Google Adwords (continued)

Landing Pages:

First impressions count.

In a world where attention is at a premium, and time is limited, the visitor needs the questions in the back of his mind answered fast.

Does this company offer what I need? Are they competent ? Are they trustworthy? Are they competitively priced? Will they do a good job? Do they have a good track record?

A good landing page presents all this information clearly.

We regularly find that building a good landing page can double the response rate.

And doubling the response rate, means you've just slashed you cost to acquire the customer by 50%!

As well as keeping your customer happy, your lander needs to keep Google happy, so your Quality Score is as high as possible. That means being super relevant to the keyword terms.

And for these reasons, you should rarely – if ever - send Adwords clicks to your homepage.

Testing

There are “many ways to skin a cat” and consequently no two landing pages are ever the same. You can only find what works for your business by testing. We don't second guess the customer, we let them tell us what works through testing and tracking.

Examples

Below are some examples, taken from the notoriously competitive double glazing industry.

You can see how the first one has a clear compelling offer. A good example.

The second doesn't tell me much, or what to do next. In fact, it's the company's homepage.

 

 

Key Elements of a good performing landing page

There are many key elements required for an effective, high ROI landing page. Here's just a few.

Design

Is the design professional?Is it aesthetically pleasing on the eye and easy to view? An uncluttered layout that focuses only on your offer and the desired course of action is a must. Make sure the visitor does not need to scroll too much, if at all.

Content

Is the content relevant to the keywords you are bidding on? Not too “heavy” on text, with appropriate imagery, and easy to read?

Offer

Do you have clear compelling offer, with a clear call to action? Do you offer a guarantee of any type?

Trust

Have you included any trusted industry logos? Are there customer reviews/ testimonials ? Do you include links to privacy and terms & conditions pages?

Retargeting

Someone visits your website. A cookie (piece of code) is dropped. When they visit another website that carries Google Advertising – perhaps tomorrow, or the next day – they then see your banner ad.

That's retargeting. And like it or not, it works.

Now, here's a hack that will double your ROI.

You only want to show your retargeting ads to people who were interested in your business, as a means to remind them and keep you “front and center” in their mind.

Unfortunately, a lot of visitors you get (not just Adwords, Organic traffic and from other sources) are just plain not interested in you. They might have reached your site by mistake. They are looking for something else. Or your website just plain doesn't “connect” with them.

That's life.

So you don't want to waste money showing those folks your retargeting ad and have them click on it.

So, we do this.

For them to get “cookied” the code must be triggered on your site. This usually happens as soon as the page finished loading. But “uninterested” customers generally won't stay on a site longer than a few second, maybe 20 seconds tops.

What we do is encase the code in a further piece of code that has a delayed timer. It then only “Activates” if your visitor stays longer than say 20 seconds.

Viola! All those mistaken / uninterested /irrelevant visitors are not cookied and never see your retargeting ad, slashing your cost by as much as 50%.

Click Fraud

Its estimated that up to 11% of online advertising suffers from fraudulent clicks, be it from automated bots or competitors clicking your ads to run your budget down.

Now it's possible to prevent this.

By monitoring the IP addresses that click on your ads, you can see if there are repeated clicks from the same IP address, then block your ads from showing to those IP's.

So if you are worried your competitors are wasting your ad spend, this will stop them seeing your ad in the first place.

(And it's also possible to get a refund from Google for those wasted clicks)

This can be done manually via Adwords, though it is time consuming. We have software that automates all this.

Funnels

Advanced marketers know all about funnels. So should you. They are a secret weapon of choice.

It's unlikely your competitors are doing this. Yet. Which gives you a competitive advantage.

What is a funnel?

The traditional marketing funnel is defined as:

a consumer focused marketing model which illustrates the theoretical customer journey towards the purchase of a product or service.

In other words, your prospect goes in the top, moves through different stages, and comes out the bottom as a customer.

We take this concept and apply it to your website visitor as he arrives from Google.

If a good landing page is the “Premiership”, a good funnel takes your website to the “Champions League”.

Your customer lands on the page. They have questions in their mind, They most probably don't know your company. They need reassurance. They need to trust you. They need to know more about your company, products & services. They need to know your solution is the best.

By understanding your customers mindset, questions, concerns & needs you can develop a funnel of pages that leads them in a controlled manner from visitor to paying customer.
Look at it this way..

   

It's like a date. You meet for a coffee. You chat a little more. You get to know each other.

You don't propose on the first date.

But that's what most companies end up doing.

“Here's our website , buy from us!”

Even those with a good landing page, still have a “request a quote” form on the first page, without any nurturing of the customer.

An intelligently designed funnel will get over that. And send conversions through the roof.

Getting help from Google?

Google now regularly phones Adwords customers, offering to “help” with their account.

Politely decline. And run as fast as you can in the opposite direction.

Here's why.

You fly to Las Vegas. Fresh off the plane you stroll into the MGM Grand. (Or Caesars Palace, the Bellagio or any other casino you care to mention). You start with a couple of slots, and just as you're deciding whether to hit the blackjack or the roulette tables, a casino employee walks up to you.

“Hey Sir, Welcome to Las Vegas. I see you're new here. I work here and know how it all works, so if you'd like to give me your money, I can gamble it wisely for you so you make some money. What do you think?”

You'd run. Hopefully.

Would a profesional poker player walk in and take advice off the dealer.

Nope. Nada. Not going to happen.

I am in no way implying Google's intention is to bleed you dry, but unless you have a mega ad budget upwards of £20 000 a month, the employee you'll get assigned will have only a rudimentary knowledge of Adwords. They mean well. They'll do their best. But they don't have time to understand your business, it's objectives or the intentions of your customers.

Here's an example we witnessed first hand.

Nearly two years ago, we met with a client. They were using Google Adwords , and someone from Google had called up and offered to “optimise” their account for free.

They agreed.

Over the next few weeks, the phone stopped ringing.

They had checked their Adwords, it was still turned on and they were spending the same money – actually if anything it had increased.

They were perplexed.

We looked into their account and it didn't take long to find the answer.

The Google Rep had added in some more keyword. One in particular was a very broad keyword, related to their business.

The problem was that the customer intent of the keyword didn't fit in with the services that the business offered. And it was a high traffic (commonly searched) keyword.

The result was that searches of this keyword burnt through their budget, it didn't match their business so they got zero enquiries and it left no budget for the other keywords that were actually performing well and leading to enquiries.

Needless to say we reversed the changes, implemented some more tweaks and they were soon getting twice the amount of enquiries for half the amount they had been spending before the Google Rep had got involved.

All because the Rep didn't really understand their business.

Why use an Adwords Specialist?

A specialist knows what works from their experience with multiple clients. They know how to test, track, tweak and optimise. They are the rocket scientist that understands the beast that is Adwords.

But most of all, a good one will make you money. Lot's of it.

Yes, you pay them on top of your adspend. But the amount they can save you in terms of reduced adspend, increased ROI will more than cover their cost.

Like a good accountant reducing your tax bill. Or a good Lawyer winning a legal case.

Even a relatively small Adwords spend in the hundreds per month can be made to work 400% more effectively.

Consult with a “Rocket Scientist” now!

If you have an existing adwords account we can look over it and advise what can be done.

If you don't have an account, we can discuss your business goals and advise the most effective strategy.

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