Improve Conversion

Paid search can be the quickest tool to deliver results on your site.

Unfortunately, it can also leave many with a bad taste in their mouth and the thought that “Paid Search is not for them” or this is just a “money making scheme by Google”. PPC works and is why Google is now bigger than brands like Coca Cola despite not even existing 10 years ago. One of the main reasons people end up feeling like this is due to poor set up which makes management and the ability to improve conversion very difficult.

We have put together 12 tips. Part 1 explains Points 1-6.

All these points should help to improve overall conversion. If not applied together then you will not maximise the performance of your online marketing approach or reach your desired amount of completed goals.

1) Firstly Do Your Research

Use a keyword tool and competitor analysis to get a good impression of the online volume and bid prices you should expect on the keywords you plan to advertise under. This will help with both the structure and budget when setting up your PPC account.

2) Create an Effective Structure

After conducting research it is vital to setup a clear and flexible structure in the areas you wish to advertise. This will help you focus on specific products or services and easily manage your budget to focus on key performing areas. For example as budgets can only be set at campaign level, to prioritise on better performing products you would need to separate these products into individual campaigns. E.g. If you were to sell two products and one converts at higher rate online then would be wise to focus more of your budget on the better performing product. This cannot be done if both products are under one campaign. If you decide to do this at a later stage then you will lose all of your history and quality score (these terms are explained below). This is why it is crucial to get the structure right from the start.

3) Target Your Audience

It is important to target visitors you can realistically provide a product or service to. This helps to avoid wasting budget on visitors that you cannot provide for and reduce costs. This will increase the possibility of a conversion on your website due to the relevance of the visitors. As well as choosing the location of your ads you can also target searchers over certain time periods. For example, it would be wise for businesses that can only answer the phone in office hours to concentrate running their ads and spending the budget during this period of the day on weekdays. However, if spare budget is available then running ads all week is advised.

It is crucial to be as specific as possible. An example below shows how effective and specific terms should be if you are renting e.g. Self catering chalets in Chamonix.

• Catered chalets for Chamonix = Bullseye
• Chalets in Chamonix = close
• Chamonix accommodation = outer ring
• Skiing = even further out
• Holiday = even further out

4) The Importance of Advert Relevance

Ensure the advert is both relevant to both the search terms you are advertising under and also the page you are sending them to. It is important to make sure your ad is appealing to the searcher so it stands out from your rivals. The relevance of each ad will help to improve the overall CTR (click through rate) which is the percentage of total searchers that click through to the website from your ads. A Call to action, such as promotional offers, is likely to attract more visitors leading to a better chance of a conversion. Calls to action such as ‘click here’ or ‘buy online now’ should convince the searcher to perform the desired action on you website.

5) Make Sure You Split Test

Make sure you always have more than one advert running to determine which adverts convert more searchers to visitors. By doing so you should be able to adapt the best possible ad text to continually attract a higher percentage of searchers each month.

6) Landing On The Right Page!

This is the key point of the customer journey on your website. It is crucial that the visitor finds exactly what they are looking for and also the advert and keyword relate to the page. The relevancy of the advert plays a major part in determining the price that you pay for each click/visitor. This also affects the customer performance to the intended goal on the website. E.g.  Someone looking specifically for an Audi A8 will want to be sent directly through to the Audi A8 page or range. Sending them to the homepage instead may be frustrating and the visitor may leave rather than browse to find the page themselves.

View tips 7-12

You may have heard it before but content really is king.

The way your content is displayed and the way it is structured will determine if users bother to stay on your site and move on to take action and convert.

It’s better to have a bad design and great copy than a great design but bad copy. We have seen some very ugly looking sites delivering incredible sales.

A set formula that often works is to use a layout such as:

• Heading title
• Summary of what the page is about and any conclusion
• Bullet points for the most important points
• Sub heading
• Content of sub heading
• Call to action (there should be a call to action near the top, maybe to the right of the content)

The heading titles should be bigger and in different colours so that they stand out.

Your visitors will often scan the page to see if this page has the information they are looking for.

Make sure that your text is sized so it is easily readable. Try to use darker colours as sometimes light ones may appear fine on your computers but on others, depending on factory default settings, may be too light to read. Avoid grey, orange, sky blue, violet & light green.

We use the tried and trusted marketing approach of the AIDA model which provides a compelling framework for persuasion online:

• A – Attention
• I – Interest
• D – Desire
• A – Action

A - The heading can get their attention. Communicate your offer and value very quickly to grab a visitor’s attention.

I - The summary of the page and how your business can solve their problems.

D- The bullet points display the desire by communicating value, showing your most important reasons why they should do business with you.

A - A call to action helps you potential customer take action by giving them options on relevant content or to complete any form submission.

By using this structure the content will be displayed in an ‘F pattern’. Numerous studies have show this is how users view content areas. This ensures that content does not get missed.

Ask 3 Critical Questions

Bryan Eisenburg believes there are three critical questions that should be addressed for every page a website visitor sees as they perform a sequence of actions (e.g. ‘click to see…’) that result in the ultimate objective (typically a sale, booking or enquiry).

1. What action needs to be taken?
2. Who needs to take that action?
3. How do we persuade that person to take the action we desire? Is it easy for them to take action?

These are the remainder of the tips to increase conversion from your PPC campaign.

7)  The Three Match Types

There are three important match types, broad, phrase and exact. Matches are keyword options we have to control how precise a user’s search term must be to trigger our adverts. To keep campaigns targeted use phrase and exact initially. If you have additional budget then add broad matches. With very specific terms such as a models number, broad matching is effective and also a good way off attracting a larger volume of visitors. For Example: The brand name ‘Falcon’ is best used only in phrase and exact matches.

• Exact means your advert will only show if someone types in the exact word ‘falcon ovens’ with no other words attached.
• Phrase would mean that your ad would show if the keywords were shown in any sentence or phrase so long as it is in the exact sequence and form that you specify. E.g. phrase would show your advert in the following sentence, “buy falcon ovens” but not “review ovens made by falcon”.
• Broad however would show your ad under very generic and often irrelevant phrases. E.g. “Falcon planes”.

8) Don’t Forget Your Negatives

Using negatives is crucial to filter out irrelevant searches for your more generic terms. This avoids wasting budget which could be used targeting areas that have a higher propensity to convert. For example a company selling meat may advertise under the term ‘beef’. Adding the negatives of ‘recipes’ and ‘how to cook’ will prevent irrelevant searchers clicking through your ads and therefore costing you money!

9) Bid pricing & Ad Positioning

This will depend on where you want to appear on Google based on the budget at your disposal. These prices will need to be constantly monitored as they will fluctuate due to competitor bidding and ad relevance as discussed previously.

10) Use of Tracking Tools

Tracking tools work alongside your PPC to monitor which keywords lead to conversions and the customer’s pathway to, and through your website. This is a very effective way of identifying areas that lead to conversions allowing you to focus your budget. A great free tool is Google Analytics which gives a very good insight into individual keyword performance. There are a number of other paid tools that perform a variety of different functions depending on your business needs.

11) Be aware of Quality Score & History

Quality score is a Google System that rates the relevancy of your keywords based on landing page and ad text. Having a high quality score can reduce your cost per conversion. Having a good quality score over a period of time will result in a build up of history meaning Google will reward you by reducing bid prices.

12) And Most Importantly…..

Constant Monitoring & Management- These 11 points will not be as effective and result in fewer conversions if not under constant monitoring and management as online trends and competitors continually change their online marketing approach.

All these points should help to improve overall conversion. If not applied together then you will not maximise the performance of your online marketing approach or reach your desired amount of completed goals or sales.

Targeting specific products/services using domain names

• Do you find it hard to target certain products/services using your site?
• Does it feel like a huge task to rebuild a site to focus on all your products/services?
• Do you find it hard to get sign off or internal approval for a new site build?

Even after sign off we have found many projects take several months to complete as the all encompassing site is built and loaded with content. By the end of the project the internal team and any agency can lose their energy to implement marketing programs and make further changes as they see how the site responds to the initial campaigns.

Why not just target one area?

It is worth looking at your products and services and targeting one or two of them to achieve high conversion rates and then rolling the learning out to other areas or using that design/idea on the main new site build.

We advised one of our clients, a car leasing company, to focus on one brand such as Audi rather than all brands. The reasons for this were compelling

1. There was a high search volume on Audi related phrases that outweighed the budget with a conservative 5% click through rate on adverts.
2. They could generate lots of leads in one sector to achieve and use this to negotiate better supply deals to increase sale conversion rates.
3. A site focused on just one sector would take a month to launch compared to 3-4 months for a site covering all brands.

www.myleaseaudi.co.uk was born out of www.my-lease.co.uk

The results were outstanding

• Click through rates on adverts went from  7.5% to 16% just by having www.myleaseaudi.co.uk as the destination URL as opposed to www.my-lease.co.uk
• Conversion of visitors to leads increased from 3% to 14%

Potential customers are less distracted due to their being no other brands and convert a higher rate with a focused offering and landing pages for each sub model e.g. Audi A3 as well as Audi family/small cars.

By asking people why they used the site for a quote they said they felt that My Lease must be an Audi specialist who knew the market well.

The quote form on the right hand side of all products worked very well and we have used this on various other sites. This is helping the potential customer take action.

This successful model can now be rolled out to other brands (such as Mercedes or BMW) or to all brands.

1.      What’s the subject?

The most important aspect of an email is to provide an intriguing and
interesting subject line for recipients to be tempted to find out more. If
possible carry out an initial Split run test on a small proportion of the
email list. For example we tested two different subject lines for
LondonCakes.com. We discovered that one of the subject lines had a 6.74% increased open rate and on a
list of 50,000 emails, that would lead to a potential increase of 3,370 more
opened emails.

2.      Who opened? Who clicked what?

If your email marketing software allows, it can be hugely beneficial to
monitor who opened the email and who clicked on which of the ‘calls to
action. The ability to resend the email to customers who did not open the
initial email and simply change the subject line can prove to be a valuable
exercise. For example we resent an email to non openers for
ChocolateOnChocolate.co.uk which led to an increase in the overall open rate of 6.16%.

3.      Above the fold!

All key offers or promotional messages should be clearly noticeable
immediately upon opening any email. Specifically they should not require the recipient
to scroll. Recipients must not be made to think or read too much as key
informative topics should be made clearly visit.

4.      List Hygiene

Email lists need to be checked regularly for hard and soft bounced emails to
keep deliverability rates up. If emails are not opened by recipients for
over 3 months it is good practice to send out an ‘un-missable’ offer to
those recipients and if the email is still unopened, the recipients email
address should be removed.

5.      Obvious Calls to Action

Implement key noticeable distinct ‘calls to action’ buttons and use obvious
blue hyper text, clickable links where necessary. Recipients generally skim
read emails but pay much closer attention to blue hyperlink as these allow
them to explore further, therefore wording used for hyperlinks should be
made to be preeminent.

6.      Distinct Logo

Ensure the company logo and slogan is at the top of the email so it is the
first aspect of the email recipients see, this instils company awareness to
the target demographic. It is beneficial for future email sends to allow
recipients to add company email to their address book and including clear
company name at the top of emails builds on consumer trust.

7.      Monitor + Adjust

Assess the best times of day to send to the target audience depending on
previous open rates. Monitor constantly the layout of the email design to
find which sections of the email are receiving the most clicks. Where possible,
build a trusting and informative relationship with recipients by providing
useful informative content. Provide incentives to encourage responses and
actions to be carried out by recipients for rapport building.

8.      List Segmentation

It is useful to be able to split email list into sectioned demographics to
allow targeted marketing offers to specific isolated audiences. This will
allow your email sends to be more targeted and aimed at interested parties
which will result in a greater click through rate and a higher return on
investment.

9.      Design Targeting

If possible, categorise target demographic and adjust email design to suit
demographic, as males and females respond differently to colours,
information and layout designs. It is important to deliver text versions of
emails as well as html versions as content validation checks are carried
out by Internet Service Providers to ensure authenticity.

10. Test test and then…..test some more

Test email in various ISP’s and browsers. Check for layout variations in
different browsers and grammatical mistakes in the subject line as well as
the email content. It is crucial to ensure every link is tested to be
working and navigating to the desired link corresponding to the relevant
page.