Setting Up & Optimising a PPC Campaign - Day 3

So today we will talk about how to optimise your campaign once you've looked beyond the clicks on your ads.

The way you should look at things is that all the action up to and including the click on your ad in PPC is determined by your market research and choice, your product choice, your keyword research and list building, your ad and and copy writing skills. Add on to that the overall tactics we've discussed up 'till now.

Everything after the click on your ad, however, is determined by your landing page, and pre or post-sales setup.

What do I mean?

Let's say the person did a search on "lose weight effectively" and from the displayed results they liked my ad for "Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle". They click on it, because it appealed to whatever emotional triggers they carry on the topic. So they ended up on my landing page - let's say for the sake of this illustration, the pre-sell page I have telling people how good this product is.

Now once you get your prospect on the landing page you have decided to use for the ad they clicked on, your landing page becomes your 'sales man'.

Weather you decide to go for a 'hard sell' tactic or something more subtle, how you do it will decide if you'll make a sale - as simple as that. Except there's nothing simple about perfecting a sales page, i.e. optimising it.

People dedicate entire business models to this (and optimising website performance), but I'm going to try and give you a few handy tips that will help you get on with bettering your landing page.

This is a bit more complicated than optimising your ad, as there are a lot more variables that play a role in how well your campaign works. At the end of the day, this is where everything is decided. You should have pre-qualified your clickers to perfection by now (using your ad optimisation techniques), so it's now time for your 'sales man' to do their job.

Factors that influence the structure and success of your landing page, and how you can optimise through those factors

• What type of product are you promoting? - this is serious…

  Is it a physical book, or perhaps a digital course and so on. This will define how people pay you and also how you can use a bonus offer to capture details. Test different payment methods. Test if having the product image below or above the fold makes a difference, or if having the pic at all makes a difference.

• Is it in a highly competitive niche?

  If so, you will need to decide which of the 3 methods of monetising this campaign will maximise your ROI (return on investment). So try out what works best for you. Very competitive niches sometimes can't be profitable just from using a straight PPC camapign - but I've discussed that already.

• Is it a high ticket item (i.e. costs a lot)?

  If the 'thing' you're selling costs $10 you will need a very different page to sell it than if it cost $1000. So bear that in mind. Ask yourself - will I get more sales if I have more explanations, examples, testimonials on my page? Can I offer an incentive? It may be better that you set yourself a goal to just get the prospect's details on this visit (this will count as your conversion). Once you have their details you can use 3 to 7 messages to convert/convince them that buying your product is a good idea for them. You get the picture…

  The truth is that the more money a person is asked to spend, the harder is their decision making and the more convincing facts they will need. Adjust your landing page/sales method according to what your product requires.

• Is it something people are likely to be skeptical about?

  This goes hand in hand with my point above. Use your judgment and experiment with the amount of 'convincing' you do on your landing page.

• Is it a new, old, or re-launched product?

  This will define how many tactics and what tactics have been tried. It will also let you know how much excitement or market attention to expect. If the product has been around for a while and is still selling well, you might do well to write to the owner and ask him for tips on what works better. Sometimes you'll be really rewarded for the extra effort. Consider doing research on PPC campaigns that are already running and copying what seems to work. This can be done with the help of any one of the ad spying tools that have been released lately. It's not an exact science - bear that in mind - but it's certainly helpful to have one of those at your calling :o). We recently reviewed ZamDoo - which is one of the best such tools available.

• Can it be sold in conjunction with another product/s?

  If it's complementary/supplementary to a few other products in the market, then you can test collecting names and doing an auto-responder series promoting the other products - that way you increase your chances of not only converting, but also maximising the return on every penny spent. It's not a big industry secret that having a list is the best long term income solution - so I'm obviously not discovering the world here :o)

• How good is the vendor's sales page?

  We've talked about this too. If the vendor is already doing a good job at the selling bit, why not test different pre-sells? Maybe test a story-type page against, a review-type page and see which one 'gels' better?

• What guarantees/bonuses does the vendor offer?

  This will define how strong and what your bonus needs to be. Generally, the better your bonus offer - the better your sales rate. But it will also depend on what market you're in. For e.g. the internet marketing niche is notorious for sourcing out the best bonus offer when a product is launched. So in that view - the better your bonus, and the better you sell it - the more you will sell. I've seen instances where people make their landing page all about selling the great bonus they have for the products that everyone else sells… consider that…

• What bonus can you offer on top of that?

  OK, that's kind of the same as the above point - oops it seems I've joined the two :o)

• What is the commission for the product?

  This one and the one below will define how much effort you should spend on the campaign for this product. Why am I saying that?

  Well, considering the most expensive commodity in your life is your time, you should judge how long you spend on a campaign - including a bonus - by how much it will make you. I know this may upset a few idealistic souls out there, but the bottom line is that there's little point offering a humongous bonus that will take you two weeks to create, for a product that may sell 100 copies over the life of the campaign, and the max commission you stand to make is $10 each. Make sure you spend your time smartly. Be stingy with your time and you will have more of it.

• How long will the product be sold for?

  Same goes for this one… You can't plan to offer a great bonus that will take 3 weeks to prepare, when the product has limited sales numbers and will sell out in a week. Think 'smarter' not 'harder'.

Phew! That's a lot to think about. And I'm pretty sure you can think of a few other questions that will determine how to structure your sales page or landing page as we call it. Take a look at all the suggestions I've offered to you above. Then look at what you have setup for your own campaign. Then decide if any of the suggestions can be implemented to increase your conversion rates.

Other general landing page optimisation tips to consider

• Does the design and layout of your page make sense?




• Is your type /font size large enough to read?




• Do you have a 'hero shot' - pic of the product?




• Do you ask people for details?




• If you do - play around with the position of that box - it works differently for different products and sales type letters.




• Is your offer, bonus, guarantee clearly stated?




• Have you made it PERFECTLY CLEAR how people can order from you?




• Have you included personal touches like your name, pic, signature, contact email (at least) - these all contribute to the trust factor that plays a big role in how people make their purchasing decisions.




• Are you using the correct 'lingo'?




• Can you include any more benefits and are they clearly stated for the reader to find?




• Can you incorporate a time sensitive offer?




• Can you use more testimonials - and should you?




• Can you add a video explanation to your page?




• Can you add an audio?

Well, that's certainly not all to consider, but it is plenty at least at first. Most people won't even manage to cover off all of these, so you'll certainly have enough to keep you busy ;o)

Well, that's all for today…

Tomorrow I'll finish off with a few tips on what you should test/optimise/change first to bring you the quickest results. We'll also chat about how to go about optimising stuff in general, and where to find some extra info on testing your campaigns.

As usual - we need your feedback!!! So don't be shy and SHARE.

Till tomorrow :o)

Anita

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