One of the great things about online marketing is that you can measure click-through rate. You can quickly review many types of statistics after you run your marketing campaign. Whether you’re doing pay-per-click (PPC), email marketing, or social media ads, you can review your click through rate daily or even hourly to see your progress.
But what should you expect your click through rate to be, after all your SEO work and online ad efforts? Sources say that the industry average is about 1.9%. However, the rate varies by industry. And for best results, your team should shoot for a higher quality scores click-through rate.
Below, we discuss click through rate overall, industry averages, plus ways you can up your click through rate and achieve better marketing success.
Below are the click-through-rates for some of the biggest online industries (Search Network CTR):
For 16 industries monitored by Google for its ad business, the average click through rate is 3.17%. For the Google Display Network, the 16-industry average is .46%.
What makes an excellent click through rate, then? There is no precise number that we can state for every business. But you want it to be as high as possible! A higher click through rate means more people viewing your product and services, which is always good.
Some marketing experts recommend having a click through rate that is at least as high as your industry average. Aim for a bit higher for best search results page.
Now you understand more about what a good click through rate is for your industry, but how to get there? Keep reading!
If you want to have a massive influence on your click-through rates, focus on keywords and match-type.
Ad copy matters, too, but that doesn’t matter unless the ad appears on a search engine result page (SERP).
If you have advertisements that have many broad match keywords, the odds are high that your copy could appear for irrelevant queries. One of the biggest culprits for broad ad groups is the keyword suggestion tool offered by Google or other search engines.
It can help you see your options, but it’s not recommended to go with their recommended match-types automatically. If you go with their recommendations, make sure to use their key at the bottom so you pick the right match type.
Signals for every match-type are:
It’s essential to practice vigilance if you can describe your product or service in ways that can net trigger queries in other industries.
Let’s say you’re a patent attorney and you love wearing patent leather shoes. But you’re probably not gunning for people viewing shoes to click on your legal ad, right?
You don’t want the word “patent” to be for any match-type – except exact.
Remember to use negative keywords to avoid queries that could come from other match-types and other keyword meanings.
For instance, cat rehabilitation can be interpreted as cat training or taking kitty to the veterinarian. The prices for each of those search results are much different. Depending on your ad budget, you may not want to use those terms that could trigger unrelated results and money down the drain.
Note that keywords that are in your advertisement groups need to be very likely to produce good queries.
If you have a shot that a long-tail keyword of 3 or more words is better, use it. However, if your specific niche has a lower search volume, you may want to choose a broad concept, as long as you have a long negative list.
Advertisement copy isn’t just a tired formulaic blurb anymore. Now we have three headlines, a couple of descriptions, and a growing list of extensions to entice our prospects to contact us.
But it’s easy to fall back into old habits and use copy backed by ‘data,’ and not take full advantage of the tools at our digital fingertips.
When humans craft your ads, you have a higher click through ratewhen the ad includes an H3 and D2 – about 8%. When there is no H3 and no D2, the click through rate falls to about 5%.
Mobile devices usually only give two headlines but usually do list both descriptions. Also, using the description provides the ad with more beef. The larger ad usually produces a better click through rate.
Also, note that ads that have all descriptions in headlines get a high CTR, studies show. So, please use them.
You’d be surprised to learn how many suitable ads lack a strong CTA or call-to-action. If your advertisement doesn’t have a strong CTA, you’re tossing your money away. Remember to use one of these:
The purpose of paying for paid search ad is to get prospects to act – go to your website. Some experienced hands say CTAs work great in H2. Others like to lead the ad with the CTA. You can test both in your industry and see which produces.
Note that having repetitive language in your ad will ding your Click through rate. For example, using a single word three times or more in an ad generally lowers engagement.
Who is seeing your online advertising, where and on which device are big deals for a high Click through rate. If you’re going after more than one region, remember that people around the country think and search differently.
Putting every region in your country makes the ppc account easy to manage, but it could hurt/effect click through rate(CTR).
Google lets you make the target location a choice in an ad campaign, so you could need to limit the first campaign to one or two markets. When you have hard data on which ad works best, you may expand to more markets, change up the ads and keywords per the local search methods.
All it can take is to alter your ad’s copy to ‘request a call back’ after hours. It shows you’re a human thinking about the person reading the ad.
Now you should know more about the ideal/good CTR and how to boost yours. We can help you with our PPC management services, including help with your suspended Google Ads account. Contact us today!
Advertising on the web is an ever-evolving space filled with the potential for billions of people to see your ads and literally thousands of metrics to determine who to target, when, and where. That’s why it’s important to have the right Flexible bid strategies in place when you go to try and win that all-important ad space on Google.
PPC ads have the potential to generate many high-quality and high converting leads to your site or business, but only if you do it right. Trying to pick the right strategy can be a mind-numbing process. Beyond just the headache-inducing number of metrics that are available, there is a whole realm of other considerations to make to figure out how, when, and where to run your PPC ads.
Google itself can do a lot to help you figure out who to target and when. The trouble is, unless you have experience and know exactly what you’re doing, you may find yourself wasting ad dollars on typical “set it and forget it” ad campaigns.
You’ll often find that these campaigns aren’t doing much other than throwing your money away. If you want to make the most of them, you have to stay on top of your ad campaigns and the strategies you’re using.
This first section deals with how ad campaigns should operate and how to tell if yours are in a good position for new flexible bid strategies.
Before we dive into the different strategies and how to implement them, we want to set you up for success. To do that, we’re going to break down what you should be doing to put yourself in a prime position to make use of the different flexible bid strategies that are available.
The very first thing we recommend doing if you aren’t already is getting in touch with a PPC management company. If you already have one, and they’re not using flexible bid strategies, then you may want to take a look at what you’re paying for and how much you’re paying. Oftentimes, agency fees and returns may not align with your goals or the level of service may not meet up to the needs of your particular ad campaigns. You may want to consider firing your PPC agency if you notice that they’re wasting ad dollars, you’re not seeing growth or other signs that you’re throwing money away.
Once you have that settled and you’ve gotten with an agency that knows what they’re doing, the first thing you really want them to do is to perform a PPC audit. The purpose of having an agency do a PPC audit is to get a sense of where your ad campaigns are at and what is potentially going wrong. Google Ads gives you loads of valuable data, but that doesn’t necessarily tell you what to do with it.
By getting an audit done, you can find out where your ad dollars are going, how much of a return on investment (ROI) you’re getting, and what the problems are. Not only that, but you’ll actually get actionable steps you can take to make improvements on your ad campaigns to see them grow your return on ad spend (ROAS).
They say “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” but if it is broke, you might want to actually know how to fix it or take it to someone who can. That’s why getting with a PPC management company and getting an audit done should be your first step.
Next, we’ll discuss how to analyze your marketing objectives to make sure they line up with your business goals.
Part of knowing what’s wrong and how to fix it means understanding your goals and what you’re really trying to do with your ad campaigns. It may be that depending on the type of campaign you’re running, you may find that while you think a search campaign is best, you want a local PPC campaign, because you’re trying to drive traffic to a brick-and-mortar store.
Through Google’s advanced resources for ad campaigns, you can help to identify your goals and the type of campaigns you should be running. Then, with the help of your ad agency, you can pick the best practices for the types of goals that you have and your advertising budget.
Google’s metrics can help you figure out what campaign to run and a PPC agency can help you execute the process, including managing your bids, increasing your bids, making changes to existing campaigns starting new campaigns, and monitoring performance.
If you find that the objectives you had set aren’t right for your business, then it may be time to pull out of any existing campaigns, reevaluate, and then relaunch.
One flaw that some agencies and businesses often make is to continue to run with an existing campaign that isn’t working. Part of analyzing your marketing objectives is determining if a campaign that’s failing can be salvaged or not. There’s no point in going down with the ship if you can make it back to shore and try again later with a better boat.
Now that we’ve covered how to align your goals with your marketing strategy, it’s time to talk about how you measure success via key metrics.
Sometimes the problem isn’t even the ad campaign itself; it’s the data you’re using to drive the ad campaign. Realistically, if you’re using an ad agency, they should be helping you do this. If you don’t really know what you want out of your ad campaigns, it can be tricky to manage.
If for instance, you’re in the eCommerce space, but when running ads, you’re not looking at the time of day when consumers are more likely to shop and complete a purchase (we’re not talking about those 2 AM window shoppers who click ad to cart and never buy anything) then you’re likely running ads at the wrong time and not targeting the proper audience.
Additionally, the type of ad and the platform you run them on can make a major difference, too. Demographics change based on the platform the ads are seen on and the likelihood of conversion is tied to that as well.
For example, managing Facebook ads is entirely different from managing your Google search ads. Your audience changes based on the types of ads you run and not knowing who is doing what will lead to wasted ad dollars. From your Google Ads account, you can see all the data you could ever need to figure out who’s logging on, where they’re seeing your ads, when they’re most likely to click them, and when they actually follow through and convert.
If your ad timing or methods aren’t meshing with the majority of your traffic, then it’s a safe bet that you’re wasting your money.
It’s also important to note that these metrics aren’t static values that you can keep running with forever once you know them. Marketing is ever-moving, ever-changing and you have to put in the work to keep up. That’s why we recommend having a marketing agency do the work, but making sure that it’s one that has your goals in mind and is willing to stay on top of the key metrics and the space you’re in to keep your ads performing their best.
That’s why we’ve written this guide to flexible bid strategy in the first place. There are some experts and businesses that still believe that once you’ve locked in a bid strategy that works, you’re good to go. That’s not how ad campaigns or marketing in general operate. What works today may stop working tomorrow. Flexible bid strategy are designed to be just that, flexible.
The next section covers what automated or Manual bidding actually is and how it works. We know some readers have a good grasp of the concept, but for those that don’t, this is key information before implementing a flexible bid strategy Aims.
Just because flexible bid strategies have the word flexible in their name doesn’t mean that you can just set them and change them any way you choose at any time. The better you understand automated bidding, the better you can make use of the powerful tool that it is.
All automated bidding strategies work off of parameters that you set. This means that if it doesn’t work, it’s likely tied back to something you told the program to do. With enough input and the right configurations, automated or different Flexible bidding strategies can work like magic for your ad campaign, routinely scoring you the optimal converting ad space you need to drive loads of high converting traffic to your site.
That’s why we said that it’s not about a “set it and forget it mentality.” You have to constantly monitor your Flexible bid strategies and adjust them to meet your needs as they change. As your business grows, your audience grows and changes with it. To think of it logically, think about ads that are run for products, consider what happens if new products are added to an existing line, the target audience may change and grow with the product line. That means your existing ad campaigns need to adjust too.
Flexible bid strategies allow you to move and adjust parameters on the fly. The different strategies also allow you to account for different metrics and adjust your return expectations if your audience and traffic volume change. If you have more traffic but few conversions, you can adjust your ad strategy to maximize conversions for the increased traffic flow.
The upcoming section deals with flexible bid strategies in practice and how to properly implement them based on your needs. We included some key pointers that apply to each strategy and how best to use them.
All your bidding strategies can be managed through your Google Ads account dashboard. From the dashboard, you can see all of the different ad strategies that you have available and can create and modify them as you see fit.
Among your choices, there are 6 flexible bid strategies that allow Google to automate your bidding process while giving you the control you need to adjust your bids if something isn’t working or your market changes.
This is one of the standard Google ad campaign strategies and is used when you want your bids to drive traffic over all else. You can control spending by setting a maximum bid amount and a maximum daily ad spend amount. This does not factor in conversion rates or other factors. It will target based on your set keywords, and the bidding will moderate within your set/target spend amount so that you don’t go over budget.
This strategy is best implemented when your main goal is just to get more people to see your site over all else. As we said, this focuses on clicks and not conversions, but sometimes click volume can relate to conversion and brand recognition. The ability to set and monitor spending lets you have more control over ad spend if you’re on a tight budget, or if you’re experimenting with a new ad campaign and want to see what type of results you can get without breaking the bank.
You can, of course, implement this strategy without setting daily spending limits/target spend amount, but this can burn through your ad spend budget. Our best implementation advice is to use this strategy when you need maximum site traffic without blowing your ad budget.
Targeted automated flexible bid strategies are great for when you want to win auctions that offer a certain value for the ad dollars you spend. In the case of this strategy, you can set a percentage value for what type of return you want on every ad dollar that is spent, and Google will automatically adjust bid amounts and auction preferences based on available data.
There are a few caveats to this strategy. Target ROAS strategies are built to get you the most return they can; this means that they will only target auctions based on the available data and are likely to generate the set return based on the available data. This also means that in most cases, they will spend whatever is calculated to be necessary to win auctions. This can be a problem if you don’t set the values for your maximum daily ad spend and the maximum cost per click.
Even with high returns, you can find yourself spending more per click than you end up actually converting. For example, say you pay $15 to get 3 new customers, sounds great right? But then those customers come into your store and only spend $3 each. You’ve effectively spent more for customers than you gain by acquiring them. ROAS strategies aren’t perfect, so you’re working partly on data and partly on guesswork.
The second issue is that if your ROAS is set too high, you may find that the bidding is too selective and you don’t wind up winning very many auctions as a result, meaning fewer ads overall.
If you have great metrics and lots of data built up to facilitate a solid understanding of the types of auctions to bid on, then a targeted ROAS strategy is the perfect option to ensure that your ad dollars aren’t wasted. Just make sure you set a spending maximum bid limit so you don’t outpace your budget.
This is another targeted strategy that bids based on a set value. In this case, it’s the cost per customer or cost per acquisition. This is not to be confused with a cost-per-action model that calculates costs based on clicks or other actions. A cost per acquisition targeting strategy bids on ads based on an average set by the campaign owner.
Google will adjust bids higher or lower, within a range of the target Cost Per acquisition in order to win auctions. Target cost per acquisition, You must have at least 15 conversions in the past 30 days and an average conversion rate over the last 7 days in order to implement this strategy. Beyond the base requirements, like other targeting strategies, the more data you have about past conversions and customer data you can feed into it, the better it will perform.
This strategy is ideally implemented when you’re interested in achieving valuable conversions while controlling the cost. This type of targeting strategy has more control than a ROAS strategy as the bidding can fluctuate within a set range without spending too high or bidding on too few auctions.
This strategy is an evolved form of the standard cost per click model. It takes the standard cost per click structure and automatically adjusts the bidding up or down within a set range to win auctions that maximize conversions.
A standard CPC campaign bids on auctions at or under a certain cost per click without regard for other factors. This is done to control spending. Enhanced CPC gives the same measure of control while accounting for conversion rates. This means that you can control cost per click spending while still getting the benefits of higher conversion rates.
If you’re trying to control spending and need to reign in CPC, but still want ads that convert, this is a valuable strategy.
This strategy is used when you want your ads to rank higher than competitors in the same space. The automated bidding algorithm will adjust or increase your bid to beat out a competitor to either appear higher up on the SERP or to appear more frequently than a competitor.
The strategy is based on estimates and attempts to win auctions over competitors so that when ads are displayed yours show up first or more frequently. The issue with this strategy is that it does not actually raise your ad rank, the spending is not as easy to monitor, and there are no guarantees that you will always outrank your competitors as the results are estimates based on available data.
This is a useful strategy when you have a competitive market and are trying to gain some market share over others. Be mindful of your spending and you can make some ground in the market by manipulating ad placement to your advantage.
The goal of the target search Page Location strategy is to get your ad either on the top of the page or somewhere on page one of the SERP. Marketers know how valuable SERP placement is, especially on page one.
A target search Page Location strategy cannot guarantee that you will end up on the top of a page or that you will land on page one of the SERP. Each individual auction is different and based on the number of competitors and your quality score, your placement will change with these factors and the result of the auction.
While the Target search Page Location strategy isn’t bulletproof, Target search Page Location are the best option when you’re trying to maximize visibility over all else. It can help you appear on page one or on the top of pages and at the very least ensures that people will see your ads some of the time.
So, there we are, the 6 flexible bid strategies and how best to use them to improve your business. Hopefully, we’ve given you the advice and strategies you need to use each of these strategies to the best of their potential. Whether you’re trying to control spending, improve exposure, beat your competitors, or maximize conversions, one of these flexible bid strategies will work for you.
As long as you remember to set your parameters and monitor your bids, these options offer more control and more choice than typical bid strategies and will improve your odds of success. Remember, PPC isn’t something you can set on autopilot. Do your research, keep tabs, and get help from a PPC agency to maximize your marketing effectiveness.
From its origins as a digital yearbook for Ivy League students in 2004, Facebook has indeed come a long way.
For instance, nobody could have envisioned that nearly 20 years later, it would supplant TV as an advertising platform for a fraction of a cost.
From the exclusive enclaves of Harvard–and later Yale and Stanford–today’s Facebook users are estimated to be nearly three billion from all corners of the globe.
Now, businesses may think that the primary purpose of creating a Facebook pages is to get as many likes or follows as possible. So, their marketing strategy is designed to achieving this goal.
After that, they no longer have any idea of how to get their followers to take the next step toward dipping into their pockets for their wallets.
The fact is that more than 9 in 10 of your visitors have no intention of buying. It is now up to you to convince them otherwise.
Sure, it is nice to see the number of followers tick up, and you may enjoy bragging rights over their competitors. But your social standing will not impact your profits in the long run unless you do something.
And that is where Facebook Retargeting ads comes in.
When you are personally managing your Facebook advertising/Facebook retargeting ad, you may have an idea of who your customers are based on their profiles. But do you know the reason why they visited your website or Facebook page?
You might say because they are paying customers.
How much are you betting that your assumption is correct? Are you willing to wager your company’s fate? Scratch that. You do not need to make that bet because it is essentially what you are doing anyway.
Make sure that the data supports your assumption if you are going to mortgage your future.
How can you convert them into loyal customers rather than one-time customers?
Facebook retargeting ads is an invaluable tool that will help identify the people who visited your website and then study their data to spot patterns and intent.
You can then use this data to create compelling ads to make them revisit your site and make a purchase.
Facebook Retargeting ads can help your company in a myriad of ways.
The first step is preparing a list of the prospects you want to target.
Creating the list is quite easy because there are multiple tools you can use, such as analytics, visitor profiles on your website, or your brick-and-mortar store. You can also gather data through your customer relationship management software.
You can prepare your customer list in the following formats before you can upload them on Facebook:
Your custom audience may also be identified by the country/city/state/provide where they are based. The Zip Code may also be entered as an identifier, along with the birth date and gender.
You can launch your Facebook ad campaign using the Facebook Ads Manager tool.
But first, you need to install the Facebook pixel. It is a small modification to your code, which is a powerful tool to track users and their online behavior after interacting with your brand.
Once they click on your ad, added an item to their cart, or visited your website, you ensnare the customer in your web of omnipresence.
Even if they leave, you can follow the cookie crumbs to easily track them across the Internet.
Everywhere they go, they will be reminded of you, like the one that got away, or perhaps an itch on their back that they could not reach to scratch.
Installing the Facebook pixel is quite straightforward. Before anything else, you need the following elements:
A. Creating a Facebook pixel
B. Add the Pixel
The next step is to add the pixel code into your website’s source code. You can choose to do it manually, use a partner integration, or email the instructions to your website administrator or engineer.
Generally, you only need one pixel across multiple business sites.
But there are times when you need to add multiple pixels, like when there are two separate ads on your website. The marketing agencies may decide to run separate pixels for their dynamic ads.
1. Head on to Ad Creation to create your dynamic ad. Make sure to select the audience who already interacted with your services and products on Facebook or other platforms. You can then retarget them first.
2. Next is to select your retargeting option. There are multiple ways to do this.
3. There is an option to identify the number of days where the last audience activity was recorded. Enter your answer.
4. Show Advanced Options if you want to include Lookalike Audiences in your Custom Audience targeting. Lookalike Audience refers to that underserved segment of potential buyers who share similar intent and goals with your existing customers.
The catalog is necessary to create your Dynamic Ads.
The catalog is a repository of all your products that you want to advertise on the platform. Facebook retargeting ads recommends creating a single catalog rather than different inventories to minimize confusion.
If you already have an eCommerce website from Shopify, you can integrate it seamlessly into your ad campaign. If not, you will have to create your business Catalog.
You click on Commerce Manager to get started.
With retargeting campaigns, you can tailor your ad according to the specifications of the customer.
For instance, you can target prospects who visited your website or competitor sites as they browse for products that interested them.
The question is, why did they not convert?
You can then tweak your ad to address the pain points of the customer, making them more likely to buy.
Using Facebook Retargeting ads, you can increase site visits by over 700%!
The first stage is to get them to click on your ad because the same data revealed that the customers are 26% more likely to make a purchase when they do.
After defining the parameters of your Custom Audience, you can then begin to launch your facebook retargeting campaign.
Go back to your main business profile page, and move your cursor to the top-right of your screen to select “Create an Ad.”
Simply follow Facebook’s instructions on how to start your campaign, including your budget, your audience, the frequency of your ad, and the schedule to display your ad.
You also need to outline your marketing objective to give Facebook an idea of your business goals. In this way, it can further hone on the types of customers you want to target.
For instance, eCommerce sites are for-profit organizations. Facebook will target the audience not only for their buying capacity but whether or not they are likely to engage with your business.
As you can see from the options, some websites are not interested solely in profits. They may want to expand their brand reach, generate leads, increase engagement, and website traffic.
Facebook is an affordable platform for marketers to display their dynamic ads.
You can already advertise for as little as $1.00 a day. In fact, it is recommended that you first low-ball Facebook, especially during the early stages.
The idea is to run analytics to determine which among your ads yield the most ROI. You can then rationalize your future budgets.
For instance, you can optimize your poorly performing ads or abandoning them together to focus on your more successful facebook campaigns.
You need to remember the three primary factors for how Facebook will present your ads to your target/custom audiences:
There is a reason why Facebook created the Lowest Cost option, and it is ideal for:
The Lowest Cost It is not the best determinant of the cost per action (CPA) rate, although Facebook claims that it will try to bring you the cheapest cost results.
The final cost will hinge on the bidding activity. The stiffer the competition, the higher the rates.
When launching your Facebook retargeting campaigns, make sure to create different types of content.
The idea is to test your ad using trial and error.
Different ads may have different outcomes depending on conditions, target/custom audiences, and frequency.
You can even take the shotgun approach. Launch simultaneous ads at once and see which one sticks. Analytics will give you a good glimpse of where you are successful and which areas you went wrong.
It is better to target your top prospects and customers first rather than deploy your ad to all your customers. You can get better results this way as your data will have less noise.
Facebook Retargeting ads is a novel way to advertise to your prospects without being too creepy about it. It is also a more affordable way to get the word out about your brand and direct your prospects to your sales funnel.
More importantly, do not forget A/B testing on all your Facebook ads to reduce guesswork in your future marketing campaigns.
Would you like to see more sales and signups from your landing pages? If you’re not happy with your conversion rate, you can certainly improve your results. However, it takes a commitment to a long-term strategy to see significant results that stick.
Creating a high converting landing page requires more than just writing some quick sales copy and publishing it on a webpage. From start to finish, creating a landing page takes research, planning, testing, adjusting, and more testing.
Optimizing a landing page to convert at a high rate requires multiple revisions sandwiched between multiple tests. Landing page optimization is an ongoing process. Even highly optimized landing page can be further improved. Unless you have a 100% conversion rate optimization there’s always room for improvement.
If you’re tired of minimal conversions and you’re wondering what you can do about it, you’re in the right place. This article will explain several ways you can increase your landing page conversion rate.
As a brief summary, to increase your conversions you need to identify opportunities for improvement and then implement the necessary changes. You can identify improvement opportunities by performing tests, which will all be explained below.
Here are X landing page tests you can run – and X changes you can make – to improve your landing page conversion rates.
Optimizing your landing page to increase your conversion rate optimization will rely on testing. Although you should hire a professional marketing agency to set up your tests, here’s a general idea of how it works.
Once creating landing page, that landing page is considered your “control.” Then, you create copies of your control page and change 1 or 2 elements on the page – preferably just one change at a time. Then, you market those pages through ads to the same target demographics and see which pages convert better.
When you identify the highest converting page, that page becomes your “control” and you can tweak additional elements to test those changes. This process is repeated on a regular basis.
Here are 4 landing page elements you’ll want to create variations for when running your tests. Since PPC ads begin the process of conversion, that’s where you’ll want to start optimizing first.
Traffic to your landing page will almost always come from PPC ad campaigns. There are other possible sources, but most people stick with PPC ads. Whether you’re using PPC ads or another ad source, start testing variations of your headlines and copy.
Headlines are the most important part of any ad. An effective headline will capture someone’s attention and influence them to click. The easiest way to capture attention with a headline is to promise to solve a big problem. Granted, your landing page copy will need to make good on that promise if you want conversions.
Your landing page visitors/website visitors will be heavily influenced by whatever they are exposed to right before arriving on your landing page. In other words, your PPC ads aren’t just a way to get clicks – they’re actually the beginning of the process of persuasion.
You can use your PPC ads to create a state of mind that will make visitors more perceptive to your marketing messages on your landing page.
Persuasion expert and author Robert Cialdini explains how this works, in detail, in his book Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade. However, he gave plenty of useful information in an interview with Forbes.
In the interview, Cialdini explained that researchers generated a higher participation rate from people by asking a question to get people thinking about how they are helpful people. When asking for help with a marketing survey, only 29% would participate. When asking a pre-suasive question, “Do you consider yourself a helpful person?” 77% of people agreed to participate.
If you’re running your own tests outside of a marketing agency, be willing to continually test ad headlines and copy. Improvement is an ongoing process that takes time.
In addition to your ad copy, your ad images (where applicable) have the potential to influence conversions. Before you start randomly testing images, read what other people have discovered to save yourself from having to reinvent the wheel.
For example, most people have learned through trial and error that proper contrast is more important than specific colors. Although, blue tends to be a good choice for a specific color scheme.
Wherever your ads display images, keep your images simple and relevant to your ad. Avoid gradients and complex graphic details that will make your image hard to see.
Your landing page design consists of the following:
There are seemingly endless variations you can create to test landing page elements. Unless you’re running a large budget marketing campaign, it’s important to start with one element at a time. For example, you might create variations of your landing page performance that includes all testimonials at the bottom of the page and another variation that sprinkles testimonials throughout the content.
Just like you’ll test your PPC ad headline and copy, you’ll want to test your landing page headlines and copy. Remember that people tend to scan copy rather than read it from start to finish. Because people scan, powerful, influential headlines will help your conversions.
The most important heading on your entire landing page is the top heading. Work on that heading first and then optimize the remaining headings.
For the most part, the changes you’ll make to your landing page will depend on what you’re testing. However, there are 5 basic changes you can make to your landing page that will optimize your conversions.
Distractions make it hard for visitors to know what to do next. Should they play the video or click on a link you provided in your sales copy? Or should they keep reading your sales page?
It’s important to create your landing page to be free from distractions. You’ll probably want to create a custom page template to start with a blank slate. It seems natural to create your landing page from an existing web page as a template. However, doing that will create multiple distractions for your visitors.
Landing pages need to be free from distractions. Distractions divert visitor attention away from your sales copy and can kill your conversion rate.
What counts as a distraction? Technically, anything that stops a visitor from reading your copy or pulls them away from the page is a distraction. Elements like:
Any and all links you insert into your sales copy on your landing page should place whatever item you’re selling into your visitor’s shopping cart. Aside from links in the footer, any other links will hurt your conversions.
Avoid linking to content in your landing page sales copy. You don’t want visitors to land on your sales page, click a link, and start wandering around your website or someone else’s website. You want visitors to stay on your sales page until they make a purchase.
Every link you publish on a sales page is one more opportunity for visitors to bounce without making a purchase. Don’t give visitors a reason to wander away from your sales page.
Navigation menus are the worst distraction for visitors on a sales page. If a visitor sees a navigation menu, they might start exploring your site instead of reading your sales copy.
You’ve probably seen landing pages with navigation, and there are exceptions. For example, navigation is okay if your landing page is a self-contained mini-website designed to provide visitors with important information. In that context, navigation is helpful.
On dynamic landing pages designed to generate sales or signups, a navigation menu will be a distraction and kill your conversions.
If you use your main web pages as a template for your landing page, make sure to eliminate the sidebar. Sidebar content will distract visitors and if it’s clickable, they’ll end up bouncing.
No matter what the content, sidebars don’t belong on landing pages – not even if the content is related to your product. If you have so much information that you want to present it to visitors in a sidebar, your landing page is already too complicated.
With few exceptions, landing page should be straightforward, simple, and clean. No navigation, no non-sale-related links, and no sidebar content.
Do you know the difference between a content writer and a copywriter?
If you’ve hired a content writer to write your landing page sales copy, you’ve hired a professional in the wrong industry. You need a copywriter, not a content writer. While both types of writers can be highly skilled, they’re entirely different professions.
Get your landing page copy written by a professional copywriter. It’s important to find a copywriter and not a blogger or content writer. Although content writers and bloggers can be phenomenal writers, high-level writing skills can actually prevent someone from writing effective sales copy.
Effective sales copy requires speaking directly to a well-defined target market using persuasive copywriting techniques that often defy grammar, punctuation, and other writing ‘rules.’
Say you’re an SEO firm selling an SEO Mastery Course that teaches entrepreneurs how to get high-level results. Your sales copy will directly influence your conversion rate and it won’t be based on perfect grammar.
You could have a landing page with well-written copy, perfect grammar and punctuation, and your conversions might still be low. Why? Good sales copy isn’t defined by the same standards as a good blog article. In fact, effective sales copy often uses incomplete sentences, incorrect punctuation, and a conversational tone that would make any English teacher whip out a red pen.
The point with sales copy isn’t to write perfect copy – it’s to persuade the reader to take a specific action. That often requires breaking the rules of grammar, punctuation, and style.
“Our SEO Mastery Course will show you how to get big results. Our expert SEO professionals will teach you how to increase your ranking in the search engines using several powerful techniques not available to the public.”
“If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you’ve learned a little SEO, but it’s not enough. You want agency-level results without the price tag. You don’t mind doing the work – if only you knew the secrets.
Imagine learning 2 closely-guarded SEO techniques that will make leads pour in faster than you can follow-up with. Imagine generating instant sales from leads who have no prior contact with your brand. Marketing pros do it all the time and you can, too.
When you take our SEO Mastery Course, you’ll learn some of the top SEO secrets marketing gurus keep from even their top students. When you implement these strategies, you’ll get breakthrough results you never thought possible.”
Both versions of copy are well-written, but the copywriter’s version is specifically written to persuade the reader to buy the SEO Mastery Course.
The biggest difference is in the style and tone. Content writers are trained to create informative, factual, well-researched copy. Copywriters create persuasive copy using specific techniques to influence the reader.
The best solution is to hire one of the A-listers like David Deutsch or John Carlton. However, you may not have a 5-figure budget.
If you’re on a budget, work with a marketing agency to get access to copywriters. If that’s out of your budget, start poking around online to find copywriters for hire.
When you find a possible copywriter, ask to see a portfolio, and if possible, e the stats for how well their copy performs. Good copywriters get paid royalties for their work. They should be able to provide statistics on how well their copy has performed for past clients. If a copywriter doesn’t know how well their copy performs, keep looking for someone who can provide you with that information.
Good typography is critical for conversions. Although, with typography, less is more. You don’t want visitors to notice your typography – you want all typography to blend into the experience of reading your sales page or watching your video.
Simplify your typography as much as possible. Use a web-safe font face, preferably Arial or Times New Roman. Don’t use background colors other than white or off-white with black or dark gray main text. It’s okay to use colors in your copy and as headings. However, avoid the high-contrast color schemes that use black or dark backgrounds with light text.
If you really want to dive into the art of persuasion using typography, read up on the 2012 experiment run by Errol Morris published in the New York Times. In the experiment, 40,000 readers read a passage from a book and were asked if they agreed with the passage by stating ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ The experiment utilized 6 different typefaces and determined that:
Typography can be a tedious element to optimize, but if you have the time and dedication it’s worth the effort.
Simplifying your landing page design and colors, and reducing the number of elements used will support an increase in landing page’s conversion rates / page speed/page load time. Ideally, your landing pages should be as plain as possible – almost boring in terms of design. Plain or ugly landing pages convert better than fancy landing pages.
Why do ugly sites convert more than fancy sites? Technically, it’s because plain and ugly sites contain little to no distractions and just offer the ‘meat and potatoes’ of the content. In other words, a website’s value is more accessible on an ugly site than a fancy site. There’s no eye candy, which is perfect for conversions.
When you create plain or ‘ugly’ landing pages, you’re stripping away all the bells and whistles and presenting pure content. It’s a natural way to prevent yourself from creating unnecessary barriers to the sale.
Another element that might seem strange is using large ‘buy’ buttons. At first, it might seem cheesy and spammy to use huge ‘buy’ buttons that take up most of the viewport. However, just like the ugly site phenomenon, large ‘buy’ buttons increase conversions.
If you’re not sure about using large ‘buy’ buttons, you can always split test your buttons against your highest converting page.
Optimizing your marketing strategy is the final component required to increase your landing page conversion rate. Here are 4 changes you can make to your marketing strategy to get better results.
How well do you know your market? How long has it been since you researched your market? Have you researched your market or are you guessing?
Finding your target market is a lot like generating a keyword list for SEO; both require extensive research and your opinion might not be accurate. For example, many business owners make the mistake of thinking they are their own target audience market. So, they craft marketing messages that appeal to them. In reality, their main market is usually an entirely different demographic.
No matter what your product is, only research can pinpoint your target market. Even when your market seems obvious, you can always go deeper. For example, if you sell socks, your obvious market is everyone. However, you won’t sell many socks marketing to everyone with a general message. Even when you sell a product as universal as socks, you still need to define a smaller group of people so you can craft specific, targeted messages to the group.
Market research will open the door for you to discover more about your market than you can gather from your own thoughts. With in-depth market research, you can discover multiple sub-niches that are also individual markets you can target with even more detailed and tailored marketing messages.
Most products and services have more than one target market. However, some markets are more profitable than others. Still, if you can target multiple niche segments of your market, you’ll increase conversions.
Specific marketing messages tailored for your market segments will increase conversions. Here’s how that works. Say you’re selling frozen black bean burritos. You can market your burritos to people who love black bean burritos and you’ll generate decent conversions.
You can also market your frozen black bean. burritos to people who don’t have time to cook and you’ll probably get more sales – even from people who aren’t too thrilled about black beans. Why? When marketing to that segment, the product is convenience. When marketing to burrito lovers, the product is the black bean burrito.
This is where having a professional copywriter will help you the most. They’ll know exactly how to write unique sales copy that reaches multiple market segments.
You’ll get landing page conversion rate when your marketing message is effective. To be effective, your marketing message needs to be targeted. Sales and conversions will increase as your marketing message more specifically targets your market. However, it’s important that you direct your marketing message to a specific target au market rather than creating a general marketing message.
The world’s top A-list copywriters get results because they write sales copy that targets specific markets. They’ve perfected their craft over many years and often earn tens of thousands of dollars – plus royalties – for writing just a few paragraphs.
For example, the late copywriting master Dan Kennedy was routinely hired by large corporations to see if his copy could outperform the company’s control piece. When Kennedy was allowed to run with his ideas, his copy outperformed the company’s control by a landslide.
However, Kennedy ran into the same problem with nearly every company that contracted him. He would go into a marketing meeting and people would toss out random advertising ideas based on the product’s features. If the company was selling a perfume, they’d toss out creative ideas for a product name, what colors to use, how to package the product, and what kind of music to put in the ad.
Nobody in the marketing meetings would talk about the target market.
In these meetings, Kennedy would redirect the conversation and get people talking about the target rather than the product.
Thinking of the target is the only way you’ll develop effective marketing messages. Effective copy speaks directly to the target rather than about the product.
The difference between copy that speaks to a target and copy that talks about the product is a small, yet critical distinction. Here’s a simple example:
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The difference between these two marketing messages is huge. The first message that simply discusses the product’s features is not a targeted message and won’t be that effective. There will always be some people who will buy items without targeted messaging, but it’s a small number.
The second message speaks directly to a target market consisting of busy people who don’t have time to make coffee in the morning, but can’t function without their coffee. This isn’t the most specific target possible, but it’s targeted enough to give you an idea of what specific targeting looks like.
Once your landing pages contain professionally-written, targeted sales copy, there’s one more step to ensure success. Your traffic source needs to be highly targeted as well.
It’s easy to manipulate people into clicking on PPC ads. However, that tactic will only decrease your landing page conversion rates.
Your PPC ads create an expectation for what the content will be your landing page. When people click on your advertisement, they expect the target page to be relevant to the ad. If the content doesn’t deliver on the promise in your ad, or if the content was hyped up in the ad, your visitors will bounce.
Additionally, if you’re running PPC ads to random demographics, you’re wasting your marketing budget. There are people who click on ads that look casually interesting even if they’re not part of that market.
The solution is to first work on defining your target market’s demographics. Then, optimize your PPC ads to be displayed for your target market. Ultimately, you’ll increase your landing page conversion rates when you target the right people with relevant and influential messages.
Although there are separate components, it’s all one continuous experience, from your PPC ad to your landing page.
You can’t increase landing page conversion rate by only optimizing your landing page. Increasing conversions is a trifecta that includes optimizing your landing page, your PPC ads, and your target demographics.
The tips and strategies outlined in this article will help you optimize your PPC ads and landing pages to generate higher conversion rates. However, your ability to get conversions will always hinge on how well you know – and target – your market.
Don’t skip market research, and don’t confuse market research with checking out keywords using Google Analytics. Market research is a fundamental aspect of marketing that has been somewhat lost in the DIY marketing revolution of the last decade or so.
It’s understandable if you’re on a tight budget and you can’t afford to pay a research firm for information on your target market. However, not having access to that information will hold you back. However, there are things you can do on your own to discover more about your market.
Are your conversions lacking? Does DIY marketing sound too exhausting? Get more conversions effortlessly by partnering with PPC.co. We’ll help you create a powerful PPC ad campaign that reaches your most profitable target market and we’ll create landing pages with professionally-written copy that sells.
Contact us today and tell us what you need. We’ll help you creating landing pages or high converting landing pages & get the landing page conversions you deserve.
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