SES San Jose Session: Pay Per Conversion

19Aug2008 Filed under: Online Marketing Author: JW

Many business owners and marketers can agree the current economy is having an impact on marketing plans, making every dollar and click matter. As part of the TopRank Account Team, I am excited to learn a new perspective to help clients increase conversions for their marketing campaigns.

Bryan Eisenberg, Co-founder of Future Now Inc., along with Brett Crosby, Group Manager for Google, shared insight to identify missed conversations and how to improve your landing page and increase PPC ROI.

Pay Per Conversion, as explained by Eisenberg, is a shift from our Pay Per Click mentality. No longer focusing our efforts to just get the click, but rather transforming those clicks into a business opportunity or conversion.

If we were to compare PPC to a direct mail piece, the ad would be like the envelope, but as we all know, what really matters is the offer contained inside.

So, why do we fail to convert?

The offer is not relevant
The customers does not have trust

Eisenberg compared our customer’s search habits to that of a bloodhound, stressing the importance of relevance. Customers are searching for so much at any given time and are bombarded with a variety of results to choose from. As a business, you need to give your customers a scent to follow, providing what your customers are searching for, at the second they are searching for it.

If your customers loose the scent, the persuasive momentum is gone and they abandon your site.

10% of searchers abandon after the first click
55% of searchers abandon after the second click
16% of searchers abandon after the third click

The biggest opportunity to maintain the persuasive momentum of your visitors is after the second click. If they have found their way to your site, and leave after two clicks, the information on your landing page is not relevant to their search and they loose the scent.

If your ad copy claims you sell ‘pink roses’ and a searcher clicks on your site expecting pink roses but you provided yellow daisies, the searcher will abandon your site and continue their search for pink roses.

Eisenberg suggests we re-think the path of conversion. Different people come to a site with different needs, our job is to figure out what each person is looking for.

The Conversion Process:

Plan what to test
Measure success
Improve based on results

Brett Crosby, Group Manager with Google, urges business owners to always be testing to improve Conversions.

When considering what items to test, focus on high traffic areas with the biggest revenue opportunities.

To identifying testing opportunities:

Look at landing pages. Where are people entering your site? The biggest opportunity to improve conversions is typically the page with the highest entrance rate and the highest bounce rate.

Review Google Goal Funnels. Identify opportunities to improve copy and forms on pages where visitors are exiting the goal funnel.

Run a site overlay. Identify where people are clicking and where people are converting on pages with a higher bounce rate.

Identify internal site search patterns.Refine your web site based on the search patterns of your visitors. Understand where your visitors started their search on your site and their navigation pattern.

The first issue plaguing landing pages is relevancy. The key to relevancy is to understand what each of your visitors are looking for and what answer is most relevant to your business.

To increase conversion rates, visitors must trust your online brand. Building credibility for your brand is important to build confidence and trust with your visitors.

Visitors will not have confidence in your brand if your site does not: