For most business owners, pay-per-click advertising is all about turning clicks into money. So long as they have the right keywords or demographics and offers in place, they tend to assume everything will work out the way it’s supposed to.
What many of these otherwise insightful men and women never consider, however, is the way their online advertising campaigns look from a customer’s point of view. If they don’t seem to make sense to a buyer, successful conversions are going to be rare. So today, I want to take a closer look into this concept and explain a couple of important ideas…
It’s Time to Rethink a Segmented Approach to PPC
In the common or traditional view of PPC advertising, campaigns are essentially a collection of parts: you put an ad out to get clicks, design a landing page that convinces visitors to buy or take the next step, and then push for a conversion. That can be a successful model, but it assumes you have the right clicks from the right kind of person, a landing page that interests that buyer, and an offer that is strong enough to pull them along. If any of those items are disjointed from the others, potential customers are going to get “stuck” at one point or another.
Look at the Flow of Ideas From the First Contact to a Successful Conversion
To understand why buyers might get “stuck,” ask yourself whether someone who were to click on one of your ads would be taken to the type of page or content they were expecting to see. More often than not, the answer isn’t clear. That’s because marketers fall for the trap of writing ads they think will get clicks, rather than starting a conversation with the prospect that leads to the next natural step. In order to help your PPC campaigns make logical sense, think about what it is that would interest a buyer in your products or services, and whether each point of contact would naturally follow from the last one.
Try to Preview Your Content and Create Value for Prospects
Instead of creating ads you think will be eye-catching and then using hard-sell techniques to convince buyers to take the next step you want them to, consider writing ads that preview what a searcher will find on your landing page and website. That creates more anticipation and fewer surprises. It may lead to a lower click through rate than you were getting, but that’s acceptable if the visitors who are coming to your website are more interested in what you have to offer. After all, that means fewer expenses and more conversions for you. Most of all, though, try to turn your offers into value propositions for searchers. In other words, don’t just work to advance your goal, but to help them find what they’re looking for at the same time.
When you treat every element of a pay-per-click campaign as a separate entity – or try to convince customers to do what you want them to do instead of the actions that make sense based on their needs and desires – you create confusion. Before they can be profitable, your PPC campaigns have to make sense. Now is a good time to evaluate yours to ensure that everything flows well from the first ad to the final call to action.