Basic Landing Page Practices for Pay-Per-Click Campaigns: Lead Generation

So you are getting visitors to click on those alluring 75 characters that make up your pay-per-click ad. The obvious good news is that your site is gaining traction, but the bad news is that you are shoving out advertising dollars on traffic, not guaranteed leads. Yes, more traffic most likely results in more leads, but there are ways to get the same amount of leads, if not more, by modifying your landing page. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could convert traffic into leads without spending the extra advertising dollars? Thus paying less and receiving more? Let’s go back to the basics:

Con-ti-nu-i-ty [kon-tn-oo-i-tee]

1. the state or quality of being continuous.
2. a continuous or connected whole.

Is the landing page congruent with the ad creatives? You may get plenty of visitors with an ad reading “Signup today to win a tropical cruise”, but your bounce rate will be through the roof if your landing page has images of Alaskan vacations.Your text ads should be designed to not only attract visitors, but also deter unqualified traffic. Always make sure that your text advertisements are congruent with the text and images on the page the visitor lands on. There is no use in wasting clicks on visitors looking for a service you don’t provide. The whole principal just goes back to what you learn in Business 101: Deliver your promise.

Va-lid-i-ty [vuh–lid-i-tee]

1. the state or quality of being valid: to question the validity of the argument.

With millions and millions of websites asking for personal information, savvy internet users have become cynical. There is always the looming thought of identity theft, calls from telemarketers, and credit card fraud to name just a few. Make your site look professional. At the very least, test for broken links and images. In my opinion, seals from VeriSign and HackerSafe can only boost your legitimacy points with consumers. Even a “we will not sell your information to a third party” claim next to your lead form will put your visitors at ease. Gaining that trust factor is imperative in converting traffic. If your visitor thinks you are a scam, they will just click the back button and continue on their search.

Sim-plic-i-ty [sim-plis-i-tee]

1. the state, quality, or an instance of being simple.
2. freedom from complexity, intricacy, or division into parts: an organism of great simplicity.

Let’s face it, filling out forms is tedious. Whether it’s an application for a potential job opportunity, a new patient file at the doctor’s office, or even a sweepstakes submission, one word comes to mind: Boring. Yes, ask for the very necessary, but please deny the inclination to ask for five telephone numbers, three email addresses and a pet’s name. Questions used for marketing research can be asked on the Thank You page, after you have received the essential information.

Func-tion-al-i-ty [fuhngk-shuh-nal-i-tee]

1. of or pertaining to a function or functions.
2. capable of operating or functioning.
3. having or serving a utilitarian purpose; capable of serving the purpose for which it was designed.

Why would you pay for someone to visit your website if they can’t complete an action? Whether it’s stripping away navigation or increasing the font size on the submit button, make sure visitors can complete the form with ease. Test the appearance as well as technical applications in each browser. There is nothing worse than having someone who wants to give you business, yet they can’t figure out how to give it to you.

Va-ri-e-ty [vuh–rahy-i-tee]

1. the state of being varied or diversified.
2. difference; discrepancy.
3. a number of different types of things, esp. ones in the same general category.

You have designed a purposeful and aesthetically pleasing landing page. Leads are coming in and conversion rates are “up to par”. Now what? Test. The best place to start is with an A/B split test. Change one element of your current landing page and split the traffic between the original and the new design. Gather data and analyze. Once you have a winner, test another design against it. You will never know the level of conversion rates possible unless you test.

Like Basic Landing Page Practices for PPC Campaigns and many practices in SEO, marketing and business that you think they are correct but in fact they aren’t. It’s impossible to cover one all subject and learn the best ways for everything but Google make a step in learning you the best way to grow your business!

On March 5th, we’ll be broadcasting talks by these top Google thought-leaders, live from the Googleplex.  Join us at our San Diego office and enjoy 90 minutes of great content, food, and discussions.

Here’s what you need to know:

• We will be broadcasting this invitation-only, live from the Googleplex in Mountain View, California.
• Speakers include Lisa Gevelber, Google’s VP for Americas Marketing, discussing how businesses like yours can grow in this digital age.
• We’ll also have some delicious catering, so you won’t leave hungry.
• We’ll have some giveaways to share with you, too.

Hope you can join us for this event. We think you’ll walk away with some great ideas about how to grow your business by reaching more customers.

Please RSVP by [3/1] either by emailing us or calling us at 619-398-2680.  We have a limited number of seats, so be sure to reply early.

Event Agenda

• Live-stream starts at 1pm ET.

Keeping Up With the Evolving Digital Landscape

Lisa Gevelber,
VP of Americas Marketing, Google

• The world is changing. The evolution of technology is giving people the opportunity to do extraordinary things. We’ll share how Google is evolving alongside this changing world, in the way it thinks about its brand and its marketing.

The Zero Moment of Truth: Reaching Customers When It Matters

John Nicoletti,
Director of Agency Development, Google

• Whether we’reshopping for corn flakes, concert tickets or a honeymoon in Paris, the Internet has changed how we decide what to buy. We call this the Zero Moment of Truth, and we’ll share how this changes the way businesses reach their customers. We’ll talk about reaching the right customers when it matters, with the right message, using Google AdWords.

Working and Winning with an Agency: A Fireside Chat

Bickey Russell,
Head of Channel Managed Agencies, Google

• We know small businesses can be hesitant about spending with an agency. We’ll communicate the importance of partnering with an online professional, how they should approach working with an agency, and what resources the Google agency team is providing agencies to help their clients succeed.

Engine Ready Case Studies

• After the live-stream, take this time to look over out current case studies and let us discuss how we can help you get more out of the web.

RSVP Today and we hope to see you there!

Google has recently released some news of upcoming changes that you should prepare for. The topics of discussion are the improvements of how they calculate the infamous Quality Score and the rank position of your Ads. So let’s jump into it…

As of now Clickthrough rate (CTR) is the most influential factor in weighing an ads quality score. When an Ad has a good Clickthrough rate then Google will reward you with a good Quality Score. But, the problem as of now is that unfortunately the position of your Ad is a major key factor in your CTR, if you’re at the bottom of the page you will have the same amount of impressions as an Ad in position 1, but won’t receive as many clicks. And that’s where the vicious cycle begins, a lower CTR, a lower Quality Score, and a higher cost per click. But Google has announced that within the coming days they will be updating the Quality Score algorithm to take ad position into consideration. This will not only improve the accuracy of Quality Scores, but also ensure that ads compete evenly for position based on their quality and bid.

Moving onto High Quality Ads, Google is also working on the way they determine what ads will be shown in the yellow region above the organic search results. Given the power of those positions Google wants to ensure that the Ads that are being shown are of “High Quality”. They say Ads will have to meet a certain quality threshold to be considered for these positions. Also it is stated that Ads with a high quality can even jump over other ads to be shown in this region. Google says that this will ensure that quality plays an even more important role in which ad is being shown on top.

Now these changes have not yet occurred but you should be prepared for them in the next week or so. Keep an eye on the Adwords Blog as they will be updating when the changes are in effect. So since the quality of your Ad will be even more important than before here are a couple tips to consider.

• Spend some time researching the keywords you are bidding on and see what your competition is doing. If you can make your Ad stand out from the rest you will see a dramatic increase in your CTR and Quality Score. Don’t be afraid to test different types of Ads and see what works best for you. Use “[]” “()” “/” “:” “-“ “©” “™” to further increase the uniqueness of your Ad.

• Another way to stand out from your competition is to test Ad length. You are restricted to 25 characters in your topic and 35 in both description lines. Common practice is to use all characters and give as much information as you can. This is not necessarily a bad thing but if you test a short Ad it will contribute to you standing out from all the other Ads and can increase your CTR.

EDIT: Changes are in effect as of 11/3/2008.