MarketingExperiments Blog: Research-driven optimization, testing, and marketing ideas

It has been a while since we have published Pay Per Click (PPC) ad testing. Lately, it can seem like PPC has taken the back seat to topics like social media and mobile. However, PPC remains an integral part of the online marketing campaigns for many of our own Research Partners, so we are still testing to discover the most effective ways to craft PPC ads.

So enough introductions and segues, let’s get down to the test.

Background

This experiment involves a business-to-business (B2B) software provider. They were trying to optimize one of their best lead generation conversion paths. They started by focusing their test efforts on the channel driving traffic through this process, the PPC ad.

At the end of the day, they would end up testing and optimizing the complete conversion path (from PPC ad to form page). And the overall gains this company achieved are going to turn some heads on today’s web clinic, but for the sake of this blog post, let’s just look at how they optimized their paid search marketing campaign.

The original PPC ad

The original ad used mainly vague qualitative statements (e.g., “award-winning,” “business software,” “fully integrated”) throughout, giving the ad little distinction from others.

Of course, there are limited characters within a PPC ad and it can be difficult to include deep specifics for certain claims and offers. But, as we will see from this test, sometimes it pays to get creative with our ad copy.

The new PPC ad

For the test, we were able to fit a bit more specific language on the second line of this ad. We included exact figures that underscored the popularity of this software. They have more than 6,459 current customers and their software is the top used by businesses.

It is important to note that, though “award-winning” could be expounded and specified, we had to balance the information we wanted to include in the ad with the amount of characters available. So we made sure that “award-winning” was explained immediately on the landing page customers reach by clicking on this ad.

The results

Overall we saw the click-through for the new ad increase 20.9% with no significant increase to the cost-per-click. For such a crowded market, an increase like this is nothing to turn your nose up at. This PPC was just one part of a holistic optimization strategy that, in the end, decreased the cost-per-acquisition by 66.4% and increased revenue by 267.9%.

So what’s does this mean for you?

This test underscores two key principles that we should all walk away with:

• First is the value of SPECIFICITY. Using clear statements provides a greater value perception in the mind of the user. If we want our PPC ads to stand out, we ought to use quantitative statements instead of (the much more common) qualitative claims. It’s a simple strategy, but it can have a significant impact on our efforts.
• Second is the importance of STRATEGY. This takes the complete picture to see clearly, but small gains are more powerful as part of a holistic optimization strategy. This 21% increase would be multiplied tenfold at the end of the day after we had optimized each step in the conversion funnel of this offer. So, when possible, test holistically.

Dr Flint McGlaughlin will be talking more about this second principle on today’s web clinic, as he walks through the entirety of this case study from PPC ad to the form submission page. He will explain in more detail how this company’s testing strategy took a 21% gain and multiplied it tenfold.

Related Resources

Compounding ROI of Sequential Conversion Rate Increases: How one company took a small gain and multiplied it tenfold

PPC Innovation: How will Google’s new lead capture extension affect your pay-per-click campaigns?

Face Your Fears: Why visitors really bounce from your site, part 2

Paid Search Marketing (PPC), Research Topics

We have been quite busy at the labs here, but I wanted to cover a PPC development that blipped on our radar earlier this year. For many of us, PPC is a critical source of traffic, and can be quite the task to manage. Well to add to the list of things to consider, Google is beta-testing the collection of phone lead information directly from SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

Google generates roughly 97% of its revenue from online advertising, so it makes sense that they delve into new areas of online marketing – which now seems to include part of the sales process as well.

Given the huge potential (or threat) this represents to you, the Internet marketer, I think this is a vital development to cover on this blog (and even reached out to a search engine marketing firm to get their ideas for you as well.) While this will not affect all verticals, for some niches this might pour some gasoline (or more correctly napalm), on already very competitive areas.

So how does it work?

According to Amber from PPC Hero, “The gist of the beta is if you’re running a PPC ad in Google, and you’re in the top position, you can click on a plus sign next to a call to action (the name you give your contact form) and Google will drop down your contact form to be submitted right there in the Google search results.”

Here is an image from that article to show the lead collection:

It’s important to note that, as with all things in beta, this has the potential for change, as I believe Google does do some testing from time to time.

And since this new feature is currently in beta, limited to businesses appearing in position #1 of PPC results, and on select keywords, it may not be available to you yet. If you’re interested, the best person to contact is your friendly Google rep.

More importantly…how can I make it work for me?

While I think this could have potentially large ripples in certain areas of online marketing, I wanted to have a chat with our friends at ROI Revolution, and get another viewpoint as well.

As a quick background, ROIRevelution is a company whose main area of focus is in pay-per-click management and they are quite good at it. We had the chance to speak with PPC Account Manager Mike O’Rourke. Here are just a couple of points Mike and I discussed:

Upsides

• Simplifies the conversion process.
• No friction (and lead loss) from weak landing pages.
• Great tracking for businesses that use the phone a lot, a traditional weakness of current PPC tracking solutions.  Interesting, how could this be applied to other voice communication/VOIP solutions like Google Voice?
• The feature will be good for certain verticals (e.g., plumbers) that provide local services tied to specific keywords (e.g., “broken pipes”).

Downsides

• Can’t have a conversation in a PPC ad. Landing pages provide a good service for addressing anxiety and questions. So how effective will this lead capture be?
• Opportunities to increase the value of a lead with a well-optimized funnel are lost (e.g. upsells). Without the ability to do that how valuable will the leads really will be?
• Because conversion is expected on the search page, you do not have their undivided attention.  On a landing page, you can guide their thinking.
• Maximum cost-per-click (CPC) rates are applied to leads submitted. This will likely cause your cost per acquisition to rise.
• Since you must in position #1, the bids for the top position might heat up significantly.
• Many people also now use many CRM solutions for keeping track of customers and sales. Will this information be easily integrated with common solutions or sent to advertisers in a standardized way?

Won’t you tell me your name? I love you. Hello.

Personally, I am interested in seeing are how users respond to putting their information directly into a form on a search engine results page. While I think some users are very trusting, others might be turned off by your attempt to get their number so soon.

It might seem like an out-of-sequence conversation. As Flint McGlaughlin, the director of MECLabs Group (our parent company) describes trying to ask for a lead to early in the process, “You don’t ask a girl for a kiss before you have a date with her.”

That might seem kind of corny. But think about how you handle your own phone number. Many of us treasure our phone numbers and can guard them quite fiercely. Will a relatively short ad space be enough to capture users and convince them to give up this information? Are you asking for too much, too soon?

Also, some of the things we talk about in great detail here are anxiety and value proposition. While you can address these with your ad copy in a limited fashion, the fact remains you only have so many characters to work within.

Your pay-per-click ad copy and the space search providers give you is simply to get the conversation going – address why they should click, how you are meeting their motivation, and then get them to a landing page to do the heavy lifting.

In skipping that step, you can end up with spending a lot of money (especially by paying max CPC) with leads that are not as qualified or do not convert.

Also, since this is a new technology, you might be getting a fair amount of people using it because they wanted to see how it works, rather than being genuinely interested in your message.

I have some more thoughts on this that we will post soon, but I want to get your opinion on what impact, if any, you think this new Google innovation will have?

Paid Search Marketing (PPC), Research Topics

In Part 1 of our series on bounce rates, we explored how to drill down into your metrics to find the numbers that really matter. But that left us with an unsettling question. For the users that do bounce but shouldn’t…what is missing that would pull them into your site?

Look at where your traffic is coming from and where it is landing
Many people think that a high bounce rate means there is a problem strictly with the content on the page. While that can be the case in part, you should take a step back and look at where people are coming from and the messages they see before arriving to your site to fully diagnosis a high bounce rate. For example, let’s look at the following user interaction…I’ll be the guinea pig.

I’m thinking of buying a new turbocharger for the Subaru WRX I race on the weekends. So I search for turbochargers.

Then I click on a PPC ad that mentions the following items:

• Unbeatable prices
• Turbochargers in stock
• Free shipping

I think to myself, “Great! This is exactly that I am looking for.” I initiate a click and this is the page I am greeted with:

Where is free shipping?
Where are the in-stock items?
And most importantly… WHERE ARE THE TURBOCHARGERS?!

If you just looked at the content of the site in a vacuum, you would find it acceptable. But users being directed to this site from that PPC ad have expectations that this page isn’t fulfilling.

I have seen many people in this situation look at their site metrics and when they see the high-bounce rate, just keep radically changing the page without any real regard to the user’s thought sequence. They get frustrated when the page continues to underperform.

And remember, I am just using my quest to break the local time trial record in my tuned-up WRX as an example. These principles do not only apply to landing pages or companies running paid traffic.

Text links (on other sites directing traffic to your pages), emails, and newsletters set just as much expectation as paid search banners. For external links, use a research tool like Yahoo Site Explorer to investigate the links to your pages along with the messages being communicated. Then evaluate if your page connects with those messages (If you’re uncomfortable with how your page is presented, contact the owner of the page to edit the links. You will be surprised how willing people are to make those edits if you ask nicely.)

Of course, giving customers the information they need is only the beginning. If we really want to address the bounce rates of key segments we are concerned about, we must get them to act…

On Wednesday, Part 3 will examine how you get visitors to act by giving them a clear path for what to do next.

Have additional questions? Other metrics you’d like to look at? Use the comments section below or shoot me a tweet me at: @ctrentmarketing

Analytics & Testing, Internet Marketing Strategy, Paid Search Marketing (PPC), Research Topics

At our July 29 web clinic on optimizing PPC campaigns, several participants wanted to know more about using forms and keyword insertion.

We distilled the questions and put them to Corey Trent, our lead research analyst on this clinic.

Q: Which is better: product description and fill-out form on the landing page or promotion on landing page and fill-out form on next page?  Is it important to have a form directly on the landing page?

In most cases, having both the description and form on the landing page is the best approach. When you start adding steps or clicks to the process, a couple of things can happen:

1. When a visitor has to click through to another page, the amount of friction increases. People are always mentally evaluating if the effort is going to be worth the payoff. When more pages and steps are involved, that adds more weight to it not being worth their time to continue.
2. When a form is on a standalone page, detached from the description, people can lose sight of the key product benefits, features and the value proposition that were outlined on page one. It’s better to reinforce your offer to help prospects overcome the anxiety of providing their information.

Q: Where is the best place to put the request form?

The best place to put a request form is where you have already built the case that what the user is getting is not only worth it, but a steal compared to the information they are going to give up.

As for where that form actually resides on your specific page — that’s an element you need to test. Whether it’s in a sidebar on the left or right of the page, or in the main content column, or “above the fold” on the page, or below several long copy blocks, there is no surefire place for a form that will work for every type of landing page and offer.

What’s extremely important is that the form is in the natural eyepath of your landing page’s visitors, and that it fits into the sequence of thoughts from intent to action that the visitor experiences on the page. In other words, be wary of placements such as putting your form above or before important content, or using equally weighted columns that downplay the significance of the form.

Q: What about keyword insertion in the landing page header? If keyword insertion does not match with a custom landing page (using dynamic text to match), is there still value in keyword insertion?

If you use keyword insertion in your ad, you’ll be best served by making the connection in your page as well because it increases relevance between the two.

Recently, we’ve seen instances where the effectiveness of header messages has decreased, so testing this with your pages is worthwhile. If you do not insert keywords on the landing page to match the ad, you should still ensure that there’s a logical, relevant connection early on the page that visitors will be able to understand to maintain continuity.

Either way, make sure that your copy is strong — don’t rely on keyword insertion alone to carry the load. Weak copy gives people a good reason to leave your site.

Additional topics covered in the web clinic and questions that we’ve touched on in past research briefs included: value propositions, relevance and offer pages.

You can hear more from Corey via the full clinic presentation and follow him on Twitter: @ctrentmarketing

Clinic Notes, Marketing Q&A, Paid Search Marketing (PPC)

Expressing an effective value proposition is one of the biggest keys to conversions. So it’s no surprise that it was a popular topic on day one of our Landing Page Optimization Workshop.

Problem: Most companies still struggle with value propositions.

This is fertile ground for optimization, and we’ll continue to cover it in more depth in our clinics and workshops. But for this post, I want to focus on a distinction that can help clarify two different types of value proposition — and provide compelling tests that you might run with PPC ads, landing pages, SEO, and other marketing channels.

As the image above illustrates, you can focus your value proposition on your company, or on your specific product or service.

In this example, a search for “lap pools” shows the PPC ads and organic search results include a mix of both styles. (Note: What the image doesn’t show is that all of the sidebar PPC ads use product-centric value propositions.)

What’s the difference between types of value propositions, and why is it important?

Product-centric value propositions and company-centric value propositions appeal to different types of searchers, with different motivations and purchase intentions.

So the style you present in your various marketing channels should match the mindset of the prospects in that channel.

In a search for “lap pool”, the copy from the second PPC ad states: “Enjoy a lap pool in your backyard. Spa Trainer also seats 12 adults.” This line focuses exclusively on the product features.

But the copy from the third ad states: “Whatever Your Needs Are, We’ll Do Our Best to Build You a Dream Pool!” In contrast, this copy is all about the company and the lengths it will go to for customer service.

Tailor your value proposition to the fit the searcher

Each of those approaches is likely to appeal to a certain type of users. In many cases, the copy that is product-specific will appeal to prospects just starting their search. Once the prospect has zeroed in on the product he or she wants, their search may shift to other factors, such as customer service or installation options. At that point, the company-centric copy becomes more valuable to the decision.

This works with SEO, too. Look at the top organic result for that search — it’s another company-centric value proposition: “Really EZ Pools offers complete portable pool packages starting at $999. A proud member of the Better Business Bureau and a one-stop source for portable lap …”

The second organic result is product-focused: “You can put your Endless Pools Swimming Pool and Lap Pool just about anywhere. Take a look at Custom Pools by Endless Pools.”

Identify the right style to use with your search campaigns

Can we tell you which style will win hands-down every time? Of course not.

That’s why you should be testing this with your own products/services, customers, and marketing channels. Especially if your PPC ad or SEO results are surrounded by a bunch of similarly focused (and struggling) value propositions.

This is a powerful way to test how your value proposition sets apart your offer and connects with the right prospects, in the right way, at the right time.

Have you tested similar variations with your PPC ads, landing pages, or SEO? Let us know. And look for more on value propositions, including a contest, in the near future …

Marketing Insights, Paid Search Marketing (PPC), Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Here’s a paradox of successful headlines: the less they sell, the more they can sell.

Our most recent web clinic looked at research and ideas that support a vital, yet often overlooked, principle: The objective of your headline is not to sell, but to connect with your reader.

That split-second connection only has to compel readers to continue — not necessarily to buy right away. You want them to read the next line (subhead), then the next one (first paragraph), and then start to engage them with your offer.

This idea isn’t new. It’s just extremely easy to forget. Tight deadlines, heavy pressure to increase ROI, a propensity for sticking with what’s worked in the past … there are dozens of reasons why we approach headline writing from the wrong angle.

Often, we either try to do too much and follow the old “sell the sizzle” formulas, or contort our copy to placate search engines and spam filters and wind up with drab, keyword-laden Mad Libs.

There are better ways.

In the clinic, Optimizing Your Headlines: How changing a few words can help (or hurt) conversion, we explored three key qualities of winning headlines, looked at recent tests and examples, and broke down two methods you can use to test and optimize your own headlines.

That clinic is now available online in three formats for your convenience:

• View the complete presentation (slides and audio)
• Read the print-friendly research brief with additional links
• Listen to the audio-only version

We also polled the audience during the session. Thanks to the positive feedback and the record-breaking attendance of the clinic, we’ll be conducting a follow-up webinar this Wednesday, Sept. 10 at 4:00 p.m. ET, that will include a live optimization session with audience-submitted headlines and new test results.

Secure your spot for Optimizing Headlines Pt. II today, as our free clinics are capped at 1,000 attendees.

(Use the comments field to post your questions and/or headlines you’d like to have our optimization team address.)

P.S. If you’re looking for more in-depth information about copywriting, including myriad tips and techniques for headlines, you won’t find a better resource online than Copyblogger.com.

Clinic Notes, Email Marketing, General, Internet Marketing Strategy, Marketing Insights, Paid Search Marketing (PPC), Practical Application, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Site Design