3 Laws of PPC Success

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If you can do well on PPC, you can drive a lot of profitable traffic to your website. PPC allows you to bypass the long, somewhat random and often expensive process of trying to get your websites ranked in the search engines.

Instead of trying to get rankings, you can just pay for the traffic instead. These three laws of PPC will help you ensure that you’re earning a positive ROI on this traffic.

==> Law #1 – Track Every Sale Back to the Keyword

The most important thing to track in PPC is the keywords that brought you the conversions. If you can identify converting keywords, you’re 90% of the way there.

Usually you’ll start with a large keyword list, the majority of which won’t be profitable. As you run traffic, it’s critical that you have tracking software which allows you to see where your sales are coming from.

You can use Google’s in-house tracking solutions, or you can use your own third party solutions. However, never ever ever run traffic without some sort of mechanism for tracking each sale back to the keyword that generated it.

==> Law #2 – Test Broad and Minute Ad Copy Changes

Always keep split testing. An ad that starts out with a 0.3% CTR could in a few months be getting a 3% CTR – effectively giving you ten times the traffic. In addition, with a higher CTR you’ll be paying a lower CPC, further driving up your profits.

Start by testing huge changes. For example, start by testing drastically different headlines and different kinds of ad copies. Try putting the price in your headline, for example, or using a shocker versus a how-to ad. Your ads should be completely different animals.

Then once you find a type of ad that seems to work best, gradually test more and more minute changes.

==> Law #3: Understand Quality Score

Each PPC engine has a quality score that’s slightly different than the other. Google AdWords’ quality score is different than Bing’s and both of them are different from Facebook.

On Bing, your quality score depends on your keyword relevance, landing page relevance and landing page user experience. The score is calculated on each match type. Unlike AdWords, they offer suggestions to improve your score.

AdWords’ quality score also takes relevance into account, as well as a high emphasis on CTR. They take the quality of your brand into account as well. There’s a large element of AdWords’ formula that’s secret.

Facebook’s is highly CTR centric. The higher your CTR, the better your CPC. The landing page quality guidelines are binary: it’s either good enough to be displayed or not.

If you follow these three laws of PPC success, you’ll be well on your way to a profitable campaign.

Top PPC comparison

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Facebook PPC, Bing PPC and Google AdWords are the three most highly trafficked PPC engines in the world. Mastering just one of these platforms can provide your company with a vast stream of profitable traffic.

Here’s a comparison of Facebook, Google and Bing, along with an analysis of what kind of companies should use each service.

==> Google AdWords

Google AdWords is still the big gorilla in the PPC space. Though Facebook might have comparable traffic in terms of impressions, because of Google’s massively higher CTRs, the amount of traffic you can get to your website through Google is still considerably higher than Facebook.

Google AdWords has the advantage of being the most proven platform. On the other hand, it also has the disadvantage of being the most competitive platform.

Google will offer you more raw traffic than any other platform. However, in order to make Google AdWords work, you need an extremely strong sales funnel.

You need to have strong conversion rates, as well as a strong backend. Your earnings per click need to be high enough for you to compete in the AdWords marketplace.

==> Bing PPC

Since the acquisition of Yahoo’s search market share, Bing has become a serious contender in the PPC space.

Bing has considerably less traffic than Google. Depending on the market, you can expect anywhere between one fifth and one tenth of the traffic you’d get from Google AdWords.

However, on the upside, marketers often find that Bing traffic converts better than Google traffic. Your ROI may be higher.

Bing users are different than Google users. Google users usually have to set their toolbars to Google, set their homepages to Google, download Google Chrome or manually go to Google. On the other hand, Bing users are people who tend to use Internet Explorer, the default browser, and just use whatever search engine is installed.

In other words, Bing users tend to be less technically savvy. They may also be less discerning when it comes to making purchase decisions.

All of this depends on the specific market you’re targeting and varies on a case by case basis. Make sure you test it all for yourself.

==> Facebook PPC

Facebook PPC is just beginning to become a serious contender. Though Facebook has millions upon millions of views, the CTRs on Facebook are usually a fraction of a percent. Also, your visitors usually aren’t searching for your product.

Instead, they’re clicking on your ad because something caught their eye. Usually you’ll have a harder time selling to Facebook customers than search customers, because search customers are actively looking for solutions to their problems.

The upside, however, is that very few marketers understand Facebook marketing. If you can find a profitable campaign, you’ll have little competition.

These are the three most common and most highly trafficked PPC engines on the web. The one you choose depends on your product, your marketing tactics and your target audience.

Landing page sales copy pt 2

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In addition to careful copywriting, there are other important things you must take into consideration when writing a landing page that converts. For instance, it is important to build a compelling case for a time-bound offer.

Now, this doesn’t mean you have to invent fake deadlines and constantly revise them each week. This is a good way to guarantee your complete loss of credibility in the shortest amount of time possible.

However, when planning your copy, you will want to make sure that you constantly urge the reader to act immediately by inserting a number of “calls to action,” as I’ve mentioned previously.

You may want to consider using fly-ins or pop-ups to create more urgency – or to make a time-bound offer. Perhaps you can use a countdown to build urgency (i.e., when someone arrives at your landing page, they have five minutes to purchase the product at the lowest price).

Now, if you’re creating a squeeze page, you might want to employ slightly different tactics. Rather than building a compelling case with multiple triggers and calls to action over the course of 1000 words, you may want to simply condense that all into a compelling headline and one paragraph of “benefits.”

For a completely free-to-join squeeze page, you more than likely wont have a considerable amount of resistance to joining, unless the visitor a) doesn’t see any benefits; and b) suspects that you will sell their email address to spammers.

Both of these problems are relatively easy to overcome. In your headline, simply state the exact benefits they will receive for joining – as always, mixing in psychological triggers. In your first paragraph of copy, give them a compelling reason to join now (i.e., the price might go up, the list might become private, you’ll get this amazing report).

Now, to overcome the second problems, simply include a short line under your opt-in form that explains that you will not – under any circumstances – spam them or sell or give away their email address and name.

Driving traffic to your landing page pt 2

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Follow up to the first post on landing pages here

In the first portion of this article, we discussed driving traffic into your landing page using pay per click advertisement and natural search engine optimization. Now, both of those methods can be effective, but they both usually have rather high barriers to entry and require a lot of work.

Luckily, you do have another option: human connections. And this is where most Internet marketers fail. They don’t realize the power of human connections because they are so caught up in the idea of making transactions and collecting massive checks without having to deal with customers and clients.

One quick way to get traffic through human connections is a joint venture. You can enter into a joint venture by compiling a list of possible “partners” — or people who might be able to assist you in some mutually-beneficial way. This list might include other list owners in your niche, site owners in your niche, and experts.

There’s only one important thing you should keep in mind when contacting joint venture partners – and that is to make it as quick, easy, and beneficial for them as possible. If they have no incentive for doing it, they probably wont even reply to you. And if it isn’t easy, they’ll accept other joint venture offers over yours.

Another way in which you can drive traffic to your landing page is through blog and forum posting; however, it is important that you do not spam, as many businesses do. Instead, actually participate on the forum, provide people with something of value; and, after a while, post your product in your signature – and try to network with people on the forum who work in similar fields.

Your approach to blog posting should be similar. Include a signature file that links back to your landing page, but don’t spam. Instead, post useful comments. This is not only more ethical, but it is plainly more effective. Spam gets deleted. Good comments get praised, inducing people to follow your link and check out your products.

Landing page sales copy

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Most people have no idea how to write a landing page that converts. Instead, they slop together elements that they have seen used in other landing pages – but usually do not put them together in the same way the owner of the successful landing page did.

One major problem is copy. And that’s fine. Not everyone is going to be an excellent writer – nevermind a copywriter. But as someone selling a product or trying to build a list, it is important that you know your strengths and weaknesses – and that you either spend the time to overcome them or hire someone else to do it for you.

With copywriting, for instance, it is important to use a mix of compelling sales points with powerful psychological triggers. Most people who create a salespage miss either one or both of those elements.

For instance, they might concentrate so much on building hype that they don’t actually explain what solution they are providing – and for whom they are providing it. If I don’t have a specific problem that your product solves, why would I buy it? I wouldn’t.

Now, if they fail to sprinkle in psychological triggers, such as “scientifically proven,” “guaranteed,” and “shocking,” no one will feel compelled to continue reading, as the benefits will have a low or average perceived value.

In addition to these two problems, some salespages lack coherency and direction. The copy looks amateurish and it doesn’t slowly grind forward, breaking down the visitor’s resistance to the sale – and compelling him or her to buy more and more at each sales point.

Additionally, if there aren’t multiple calls to action – another form of psychological trigger – then a potential visitor might never feel compelled enough to pull out his or her credit card on the spot and make the purchase.

Landing page system

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The landing page system provides a uniquely powerful system through which you can derive profit from multiple streams. This article will briefly discusses some of those different streams – and how you can manipulate them.

Let’s start with the landing page itself: all traffic is sent to the landing page. From there, it will have a number of options, depending on what you have given them. Many marketers suggest that your landing page should always be an opt-in form. Others will suggest that it should simply be a sales page.

Whether it’s a free newsletter or a product for sale, the landing page system you create should include a “one time offer,” which will compel them to take action – subscribe, buy, etc.

Once they subscribe or buy, the landing page system you create should then re-route them to a thank you page, which opens up more means through which you can up-sell. One quick way to up-sell is to simply include advertisements on your thank you page for related affiliate products or for your own products. Here, again, you will want to give them a one-time offer.

Also, if you haven’t yet asked them to join your mailing list, this is where you should do it – on your thank you page. Once they opt-in to your list, you now have a whole new options you can use in conjunction with the landing page system to generate revenue.

One such option is selling ad space in your newsletter or e-zine. The more people you have reading your newsletter, the more you can generally charge for ad space; however, you will want to avoid overselling to your list to ensure your advertisers actually make money.

Your next option is to endorse a product as an affiliate. You can tell your subscribers how someone has just created a brilliant product – and you can offer it to your subscribers through an affiliate link. You may even want to use other products you have has bonuses to give them something extra.

The last and most profitable way in which you can generate revenue through your newsletter is by creating and selling your own products to them.

It is important to note that you don’t have to use all of these means to generate revenue; however, the more you use, the more you earn in general.

 

Driving traffic to your landing page

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Driving traffic into your landing page – it sounds easy, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not. And no matter how great your landing page is, it wont matter if no one ever reads it. Furthermore, if everyone in the world other than your target audience reads it, it also wont matter. This is why you need to find media through which you can drive targeted visitors to your landing page.

One way in which you can drive traffic to your landing page is through natural search engine optimization. This is the slowest process, but it is also one of the best ways to ensure a continually-increasing stream of traffic over time.

Generating natural search engine traffic generally entails getting links to your site. While reciprocal linking was once the best strategy, experts now believe that major search engines are devaluing reciprocal links in favor of one-way links and triangular links (which search engines can’t really detect).

Another way in which to get natural search engine traffic is by optimization your website for certain keyphrases. You can do this by creating pages that specifically focus on one keyword on your given niche. You can then set the page extension to that keyword and optimize the content at a 1.5% density for that keyword. You will also want to use it in header and title tags.

Now, in addition building natural search engine traffic, you will want to consider using pay per click advertising. You can do this by opening an account with Google Adwords.

As mentioned earlier, successful Google Adwords campaigns do two things: they group keywords into multiple, small, related groups – and they send leads to multiple, tweaked landing pages.

This means you will have to start with some careful keyword research; and you will then have to alter your landing pages to match that research.

These are some of the most commonly used tools for driving traffic to a landing page; however, they are not always the most effective.

Landing Page intro

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Before you begin the attempt to build a successful list or create a powerful sales page, you will want to start with a rigorous introduction to landing pages. In stark contrast to undifferentiated, unfocused home pages, landing pages focus specifically on capturing leads for a newsletter or making sales for a specific product – and make no attempt to give visitors a different option.

Another word which is used for a landing page when it functions for the specific purpose of capturing leads is “squeeze page.” A squeeze page is a page designed to get names and email addresses. Usually, however, a squeeze page is usually a smaller type of landing page, which usually has an opt-in form in sight when the page loads.

So what is important to learn in an introduction to landing pages? First, it is important to recognize that all successful marketers use these. If you plan to sell a product over the Internet, you will want to use one, too, rather than relying on sidebar opt-in forms and unfocused pages that do not convey a single point and a single call to action.

Another important thing you will want to take away from this introduction to landing pages is that every landing page contains the same parts and is focused on a SINGLE goal – getting the visitor to become a subscriber or buyer.

These parts are as follows: an opt-in form (or sales prompt), a brief or lengthy introduction, a picture of the list/product owner, the signature of the list owner, and a call to action (or multiple calls to action).

Determining which model will work best for you can simply only be done through testing. While many boast a conversion and attribute it to the shortness of their introduction (many will be one short paragraph), otherwise will boast a high conversion rate because they use lengthy, thorough, and compelling copy. Jimmy D. Brown’s list and traffic, for instance, has an unbelievably high opt-in rate, but he uses lengthy copy.

If there is anything you absolutely must take away from an introduction to landing pages, it is that you cannot create a landing page or squeeze page that isn’t focused.