PPC Optimization: Tips from your peers on regional differences, Google Product Listing Ads, distracted visitors and offline conversion

With pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, you pay money every time your ad drives someone to your landing page, so improving conversion is crucial to a healthy ROI. After all, you’re directly paying for this traffic, therefore each bounced potential customer seems to hurt just a little bit more.

Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director, MECLABS, will share our discoveries about optimizing landing pages that receive traffic from PPC ads on today’s free Web clinic – Converting PPC Traffic: How strategic keyword placement increased conversion by 144%.

But before we share what we’ve learned, we wanted to hear from you. Here are a few PPC conversion optimization tips from your peers …

 

Pay attention to regional differences

We market on a regional local basis. Establishing a persona per market has worked well.

Also, messaging by market has worked well. The lesson we have learned is, regional differences do exist, and experimenting to find those differences is  key to optimization.

– Ben Joslin, VP of Marketing, MD Connect

 

5 tips to optimize Google Product Listing Ads

Here are some tips to improve your Google Product Listing Ad (PLA) program:

1. Reliable Google Merchant Center integration

Continuously maintain and update the product feed and use the resulting performance data as the basis for future optimization.

2. Manage PLAs at the product, category and sub-category level

A combination of broad and more specific product targets will result in the best balance in traffic and efficiency.

3. Leverage text ad performance to improve PLAs

Product-related keywords and queries that have been successful in your PPC program may translate well into PLAs, and vice-versa. Continuous search query mining and expansion of coverage is critical to PLA growth.

4. Match terms to customer intent and negate ineffectual terms

Mine queries for those that are successfully converting, and negate search queries that are not performing well.

5. Optimize and test landing page and PLA ad text

Use Google to promote text and promotional pricing in the feed. Design and test various landing pages on a product-specific level to determine what converts [the] fastest.

– Auburn Rutledge, Client Manager, Adlucent

3 rules for converting distracted paid search visitors

Converting paid search visitors is a unique beast because of the remarkable attention deficit disorder we all have when searching the Web and trying to complete a specific task quickly.

Here are my three golden rules for assuaging the unique problems of the often-ADD paid search visitor.

1. In your ad copy, advertise exactly what was searched for (to the extent that it accurately reflects what you’re offering).

2. On your landing page, lead with exactly what you advertised.

3. Create a “safe playroom” for the visitor, meaning:

• Is it 100% clear and defined what I get if I convert?
• Are my risks minimal? (e.g. How much email will I get? Will I be charged? How firmly do I believe the promise you’re making?)
• Have LOTS of other people done this before me? What was their all-in review of how it went?
• Who else thinks this is a good idea? The BBB? VeriSign? TRUSTe? People I respect?

– Igor B., Cofounder, Clever Zebo

 

Consider offline conversion

Don’t try and do all the conversion online. Go big for phone conversions – and measure them with dynamic numbers. I find that focusing on B2B conversions online is a big mistake when compared with getting people to call. I usually track this offline conversion and when I track back, I find that it is calls that count, not just clicks!

– Boyd Butler, consultant

 

Related Resources:

Search Marketing: 46% more conversions from PPC ad test

Which PPC Ad Won? (Marketing intuition contest)

Search Engine Marketing: Google Product Listing Ad strategy lifts average monthly revenue 129% – from MarketingSherpa

Marketing Research Chart: PPC objectives in the next 12 months – from MarketingSherpa

Paid Search Marketing: Automation increases revenue 22% – from MarketingSherpa