Player's Guide - Lesson 5

"Tracking Ads and Landing Pages"

Lesson:[1][2][3][4][5][6] 

In the last lesson, we talked about split testing your ads as a means of continuously improving the CTR for your keywords. You can apply the same principle (of steady improvement) to your whole AdWords campaign, and today, we're going to learn how to do just that.

There are three specific parts of your campaign that you can keep improving:

• Your keywords – creating focused keyword lists (discussed in Lesson 3).

• Your ads (split testing – discussed in Lesson 4)

• Your conversion rate – how your keywords convert into sales and the effectiveness of your landing page (discussed today, Lesson 5).

In this lesson we'll discuss two major topics – how to measure the conversion rate of your landing page, and what to do to improve it quickly and easily.

Landing Page Basics

What is a landing page, and why is it so important?

A landing page is a web page that your prospects (the traffic that you are driving to your website) will land upon after clicking through your ads. It is the ‘destination URL' field in your AdWords ads.

Depending upon the type of product / service you are promoting, the landing page could ask the user to do any one of the following:

• Subscribe to a newsletter
• Buy a product
• Download trial software

And more – basically, any visitor action that you would want taken place on your website.

The look, feel, content, quality and focus of your landing page is critical in making sales – if the landing page is not able to ‘hold the visitor's attention' and convince him to buy your product, not only have you not made a sale (when you had the chance to do so) but you have also lost some money.

Not all clicks will produce conversions. That means that in order for your marketing campaign to turn a profit, you have to make more sales than you spend on ads (i.e. bringing in traffic). And since selling products is not always easy, you should always be improving your landing page (and thus trying to improve your conversion rate) in order to make more money out of AdWords.

How can I make sure that visitors to my site buy from me

Quite simply – find out what works best, and then meticulously apply that on your website.

There are two approaches to doing this:

• You can learn from your industry (by observing your competition) and from marketing experts who have a proven track record of success in improving conversion rates
  
• You can test different configurations on your own landing pages and then track the results.

In practice, you would be doing both – applying what you've learned from the experts, and tracking actual conversions to evaluate how you can improve on them.

Conversion tracking is in fact one of the most underused and important tool in AdWords. It lets you track the performance for each ad group (that is, each landing page) and also allows you to see how traffic from different keywords react to the same landing page.

The importance of conversions can be traced to one simple principle – no matter what your ad position or CTR, without conversions you are simply spending money on ads that do not make any sales.

Use conversion tracking to help you improve the selling power of your website – here's a look at how to use Google's ad tracking code on your website.

Walkthrough for Google's Ad Tracking Code

For AdWords' Conversion Tracking to work, you just need two things – accepted and running ads, and the tracking code inserted in your landing page. Let's see how this is done.

Log in to your Google AdWords account – under the ‘Campaign Management' tab (the default screen that you land on after logging in), there is a link for ‘Conversion Tracking'.

Click on the link and you will be taken to the Conversion Tracking page.

Several important things to note here:

• The conversion tracking is free

• You can track both Google AdWords campaigns and non-AdWords campaigns such as Overture (conversion tracking for non-AdWords campaigns is known as cross-channel tracking – for more information on this visit https://adwords.google.com/select/crosschannel.html

• You can use the Flash presentation and the PDF guide to understand more about how Conversion Tracking works and get specific code instructions on setting up tracking on your website.

To start, click on the button at the bottom of the screen titled “Start Tracking Conversions” (Shown in screenshot above). This will take you to the following page:

You have several options here, depending on what the ‘key action' is for your site. If you are directing traffic to a product site that offers both a newsletter and products for sale, then you would set up conversion tracking for each of those pages – one for the newsletter page and another for the product.

They give several suggestions as to where to place the conversion code.

For this example, we will select purchase/sale, as that's the most common option, and really the only option I ever use. Pick whatever suits your business best and click on ‘Continue'.

Google asks you to place a small box saying “Google Site Stats – send feedback ” on the landing page where you insert the conversion tracking code. This page asks you to set the background color for this box – match it with the background color of the page where you are putting your conversion code.

Once you are set to go, click on ‘Continue'.

It's important that you read these points.

Basically the page says that you should make backups of the pages you are changing and that if you are not skilled in doing this, you should get your webmaster to help you out. Google does not take any responsibility if you delete something by mistake and your website stops working (and come to think of it, I'm not responsible for that either, so make sure you know what you are doing or get someone who knows. It's really no that difficult, but just to be safe, make sure you get someone that knows how to insert tracking code into your web page.)

Scroll down to the bottom of the screen – Don't worry, we're almost done now.

Choose the language your site is in – usually this will be the default language of your account.

Choose security level – leave it set to http in most cases unless you are using SSL security on your site. If you don't know what that means, just look at your website's URL – if it starts with ‘http', use that, if it starts with ‘https', use that instead.

Now here's why this is so important – AdWords allows you to set a value to what each ‘conversion' means to you and then uses that to calculate what it is costing you to make a sale.

All the hard work is taken out of it for you – all you need to do now is to keep an eye on the cost/conversion figure (I'll tell you where to check it from) and you will know within a split second if you are profiting from your AdWords campaigns or not.

If making a sale gives you a net profit of $47 (subtracting credit card processing fees), then put in 47. Whatever the amount, enter it in the textbox and press refresh (you must press refresh for the code to reload and be configured properly.

Once the page has refreshed, click once on the text box containing the code – that will select all the text – right-click, select copy and then paste that into a text file. Save that file in a place you can easily access, and then click on ‘Continue' (I'll cover code-installation instructions in just a minute). On to the next screen:

You will see that the page talks about two new columns on the campaign summary, Conversion Rate and Cost/Conversion. You can spot them here in the “Campaign Summary” page – the same page AdWords loads when you login to your Google AdWords account.

Below I've included a screenshot of my Adwords account. You can see how I'm using this tracking feature. It's very important, as it shows me exactly which keywords are converting to sales, and which ones aren't.

Over time, you can just remove the keywords that aren't making you money, and keep the ones that are... You'll notice there are two campaigns and the cost per conversion is $24 for 1 and $62 for the other. The products I'm selling here are selling for much more than what it costs to generate a sale, and that's the goal.

Screenshot of my Adwords account...

Now all that remains is that you test this system to make sure that it works. How do you do that?

AdWords suggests:

•  Click on one of your own ads that directs you to the landing page

•  Wait for someone to make a purchase

But before you choose to test the system, you have to insert the tracking code into your conversion page, right?

How do you do that?

Well, if it is a basic html page (it is a page like page_name.html ), here's all you need to do:

• Make a backup copy
• Open your "Thank You Page" in a text editor or in your webpage editor of choice
  

• Scroll down to the end of the document
• Locate the </body> tag – it is at the end of the of document, like this:

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>

"All of the content on your web page..."

</body>
</html>

----------------------------------

Right above the </body> line, copy paste the AdWords conversion tracking code. So now it will look something like this:

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>

"All of the content on your web page..."

Google AdWords Conversion Tracking Code

</body>
</html>

----------------------------------

Save this file, and upload it to your website.

Now that your tracking code has been added to you "Thank You Page" and uploaded... all you need to do is:

1. Click the link in your ad
2. Go directly to your "Thank You Page" URL

If you set up you tracking code correctly, Google will register a sale within your account. Adwords stats are not "real-time", so you may have to wait a couple hours before your stats will appear. This is completely normal.

... and that's all there is to it!

5 Tips for Writing Landing Pages That Sell

Here are 5 easy-to-implement strategies for creating landing pages that really sell.

1. Acknowledge the “bail factor”

Most visitors to a landing page “leave” within a few seconds of arriving. They don't read your sales pitch, they don't scroll down – they're just not interested. They take this action based on an instant impression they have formed of the landing page.

• Is it attractive and easy to read?

• Does the overall design convey professionalism and trustworthiness?

• Is the landing page directly related to what the visitor was searching for when he clicked on your ad?

The first step is to acknowledge that this is the mindset you're dealing with. Whatever your copy or headlines, whatever your design and layout, they must convince a visitor within just a few seconds (some say 8, some say 5, others say 15 – not much time any way you look at it). In other words, this stuff really matters.

Designing and writing an effective landing page doesn't require a big budget. It does require, however, more time, thought and work than you initially thought it did.

2. Make your headline match the copy in your ad

Your “landing page headline” is the first thing a click-through visitor sees, other than a graphic. Slight changes in wording can significantly impact your conversion rate. This is similar to the importance of a headline on an AdWords ad or a sales page – the headline makes a crucial difference.

However, there's something even more important at work here – by matching your headline with the words in your ad, you are providing a subtle, visual reassurance that this is the site they wanted to visit.

We're talking millisecond decision-making here. Make it easy and comfortable for your visitor to take the next step... to keep reading and visually exploring the landing page. And that starts with maintaining a connection between the ad they clicked and the headline of the landing page they ended up at.

3. Keep your "hero shot" on the left side

“Hero shot" refers to the photo or graphic of the product you're promoting.

Eye-tracking studies cited in MarketingSherpa's “Landing Page Handbook” show that a visitor's eye is drawn first to an image. Only then does the visitor move on to read your copy.

If the hero shot is on the right side if the page, it's more difficult for a reader to switch their eyes back to the left and start reading. So a visitor might never get around to reading your copy. Pretty simple, you'd think? But it's the small things that count.

4. Your call to action must be a link

In other words, when you are asking the reader to make a decision and click the order button, don't put the words “click here” in the anchor text. Many visitors read the hyperlinks first. In fact, readers tend to treat the links more as an informational tool than as a “thing for clicking”. Strange, but once again this is proven to work.

Use strong copy that calls for powerful and prompt action. Your “linked” copy is second in importance to your headline. Don't be afraid to hotlink a whole sentence. For example:

Download your FREE copy of this 24-page guide on 10 Mistakes to Avoid When Buying a Home Theater System (don't bother clicking that one, no magic guides there) .

People love specifics. Plus they want something tangible to attach their actions to, and this method gives it to them.

5. Ask the prospect what they want

Instead of just asking the reader to make a purchase, be specific and ask them upfront what sort of information they are looking for (use checkboxes). For example, if you are promoting health products, give them options that let them specify their motivations for inquiring about this type of product.

Different people have different motivations. Person A could be looking for a diet plan to help them lose weight – Person B could be looking for a diet plan to help them build muscle – and so on. By asking the prospect what they want, you can deliver a tailored sales pitch according to the motivation the prospect has specified.

And this time, because the visitor made the decision himself about what sort of product he wanted to see, it becomes a lot easier to keep their attention (after all, they are the ones who ‘requested' this information – they are bound to be interested in reading through and finding out how it can help them).

By giving them a feeling that they are still gathering information (as opposed to telling you what they are interested in buying), you can not only drastically cut down on “bail-outs” but also seriously ramp up your conversions.

That's all for today. Hopefully you'll take time to read through this material and apply it comprehensively to your landing pages – it could mean the difference between making a tidy profit and suffering financial loss.

In the next lesson, I'll talk to you about specific keyword strategies that you can use to maximize the focus of your ad campaigns – including the “Peel and Stick Method”.

Stay tuned for Lesson 6.

All the best,

Brad Callen
PPC Marketer
http://www.keywordelite.com