Happy Monday! Over the last couple of days, we’ve covered the debate over SEO vs. PPC, why companies should think like customers when they set up their campaigns, and we’ve learned the most common mistakes that companies make when setting up their own campaigns.
In this final installment, pay per click expert Matt DeYoung will share landing page tips and pay per click tools, then discuss the rising cost of pay per click marketing and alternatives to Google Adwords.
From my experience, companies focus too much on their keywords, ads and bids, but don’t focus at all on landing pages. Can you tell us why landing pages are important and give some tips to optimize them?
Yeah, I hate to say this but most business owners have their PPC process upside down. Most owners I’ve worked with pick keywords to match their business or website. Bids and ad copy are important to generate affordable qualified traffic. Quality landing pages have become the smarter way to work. You don’t have to worry about forcing your ad position by bidding higher.
With landing page optimization all you’re trying to do is match closer and closer to what’s on your customer’s mind. Dr. Flint McLaughlin from Marketing Experiments said it best, “You’re not trying to just change landing pages, you’re trying to change people’s minds.” Keywords tell you what’s on your customer’s mind. Your landing pages should match.
Each optimization effort will eek out a few more conversions. Even 5% compounded monthly equals massive increases in sales over 12 months. It can be the difference between a profitable or loosing campaign.
What I suggest is to start with a landing page that best matches what you think the intent of a keyword. Then start testing minor elements of the page one at a time. Start with a simple 2 column vertical layout page. Test writing a new main headline, the 1st and 2nd sentences. Test each paragraph subheading. After that, work on testing your offer, or “call-to-action”–your method of response. Hint: put your call-to-action on both the top and bottom of the page.
Optimization is just a matter of improving on the early educated guess you made about your customer–one step at a time. It’s worth doing. Landing page optimization is truly the secret of internet marketing. It shouldn’t be a secret, but it is.
Are there any tools on the web that you recommend to small businesses that want to set up and run their own campaigns?
There are a lot of tools out there. Adwords Editor is a crucial. Download it if you don’t have it already. Using Google Adwords conversion tracking in your campaign is a must. Also learn Google Analytics inside and out will take you far. It’s free, but does more than most small biz packages.
Keyword research and campaign set up can be tedious. Adwords Accelerator and SpeedPPC are two great tools. They’re expensive, but they pay for themselves quickly. Of course, there are lots of tools out there to peak at your competitors’ PPC: KeywordSpy, SpyFu, Compete.com, PPCBully to name a few.
More businesses are advertising online and keyword bid prices are rising. What is your take on this, and how can small businesses be budget-conscious?
PPC has definitely gotten more expensive. I even saw a swift increase last half of 2008. But, the fact is I’ve still been able to lower my costs. Small businesses can maintain their budgets in two ways:
- Focusing on optimization, whether ad copy, landing pages, product offers etc. Doing more planning and testing pays off. Increasing conversion from 1% to 2% means you just cut your marketing expense in half.
- Don’t diffuse your efforts, and your budget, but try to siphon irrelevant traffic away from your website. My suggestion is to focus all your resource–time and money–on better serving the keyword that make sense for your business. Even if that means you’ll only have 5-10 keywords, you can still generate a ton of sales.
It seems like everyone is focusing on Google Adwords. Is it your favorite pay per click engine? Are there other more niche engines or properties that small businesses should evaluate?
That’s a great question. I’m thankful for Adwords. It changed SEM. I start all my efforts with Adwords. There’s so much traffic on Google, and they get ads up so fast and you can test things quickly.
Adwords isn’t always the best place to spend all your PPC money. It really depends on your customer. I have one client who has an older demographic. I have the same ad on Google as I do on Yahoo. The Yahoo ad brings in 2 or 3 times more sales. I start with Google but expand to other networks. I track my ad channels/networks individually. Each one performs differently, and I adjust my budget accordingly.
MSN and Miva (Findology, ABCSearch, 7Search, SearchFeed, FindWhat) can be other places to look for traffic too. Just track the results so you can reallocate your budget to the best performing channels. Only reward the networks that are bringing you the best sales.
Any closing advice for small businesses?
Yes. Stop changing directions. Start working with what you’ve got. Too many clients I speak with keep trying new SEM tactics before they really learned why the last effort didn’t succeed. The difference between success and failure is to just see through what you’ve started, with the tools you’ve got before you. Free tools and Microsoft Excel will go along way if you know what you’re doing. With Internet marketing it’s especially easy to keep trying new things. Sad part is you’ll probably stop one step short of all the benefits.
