Affecting Conversion
Improve Relevancy of the Landing Page
The more relevant and appropriate the content on the landing page is in relation to the keyword and ad copy; the more likely the searcher is to convert. In our experience, the five best ways of improving this relevancy are:
- To manually review all available articles, products, services etc...and individually match the keywords to the most relevant landing pages.
- To re-group the keywords and change the ad copy to reflect the content on the landing page. By ensuring that the ad copy accurately describes what is on the landing page; the searcher is more inclined to be satisfied with the content, product or service they have been provided with and therefore is more likely to convert.
- To update the content. The actual subject matter may be perfectly relevant; however, often the information or products being provided may be out of date, thus making it less relevant than it could or should be. Therefore, updating the campaign site content will inevitably improve conversion.
- By testing alternative landing pages. If a particular landing page is not converting well, even though the content appears to be sufficiently relevant, it is often worth trying an alternative landing page or even the home page as the landing URL. This method uses trial and error and requires thorough analysis of the performance metrics.
- By using the existing site’s search query facility, within the URL, to ensure that each keyword lands on the most relevant content.
Qualify / De-qualify Ad Copy
As described in the ‘Affecting CTR’ section; the more thoroughly we describe what the destination URL or campaign site has to offer through the ad copy; the less that is left to curiosity or misconception, thus reducing the likelihood of attracting non-converting traffic.
It is also important to note that, through the ad copy, you can also influence how the searcher is going to react once they have landed on the campaign site. By managing the expectations of the searcher, it inadvertently softens the sale once they have entered the campaign site’s sales environment.
Site Management to Decrease Drop-off
Naturally it is important to ensure that we drive qualified traffic to our campaign sites; however, the campaign site still needs to be an efficient mechanism for converting visitors. Therefore, in order to maximise conversion, an obvious place to address is the performance and mechanics of the site. There are two main areas where concentrated site management is likely to reap benefits:
- The Sign-up funnel – How visitors react to a sign-up funnel is dependent on numerous factors, e.g. demographics, the appeal of the offering, whether a trial is on offer, information required, number of steps etc…There is a substantial amount of research which suggests that there is no hard-and-fastened rule on how to improve the sign-up funnel performance; the only way to reduce the level of drop-off is through trial and error. There are obviously fundamentals which we apply to each of our campaign site builds, however, once a campaign is running our Account Management Team are always striving to identify and implement appropriate site changes.
- Strategic placement of the site’s Call to Actions (CTA’s) – The main purpose of the campaign site is to convince each visitor that the service, product or information represented on the site satisfies their immediate or future need for that service, product or information; whilst giving them a convenient and slick route to purchase. It is therefore imperative that at every point a visitor might be tempted to commit there is a strategically placed CTA. These CTA’s may be in the form of banners, images, buttons or text. It is important to mix up the types of CTA’s used as to avoid an over-sell situation. We want the CTA’s to be conveniently placed and not intrusive.
Reduce Offer Commitment (e.g. free trial)
With our PPC campaigns, as a rule, we are introducing the visitors to an offering for the first time. It is therefore more difficult to get these visitors to commit and part with their money immediately. This is exactly why we have found that an offer which requires the least amount of commitment (e.g. free trial or money back guarantee) is the most successful ploy for converting search traffic.
Introducing a new offer obviously requires our client’s consent; however, if the potential drop-off after the offer period is taken into account, when allocating the campaign CPA, then this is always an extremely viable option.
Email Follow-up
If a campaign does not have a secondary revenue opportunity in the form of email or address capture, we will often send a HTML follow-up email to all the visitors who drop out of the sign-up process having entered their email address. The email would reinforce the offer and present the potential customer with a link straight to the sign-up process on the campaign site.
Decreasing Bid Cap
As a rule, by lowering the bid cap, the lower down the listings on the search engines our ads will show. This in turn means that searchers have to work harder to find the ad, which consequently means that the searchers who eventually click on the ads are more likely to be qualified and therefore convert.
Adding Negative Keywords
Yet again, adding negative keywords will reduce the likelihood that ads will be shown for irrelevant keywords. This means that the ads that are served will be more relevant as a whole and will therefore attract more qualified traffic to the microsite, which will consequently improve the site’s conversion.
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