how to approach the whole campaign. This is such a broad question - that we'll need a few days to cover all angles. But bear with me as I do have a structured way to give you an objective overview - in just one day :o).

Decide What Business Model You Want to Use for This Campaign

Yes, this is vital as it will decide if you need landing pages, and if you need to setup a back-end system to your sales funnel.

The first may cost you more per sale, but will be a lot less time consuming to setup. The second one will take you a lot longer to setup and conceptualise, but in the long term will yield a lot more profits and sales than the first.

There's also a version 3, which essentially is somewhere in the middle. It doesn't collect leads, but still ads a pre-sell step in between to increase your chances of a sale.

It is entirely up to you which way you'll go, all I'll do here is present you with an overview of how to set each type up and hopefully give you enough info to decide for yourself.

Setup ONE

No landing page - you take traffic straight from your search engine ad to the vendors' site.

I like to apply the direct linking method to new campaigns that I am just starting out with. In that case, I usually need to test the profit capabilities of the product fast and with minimum expenditure on my behalf of time or money. If it's not going to deliver - I need to know now.

After I know the potential, I can work on enhancing and optimising. If it doesn't work out though - I'll know it straight away.

So with that method it's easy. You fling the traffic straight to the vendor's site and see the conversions roll (or not) in in your ClickBank account. There are a few things to be aware of here:

Google - you need to play as much as possible by their rules. So make sure you're compliant, if you're interested in the long-term well being of your campaign. Short term you may 'sneak' something by, but I speak from experience when I tell you they catch up sooner or later :o)

Here is what you need to do to be compliant: How do I create a high quality landing page?

Be sure to implement some sort of tracking for your campaigns. I am 100% for keyword-wise tracking of each and every campaign, but as an affiliate you'll be limited as to what you can do, so even if you just make sure that you have enough data to establish if a campaign is profitable or not is better than nothing.

The best tool (meaning the easiest to setup, use and maintain), I have found so far to enable you to track keyword-wise stats, especially if you're using ClickBank, is XtremeConversions. I hear Amir (the creator) has freshened the interface up and the tool is looking even better than before.

In the absence of such tool, there is a way to set up different CB accounts, but it is so long-winded, that I can't even begin to explain it here… so I won't.

The other alternative?

Well if you blindly start flinging traffic to a page or directly to the vendor, hoping something will stick… how do you know if you've found a winner. Most importantly, how do you scale that model? What I mean is, if you have only one campaign to look after - you'll manage somehow…

Another down-side of the direct linking method is that as an affiliate, very often you have very little control over where your traffic lands. That's not so bad if you're selling something where the site is just one sales page, but what happens if you're needing to lead traffic to some other page of the site…

And the final thing I can think of, is the biggest down-side… Where do all your customers go?

Yep, they come in, they may purchase, and they then disappear into thin air (actually into the vendor's sales funnel). Don't get me wrong - there's nothing wrong with the vendor getting all the info, but why shouldn't you?

A Little Bit About Building Good Landing Pages for PPC Traffic

Right, I'd like to be clear with you right from the start. Building successful long term sales funnels is an art form in itself, and it has so many influential factors at each step that will define a suitable model for you, that even if I tried to give you a 'one-type-fits-all' solution here I'd be lying to you - as it's impossible to do.

Each and every business model will need/suit a different sales funnel…

So, what I'll do for you instead, is give you the most basic setup, and let you build on that in an individual fashion - to make that fit your own business… Learn on the job. There are a lot of really good products out at the moment that go into a lot of detail as to how to implement a back-end system - they'll do a lot better job than me.

Let's get down to the nitty gritty…

You've got the click, you send the person through to your squeeze or landing page. Here are a few rules of engagement if you want to keep on the right side of Google (to satisfy the quality score system and get the best CPC):

1. Have tightly knit kwds in your AdGroups.
2. Incorporate the kwds into your ads as many times as possible - but without losing the human touch - i.e. bear in mind humans need to make sense of what you write.
3. Get a domain name that is relevant. This is important on two levels:
   • You'll get extra attention at the point of your ad being viewed - especially if the display URL contain the search phrase (or parts of it).
   • But you'll also get the benefits of the relevancy points towards your QS (quality score).
4. Make sure the page people are landing on is of relevant nature to the ad and keyword that's sending the traffic there.
5. Provide relevant information on the topic.
6. Be aware of what your linking structure is - links coming in and going out of that page. Google looks at whether you have just a little bit of content and then all you're doing is sending people off on their merry way, or if you seem to have authority links coming into that page and if you're linking out to relevant and helpful content.

Cool, so that's plenty to look out for. But if you have a template that you prepare once, containing all relevant parts, all you'll need to do each time you create a new landing page, is to fill in the blanks. Again, try and create a process map of this step and it will make your life a lot easier - especially if you plan to outsource this part of the business at a later stage.

By now you've guessed, that you will most likely need a few landing pages not just one. The way to decide how many you need is to put yourself in your prospect's shoes.

If you clicked on the ad - what content will you want to find on the page the ad takes you to?

Usually, you shouldn't need more than one page per ad group, because they are tightly related. But you may find that a few of your adgroups can all lead to your one landing page… Use your judgment and keep it relevant.

There's a very neat piece of software that allows you to dynamically change the kwd specificity of your page (so you'll only ever use one page), but more about that later.

The above are rules for creating any landing page for PPC traffic - regardless of it's purpose. Now let's look at the first of the two possible ways to use them.

Setup TWO

Use a pre-sell page, and then fling the traffic to the vendor to close the sale

This one is the easier of the two methods involving using a landing page. It has to be done well, but once it's done you leave it there to do its job. This method is good as it increases your chances for a sale (as you're 'warming' the prospect up to the product you're about to sell them).

The other benefit is that you have a more secure (although not full proof) way to ensure you are credited for the commission :o)

The general guidelines for creating one of those is all of the above, plus:

• Be sincere, and give the reader something unique and enticing.
• Have a story to tell that will appeal to the person looking to buy.
• The length of the copy is up to you - some people say long some stick with short. I personally hate the 50 page sales letter style, but you may feel otherwise. The best way to judge it is - if you've said enough to give a clear picture - then it's usually long enough.

I don't mean go ahead and rip off someone else's work!!! It's more about looking at the formula they are using and adapting it to your own style. For that I can recommend Day Job Killer - that's a great product full of different methods and ideas on how to achieve great results with your pre-sale.

If I was to use this method for our product, I would perhaps choose to take the angle of telling a story of how I found this product online 4 weeks ago. How I like d the sound of it - and since it was cheap enough and had a returns policy, I had to try it out. Then I'd proceed to summarise how I followed through and what the results were, before I sent them off to the vendor's site "to check it out for themselves".

Now, remember - NO LIES. I'd only tell this story if I had really done what I was describing. You could fib your way through this one, but something will give it away and you won't sound sincere - people will be put off. Don't forget that you're spending money on each click - so you need to make sure you make the most of converting them.

Anyway, you get the point right…

With this model, you don't have to worry about the back end if that's not your 'forte'. So it's just a good way of increasing your chances of converting.

Model THREE

Use a landing page to collect the prospect's details in return for free relevant information, then send them off to the vendor's site.

This one is the most time-consuming, and most thorough model to squeeze every bit of potential from your PPC campaign. It is harder to setup, develop and maintain, but you can ask any one marketer who's done it both ways, and they will tell you that it's the best way to have a strong, profitable and consistent business.

This method can also be done on the quick, or it can be developed into an elaborate business model. Up to you - again…

In short, you setup a landing page - as discussed above. But instead of just pre-selling and sending prospects to the vendor for more info, you're now offering them a bonus. Either a free report that's tightly relevant to the product, or something else free and complimentary to the topic of the product.

There are many ways to tie in the prospect and get the most out of them, but again - there are whole products dedicated to this specialty - this case study is just a basic overview.

The benefits of this method are that:

• you get a dialog going with the people you're sending to the vendor.
• you get them on your list so you can promote other products to them at a later stage.
• you get their details, so even if they don't end up buying the product right now, you have more opportunities to 'strike a cord' with them and sell them what they need through your newsletters. So your hard earned PPC pennies are not wasted straight away.
• by offering them something of greater value than most other people, you make sure that the prospect buys from you and not some other affiliate, or their own link.
• you are a lot more in control of converting your money spent on PPC into a profit.
• and finally, this is a great way to ensure you're affiliate commissions are not stolen, and my favourite…
• to get the chance to correct the damage of a potentially rubbish vendor sales letter…

What am I using?

OK, so as I mentioned right in the beginning, I am only going to use the direct linking method at this stage for my campaign, because of all the reasons I gave you, and also because I already know that the sales page of the vendor is great, so my chances are ok.

Remember, I just need to test the 'water' here. It'll be a quick campaign - usually less than a week. Be aware that Google is not very tolerant toward the direct linking tactic…

Saying that, it is such a competitive product and niche, that I will have to be extremely vigilant about how long I have my PPC campaign on in that way. Then I will have to setup some sort of an enhanced method to give my campaign the edge…

For now though, I need a domain name - remember - be relevant.

Go on - decide how you want to setup YOUR business/campaign. If you decide to use a landing page, make sure you get it ready using some of the guidelines I mentioned to you. Then get yourself a domain name and you're ready to go.

As always, post any comments you may have about this case study below. We'll address each one as they come in :o)

Till later…

Anita

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