Today I’d like to share with you some tactics that I’ve used personally to help turn one of my pay-per-click accounts around from generating 19 leads per month to 95 leads per month in a short period of time!
Tip #1: Perfect your landing page: This is the starting point in giving users a great experience and becoming a trustworthy site. A lot of our clients are very open to recommendations on improving their site and landing page in order to achieve additional leads or sales. The best tactic is to write out all of your landing page recommendations and give good reasons why each of them is critical. This part is especially important since many company programmers are extremely busy and may not have time to tweak pages that aren’t technically ‘broken’. Therefore, making changes to a landing page and giving viable reasons and ‘best practices’ is essential to making the changes happen.
There are tons of blogs on how to create the best landing page. It’s all about the customer experience. The crucial elements of a good landing page include:
- Prominent form above the fold (above the fold meaning to where you can see the entire form without the computer screen cutting it off)
- Large ‘submit’ or ‘enter’ button above the fold
- One image that portrays a professional look
- Small content area that describes the top reasons why a customer should choose your company. Or the top services you can provide to a prospective client.
This is a great post on landing page do’s and don’ts that if implemented correctly, it can really boost your conversions.
Tip #2: Stray from pausing keywords, focus on the best converter: My motto: stick with what works! If there is one keyword in your account that generates a majority of the leads, stay focused on that one keyword. What I mean by stay focused is don’t lower that keyword bid if you’re over budget, lower all other keywords that aren’t generating any leads. This allows for more of your budget to go towards that one better performing keyword. If you’re generating more traffic towards one particular great performing keyword then the chances of it converting more are high.
Lowering bids at the ad group level, and not working at the keyword level is a HUGE mistake in my opinion. Keep increasing that one keyword bid, and continue lowering all other keywords that aren’t converting. I wouldn’t recommend pausing any keywords unless they haven’t converted in a long time. If you pause keywords then you have absolutely no chance of getting them to convert. The idea is to try and make these poor performing keywords work. Leave them on, but lower their bids.
Tip #3: Take advantage of match types in Adwords: I have used it and it works! Add all match types to each and every keyword in your account. This of course only works in Google with exact, phrase and broad match. Once I began adding all match types in every ad group, I immediately saw a huge increase in traffic, and leads were soon to follow.
Tip #4: Be direct, tell your customers what to do: Ad text is extremely important when trying to generate leads. It’s important to tell the customer exactly what they should do. Whether it’s to download a whitepaper, sign up for an email newsletter or request a quote for a service, be sure to tell them so in your ad text with a call to action. To learn more on ad text read my post on 9 mistakes when creating ad text.
Tip #5: Use the free keyword tools frequently: Ideally, the more traffic you drive the more leads you’ll generate. Be sure you’re not missing out on any potentially great converting keywords. This includes simple variations of current keywords, misspellings and new keywords. There are a ton of free keyword tools for advertisers, use them! Run through each ad group and use the keyword tools frequently. More keywords are likely come up each time you use the tools.
Not only can you use the basic free keyword tools but Google has a great option where you can enter the url of your landing page and they’ll find keywords for you. To use this option go to the Google external keyword tool and click on the website content option, then simply enter your url and voila!
Tip #6: Organize your campaigns and ad groups better: I can’t emphasize how important it is to have an organized account with a small list of keywords per each ad group and a very targeted, relevant ad text. If you download Adwords editor it’s super easy to rearrange your keywords within ad groups and move things around. Writing new ad text that contains keywords within your ad groups is essential to getting more click-throughs and generating more leads and conversions.
Tip #7: Use backwards math: It’s pretty simple when you think about it; just calculate the number of clicks it takes to generate one lead. Then, use these traffic generating tips to increase clicks and traffic to your site.
For example, if in the past seven days I’ve generated 100 clicks and 5 leads, therefore it takes 20 clicks to generate one lead (100/5). If my goal is to generate 15 leads, then I know I need to drive an additional 200 clicks to achieve the 15 leads.
Tip #8: Run a Search Query Report to find relevant keywords: Running a search query report in Google Adwords is a great way to find out what keywords your users are actually typing in the search box that displays your ads. I’ve run search query reports in all of my accounts and always seem to find additional keywords that I wasn’t previously targeted before.
The bottom line, always try new things and stick with what works! If you have additional tips that you’ve used personally to generate more leads and conversions, feel free to pass them on!
