Battle for the Planets? The Difference is more Power Rangers.

Organic keyword research focuses on traffic, looking for quality descriptors for the products, service, or content offered to the visitor. These descriptors are filtered for the search phrases that are the best fitting and for “low-hanging fruit,” ones with low competition and high value to the business.

However, strategies for paid research must be different, because the mediums are used in a different way. In addition to search traffic, competition and metrics that might be overlooked or generalized, like average CPC, must be included in the research. Furthermore, these three additional discovery strategies can help create a more robust keyword profile.

Three Keyword Discovery Strategies

General

Unlike in organic search, general keywords play a central role. Organic keywords, especially for businesses, tend to be of the general pattern *geographic area* *keyword*. However, because a paid search campaign can geotarget its ads, any search using the non-geomodified keyword from the targeted area would also trigger the ad. Thus, someone in Montana searching {window cleaner} will see ads targeted to Montana Window Cleaner.

General keywords focusing on the domain name and business name are also useful for brand marketing. There is a bit of a debate over whether PPC clicks cannibalize organic clicks for this kind of keyword. A few theories and strategies have arisen, with of course the best answer being “What’s best for you,” though problems can arise with attribution.

Long-Tail

Long-tail keywords, searches like {cost of criminal lawyer} or {home security free installation}, while relatively low traffic, are specific searches that strengthen the depth of the research. This way, deep searches you wouldn’t optimize for organic search can be explored and taken advantage of. These deep searches are largely of two types, researching and buying. Phrases like {cost of …}, {buy …},  or client-specific long-tail terms like car models can be used to serve ads leveraging the search intent of the viewer.

Match Types

The three match types are Broad, [Exact], and “Phrase.” These three types are even more important to the research than for organic search, as it can affect CPC.

Broad keywords would trigger on longer-tail searches, synonyms, common misspellings, and word reversals. The broad keyword Criminal Lawyer would show ads on the queries {criminal law}, {attorney for criminal case}, or {criminal lawyer new orleans}.

To save on CPC, [Exact] keywords will run ads on the keywords only in that order, so [criminal lawyer] would trigger on the searches {cost of criminal lawyer} but not {lawyer for criminal case}.

“Phrase” Keywords display ads solely on the phrase entered. The keyword “criminal lawyer new orleans” would show solely on that term, and none others. This one is less necessary for PPC research.

Facebook and Display

The final addendum for any PPC keyword research is that you have to take into account for display ads, whether through Adsense or social media platforms. These ads, though not for paid search, are the bread and butter for retargeting and remarketing or brand awareness. Approaching this match types as keywords may not yield much, but treating broad keywords as categories or thinking laterally and approaching the keywords from demographics and related interests could solidify a bland targeting spectrum.

With the “reimagining” of Keyword Research strategies focused around these three concepts (and one quick point), your ROI will skyrocket from the CTR and quality score increases that come with a well-curated keyword list. What tricks have you used to get the most out of your keywords?

Shutting down the ability for these sites to advertise online...

As expected from page 21 of the May 10 quarterly report to the SEC, Google will pay for a Department of Justice investigation into the use of American ad space for illegal Canadian pharmaceuticals. Finding that from 2003 to 2009, Google “both allowed and helped” Canadian pharmacies that tried to sell to US patients, this DOJ settlement avoids criminal prosecution. It’s also one of the largest forfeitures in US history, according to Rhode Island U.S. Attorney Peter F. Neronha. Crimaldi argues that Google may see long-term reputation damage from the case, which butts heads with the mantra of “Don’t be Evil.”

But is this backlash really going on? Google’s stock price was up $4.47 (.86%) on the day, despite Crimaldi’s piece coming out at 8am yesterday. Crimaldi predicted this by mentioning its miniscule amount compared to Google’s cash on hand; but not only this, the money has been paid for already. Google already mentioned it almost a year ago. The fallout for this may have already rippled the zeitgeist — May 10 began a 6-day slump, though not the nadir of a 3-month losing streak starting in April. Making comparisons even harder is the 5-day selloff that was likely a direct commentary on Standard and Poor’s downgrade of the company’s shares to “Sell.” S&P rated the stock a “Hold” yesterday, basically saying “the price is right.” Similarly, Robert W. Baird & Co. sees verticals like YouTube as undervalued, and sees the stock outperforming the market, even growing to $650 a share.

Three salient points arise from this story. First, there is a lot of trust in Google. The business world sees one of the main thrusts of European antitrust investigation as a boon to the company: the vertical integration Google has enacted. Secondly, Google isn’t the Dad and Dad store it was, even as recently as last decade. Google’s revenue has exploded by 33% over the past fiscal year, in no small part due to the Adsense/Admeld deal. Finally, Google has often toed the line of what is or isn’t legal — for a less objectionable example, look at Google’s reticence to Chinese censorship laws.

Peter F. Neronha, sending "a clear message to... Google and to others that contribute to America's pill problem that they will be held to account."

Most importantly is that this has already been planned for and dealt with. The submitted Form 10-Q says:

In May 2011, in connection with a potential resolution of an investigation by the United States Department of Justice into the use of Google advertising by certain advertisers, we accrued $500 million for the three month period ended March 31, 2011. Although we cannot predict the ultimate outcome of this matter, we believe it will not have a material adverse effect on our business, consolidated financial position, results of operations, or cash flows.”

Google still allows American pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies to advertise on Adwords and Adsense, though under much stricter rules. Clearly, neither Google nor its handlers are concerned about this, and neither should anyone with a vested interest in the company.

When a new visitor to the Facebook Page arrives, instead of visiting the page’s wall which may have a chaotic dialogue and brand message, he sees a branded tab with a clear call to action and a variety of “toys” to play with — videos, viral content, and user-generated content. When the user Likes the Facebook page (if it’s not bugged up), he’d stay on the tab to interact with more content before moving on. When he returns, the visitor would reach the Wall for the Facebook Page.

For slightly over a week, the user would Like the page on the Canvas App tab, then would immediately go to the Wall, bypassing the ability to immediately remarket to the user. A “Thank You for Liking Us” tab can have an immediate payoff for the visitor in the form of links, RSS feeds, or other sharable content, and solicit him for his information by filling out a contact form. This kind of progressive funneling drives highly desirable leads to a website: since they already were engaged enough with your brand to Like your page, they will be more likely to contact you for what they were searching on Facebook.

1. Call to action. 2. Pulled in by brand/mysteriousness
3. Share in other ways. 4. UGC

Using Coca-Cola’s page as an example, there are four features of a Canvas App tab that increase conversions for the first half of the funnel — the Like.

1. A direct call to action with a prominent arrow will bring attention to the point of conversion. Coke probably doesn’t need to focus so hard on getting people to Like them given the brand recognition, so more creative copy than that may be needed.
2. Offer some kind of secret sauce, a benefit for liking the page. I was fooled into hoping for at least an ad about the secret recipe — more direct benefits would be needed for a brand that isn’t already a 12-pack in my refrigerator.
3. Providing links to other social networks seems counter-intuitive as it takes the user away from the page. However, with opening the page in a new tab in the browser, you keep the viewer on the Facebook Page while offering a new place to share your brand message.
4. A set of editors picks of user-generated content reinforces brand interaction on Facebook. Coke’s prioritizing of this content above branding or further lead generation could a sign of their focus on social branding over other methods of funneling social action.

At the core of any news story is its effect on the reader’s business. As Facebook seems to count each Canvas App tab view before and after the like, you can find a rather direct metric of which tabs were affected worst under Insights>Users>Activity. Furthermore, if you’re tracking your Facebook tabs with cross-domain tracking or your tabs’ links with referral tracking encoded in the url, you’ll be able to look at Google Analytics or your tracking software and determine more specifically the effects on your campaign by searching the Content Drilldown.

At the core of any discussion of unexpected downtime is the allowance for such downtimes in your marketing and advertising plans. Either by focusing on long-term gains or by re- or proactively acting on the acknowledged bugs in the Facebook Bug List, you’ll be able to weather the storm of any accidentally lost functionality.

Recently I tweeted a statistic from Google that 39% of searchers use their mobile devices while going to the bathroom. While it served the intended purpose of getting people to @ me (I’m incredibly thirsty for Internet attention), I didn’t think about what this statement really meant for SEO. Several days later a friend of mine posted the following on Facebook wall:

As comical as it is my friend’s post forced me to think about the legitimacy of Google’s mobile user stat, how many times have you sat down on the can and immediately reached for the phone in your pocket? There you are in complete solitude with your device. Just checking /b/, posting trivial Facebook statuses, or finding the address for local adult entertainment –- completely engrossed in the Internet.

The isolation of the bathroom becomes the perfect environment for search marketers. While users are going, they are also staying focused on search engines or social media. Internet marketers can use this opportunity to make them brand-aware through mobile ads on Google* or promote their newest special offer on Facebook and Twitter.

While I originally took this Google “fact” as something funny to tweet, it shows how much potential there is with mobile search. Users are more attentive on what is being presented to them when they are in the bathroom. With the right content and call-to-action, you can easily convert these users into leads or at the very least have them remember your name.

*I purposely didn’t mention Bing because NO ONE does mobile searches on Bing.
For more search marketing musings, follow me and Search Influence on Twitter: @anthonyfcoleman & @searchinfluence

Picture Source – http://windows7reports.com

The world according to Facebook.

Following advertisements for a contest where Facebook fans can enter to win a 60” 3D television, anchors’ guffaws at “The Facebook” and “The Twitter,” and the third run of a talk about how Facebook and social media peacefully brought down a dictator in 18 days, FOX8, our beloved Fox affiliate network channel, ran a special report on Facebook privacy which showed how confused people are about Facebook.

Stirring up fears about Facebook’s lackadaisical attitude towards users’ privacy is almost as old as the site itself, but really took off after the introduction of the news feed, prompting this post from Michael Cera himself. But FOX8 reports that there yet is one more person who knows “everything” about you, even after 170 types of privacy options: the social media marketer.

We’ve determined a rough estimate of the gay population of the military using the tools they’re talking about. Dr. Kimberly Mason, cyber-bullying expert at UNO, claims:

“The majority of the individuals who use Facebook of course are on there to make their social connections and keeping in touch with friends and family. So looking at advertising and looking how they monitor that really is not in their realm of awareness.”

Strengthening this argument is the general concern about privacy that Facebook users have cultivated. Avoiding questions of survey design, there is no attempt by Gallup/USAToday to reconcile this data with the knowledge users displayed about the privacy settings even at an early stage of development for the site, nor with the skyrocketing membership and constant activity seen as the site has become the second-most-trafficked site on the web. Obviously we’re not dealing with an all-or-nothing situation, and maybe even analysis of risk perception could be appropriate, though of course not under the language of physical harm.

The FTC supports a browser-based “Do Not Track” system, while Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) offers a much more nebulous, but more proactive and far-reaching system. These proposals and recommendations are to protect the users of the site from their private lives being compromised.

But the privacy argument driving interest, polls, and media stories is too muddled to be coherent — there’s privacy, and then there’s privacy, and then there’s privacy. These three realms where users can unknowingly give out information — your network, the public, and advertisers — have different priorities and different interdependencies when it comes to blocking access.

The first kind of privacy — hiding your information from your own network — seems simply counterintuitive to me. Like having a private Livejournal, not using the social aspect of a social network seems a bit counterintuitive. There’s got to be some kind of control here — Reuben Foster of UNO says, “If I don’t want it to be public, then I won’t … click these things,” and that’s right on the money.

Found directly beneath the status box.

In addition, the News Feed is smart. That first variable, the affinity score, is user-controlled. If you don’t talk to someone, they won’t show up as often. To boot, the other variables, weight and time, simply fulfill the definition of a social network. Combined with easy to navigate deletion and blocking capabilities, it’s a hard sell to me that there isn’t enough privacy options for the user.

But that’s a straw man; privacy can be breached in other ways. While privacy settings can stop a lot, so many checkboxes to look at and discover over time might be overwhelming. Worse still, Facebook has a bad habit of resetting its users’ privacy settings when it updates its features. We’ve talked before about other people looking at your posts and online image branding. There are a number of news stories where someone posts something that unintentionally irritates the wrong people, all of which bring up the divide between what is or isn’t public speech.

While I’m not about to open that can of worms, two alternate court cases show the two likely outcomes of privacy issues: either an out of court settlement or a court siding with the company, who can probably show a solid link between loudly kvetching about work and “job performance.” The question on the level of privacy and anonymity of your Facebook profile has not been answered; best to tread with care, but not necessarily lightly.

Even with careful Facebook pruning, you still have your information going to advertisers, and it is this what puts Facebook in a unique position for privacy. Google doesn’t have the instant interest data to tailor their content offerings like Facebook does. Even Microsoft, whose use of Internet Explorer to strengthen Bing’s ranking pages is more insidious and less publicized, gets their data from Facebook

Obviously not the best tool for small fanbases...

WVUE reflects the average Facebook user’s view when it refers to all ads as “Sponsored Stories.” Ads are ads — it’s neither Facebook’s intent nor in their interest to try to fool you into thinking they’re not, and you’d have to ignore clear headings to think they’re from your friends. There is a difference, though: Sponsored Stories refers to ads that look more like regular news feed posts; however, they again have the telltale heading. They also can only be shown to people “whose friends are already connected to” the Facebook page or post that they’re connected to. Similarly, fan page ads can only be shown to people not already connected to the fan page.

See, nothing terribly creepy here...

Facebook’s ad targeting is much less sinister than it seems. You can filter by age, sex, and broad category of interest. While the Family Status category under interests is on one hand a bit questionable, it can heavily influence relevance of ads; you wouldn’t want to be showing ads for singles sites if a member is married with kids.

You can then target by Connection to a Page, Event or App. The next section, the Advanced Demographics, provides advertisers with better opportunities to provide relevant content and avoid marketing gaffes. Finally, you can target by education level or workplace.

And that’s it, right? You get your broad information, and nothing’s even tracked deeply enough to cause any concern. That doesn’t seem so bad.

... But we could make this comparison much creepier. I just like music.

But when something* happens with your account, the advertiser gets access to Likes & Interests. This narrows the interests so that it is more like traditional keyword bidding. This isn’t unusual, and follows the traditions from Google pay-per-click advertising. The advertising platform provides vague statistics to give advertisers an idea of how many people are interested in ideas that are related to your link.

But not only does the advertiser get this information. Another privacy craze was raised over Facebook’s Open Graph Platform, which began the rash of “Like” buttons on the site. Extending the simplicity of the “Like” from every kind of “Edge” — the term Facebook uses for any post, link, comment, or ad — to web pages seems logical and extends not only the brand, but the whole social media mentality.

Open Graph allows a content provider to, like Google Analytics, track his links’ likes and clicks on Facebook, even without having a Facebook presence. While this might seem like nothing new to your loss of privacy, an important distinction has to be drawn between this and Google’s tracking programs. Facebook offers this information with your personal information like your friends list in the unseen data. Obviously, this is used not for advertisers, but for the inner machinery. However, the concern remains that someone with a bit of knowhow can get that information.

But that information isn’t useful for advertisers right now. A list of friends might be interesting on a massive level, but then again, the individual is lost looking at larger trends. The other factors, publicly displayed on your profile

Through these three realms of privacy, it seems that there’s good reason to be afraid of Facebook and its privacy issues. But here’s the catch — who’s really looking at this? Advertisers and content providers, even among the slimiest of content farms, simply want to provide a better user experience. They, including us, are looking for the most people clicking on ads and, more importantly, interact with the content behind the ads.

There’s a tendency for people versed in Facebook to blame the user — we all see the inner workings, we know how easy the whole system is if you turn off your brain. We know that all you have to do is click the “Like” button and you’re giving us good information that we can use to give you more of what you already, at least in a marketing sense, “Like.” Those that are trying to target you are trying to give you more of what you’ve already said you want, even if it’s an admittedly selfish gift, since advertisers obviously get benefits from you clicking the link.

But the Skinner box that is Facebook, and particularly the games and apps that tweak and complicate privacy settings beyond the basic problems described, is ultimately something from which its users benefit. The on-first-glance underhanded data-gathering techniques are ultimately the way that Facebook serves its users, by providing content relevant to them, as determined by them.

Don’t forget to “Like” this page. We promise to do every creepy thing we can with your information and show you what you’re sending to advertisers and content providers in an upcoming blog post.

Not surprising to many is that Internet Marketing Revenues for the 1^st half of 2010 alone totaled $12.13 billion dollars – an 11.3% increase over the same period in 2009.  If that number is surprising, it’s likely you haven’t yet had your eyes opened to the wonder that is Internet Marketing.

Obviously I’d be a champion for all businesses to hop on the online marketing train, but my beliefs are founded in the great results I’ve seen in my time working within the field, as well as the benefits that online marketing offers, particularly compared to traditional forms of advertising.

The main benefit, in my opinion,  is that you can measure the true effectiveness of your online marketing campaigns. Through the use of phone call tracking numbers and contact forms, you can see the source of your leads, which allows you to measure which aspects of your online marketing mix are most effective. Given strong internal processes, this data also allows you to track leads and potential customers all the way through the close of the sale, giving you your true return on investment figure.  This brings up the importance of making use of the technology available to assist business owners with tracking leads, or even simply using a spreadsheet if you can maintain the data.

For example, say you receive 20 leads over a period of time from source A, and 10 from source B. Many marketing managers or small business owners might view source A as more valuable. However, if you have strong systems in place that track the sales process from the submission of a form or a call to the close of the sale, you might see that 30% of leads from source B become actual customers (3) while only 10% of leads become customers from source A (2).

The benefits of tracking are evident in the IAB study as they report that “the most prevalent pricing model since 2006” is performance-based pricing. The effectiveness of tracking can also fall into the hands of your online marketing agency, as many use leads to prove their value. They may also be willing to work with you to compare your new customers to incoming leads in order to further prove a real-life ROI.

Additional benefits of online advertising include, but are certainly not limited to, the ability to target as well as the cost effectiveness of many programs available. Many online campaigns have a relatively low cost of entry. With search engine optimization and pay-per-click ads, since the magic is in the text, once your site is built there’s no hefty graphic design costs compared to print.

According to the IAB study, retail is the leading purchaser of online advertising. Small to medium businesses need not be intimidated by the large share of the market for which their industry accounts, as yet another benefit of online marketing is that small businesses can compete with larger businesses in the online realm.

Top Industries of Online Advertising:

1.     Retail

2.     Telecom companies

3.     Leisure Travel

4.     Financial Services

5.     Automotive

6.     Computing advertisers

7.     Consumer Packaged Goods and Food Products

8.     Entertainment

9.     Pharma and Healthcare

10. Media

The IAB also reports that the largest portion of revenue is spent on search-related advertising. Search related advertising can be the most effective and bring in more quality leads than display advertising because your products and services are being shown to individuals who are seeking what you are selling (if you target your ads appropriately).

All things considered, online marketing can certainly work for you, but many times, when done incorrectly, advertisers and small business owners don’t see the value because they don’t have enough information to either a) conduct it effectively or efficiently or b) to even know if they are. In this case, advertisers, both small and large, should reach to a seasoned Internet marketing firm with the skills and experience to help you and your business utilize this ever-growing segment of the advertising world.

View the full report here.

Thanks to vizzzual-dot-com for the photo!

This is the most fundamental building block when trying to determine the success of a Pay-Per-Click campaign.

Data tells you if that “iffy” ad copy you wrote is actually paying off and it also tells you when something’s gone belly up and is stinking up your cost per lead. But despite being extremely useful, data is also extremely problematic especially when you are using third party report tool with unrelated PPC platform.  The data gets well… unpleasant. This statement has been especially true for me using tools such as Analytics to track Facebook advertising performance.

Don’t misunderstand, I am a huge fan of Google Analytics because it is useful and free (two of my favorite software attributes). While Analytics has proven to be useful in determining the actual run-of-the-mill site metrics, figuring out specific Facebook ad details has been tedious. I mean we’ve all seen that highlighted message they displays when you start using expressions and Advanced Segments – “This report is based on sampled data. Learn more.”

Google Analytics Sample Data Warning.

I hate this message.

I especially it when I’m trying to figure out performance of a Facebook ad. I constantly ask myself, “Why is Analytics ignoring all the information built into the URL? Is this bounce rate even correct? Why doesn’t Facebook allow conversion tracking so I don’t have to deal with these messy urls?”

Whether it was other advertisers demanding more functionality or FB’s development team telepathically sensing my frustration, Facebook is now offering conversion tracking! Even though it is still in beta, Facebook conversion tracking is going to allow advertisers to see at a glance how well new images and adcopy is converting visitors. No more relying completely on Google Analytics and its jaundiced sampled data!

Facebook new "Tracking" tool.

Another benefit of Facebook conversion tracking, conversion data can be compared for accuracy. This is huge for me because having Facebook conversion data allows me to see how accurate the Analytics conversion data is. I trust Analytics but ultimately things do fall through the virtual cracks because of outages, page load errors, or malformed urls. Plus having multiple  sources of data allows advertisers to determine the percent of data loss between platforms.

While I will never know why Facebook didn’t include conversion tracking initially, I am happy after months of tedious URL building and endless data confusion it’s being offered. With an increasing number of advertisers using Facebook, we should see more advanced conversion tracking options. Now if only they’d do something about the archaic reporting tool…

Facebook Yields High ROI on PPC Ads

For years there have been only three internet ad services I viewed successful: Google Adwords, Yahoo Sponsored Search, and MSN Adcenter.  Don’t misunderstand; I was aware of other services.  I am a social media packrat after all, but I never considered them realistic alternatives to the holy SEM trinity. They seemed like gimmicks. As PPC manager at Search Influence, I provide these services to our clients but I never realized how truly profitable social media advertising was until I started comparing the conversion rates. The numbers spoke loud and clear – Facebook (to my surprise) was generating a high return with a significantly lower cost because of demographic targeting and editorial-like advertisements.

Facebook ad that targets keyword's in an user profile

Demographic targeting has always been the corner of successful search marketing.  Though Google Adwords has demographic targeting capabilities, it lacks Facebook’s knowledge of its users. Facebook allows internet marketers to directly advertise to their core audience based not only geo-location, age, and sex, but a plethora of user define information.

Facebook Demographic Targeting

Facebook Advertising allows you to target by:

• Geo-location
• Age
• Sex
• Education Level
• Relationship Status
• Sexual Orientation
• Keywords

Instead of trying to convince a “researcher” to click through (as you compete with nine other ads and organic results), you can use demographic targeting to directly advertise to your potential client. Showing highly relevant ads to a smaller and more focused group of viewers leads to higher quality leads and lower cost per click (cpc).

While demographic targeting is key to finding your audience, the proper verbage is also needed. Unlike search engine advertising, these users are not looking for tax specialists or new-age spa retreats. This type of user is uploading pictures from their kid’s birthday and accepting event invites.

Example of Facebook Ad

So how do you engage these users?

Write magazine-like editorial ads for your targeted demographic.

The reason magazine and newspaper ads are so successful is they provide a great value proposition to a targeted user. Incorporating graphical elements gives Facebook ads a stark advantage over search engine advertising. This element not only allows user to visually convey the ad purpose, it is also a good way to generate a higher quality click-through rate (CTR). A relevant image will always be worth a thousand plus words.

In the end, while search engine paid advertising is beneficial in capturing high-level researchers, Facebook allows you direct access to a potential client. With a well-written advert, you can lead the horse to water instead of yelling at him to drink.

Facebook Advertising Early Lessons

This was a shock to me, the surgeon and the 5 other people who saw the Facebook advertising mockups, because we thought we used:

• relevant and appropriate images and language
• correct grammar
• spelling and punctuation
• proper sentence structure
• and targeted the ads appropriately

After trying many Facebook ad combinations, I realized Facebook was rejecting the images, so we decided to try the practices’ logo instead.

Facebook Advertising Effectiveness

Is facebook advertising effective?  I had run an unsuccessful Facebook advertising campaign in early 2008 that turned out to be a waste of money!

So, I wasn’t very optimistic going into the campaign. We decided to start out by testing $150 in August.  After several days of looking at the impressions, click through rate and cost, I was still discouraged.  However, when I logged into Google Analytics, I noticed that Facebook was referring a decent percentage of the sites visitors and these visitors were completing contact forms at a very high rate.  At the end of August, I calculated that of the almost  $150 spent in August on Facebook Ads, there were 11 completed forms, which is about a $13.63 cost per lead.

Facebook Advertising ROI

WOW! A $14 cost per lead for plastic surgery is amazing! So, for September we decided to increase the budget to $200.   Again, I noticed a lot of activity in September and, as of Sept 30th, Facebook advertising had referred 17 completed forms for a total cost per lead of  $11.76.

Overall, $350 was spent on Facebook ads and 28 contact forms were completed during August and September, averaging a total of  $12.50 cost per lead.

I am pleasantly surprised at how well it all worked, and I am very excited to explore more Facebook advertising opportunities in the future!

–

Related Posts:

• Facebook Marketing – Sneaky, Subversive, Effective!

Coming in for a smooth landing

1.)    Your Company Logo clearly marked in the top left corner of your landing page.

Your company logo is your brand and it is what is going to clearly connect your landing page to your website.  You do not need or want the exact navigation that exists on all of your web pages, it offers too many distractions and takes up too much room, most likely forcing the more important information (the Form) below the fold.

2.)    The only content needed is a few credible and useful facts that must satisfy the users search inquiry.

Display this text concisely using bullet points.  The messaging should match the ad copy and try to use relevant keywords. Only add relevant images that will enhance the users intent to take action.  Do not use stock photos for design because it will likely distract the user from the intended action.

3.)    Make the point of your page loud and clear with clear and obvious calls to action.

To be golden be loud and clear

If you want the user to fill out the form or call a number don’t make it difficult for them. Add the phone number clearly in the top right of the page.   Add a visible contact form that is above the fold, and does not ask irrelevant questions like “how did you hear about us?”  Since, we can track all of our leads in analytics, we do not need to ask this question, so don’t ask it!

4.)    Add your credibility symbols above the fold.

This is very important, because the users need to immediately see a reason to trust your brand, if they do not see it right away, they will not scroll to the bottom of the page, but they will hit the back button to find it somewhere else.

Visible trust symbols are also very important for the ad copy.  For example many of our client’s are plastic surgeons, and we cannot say, “board certified” in the ads unless it is proven on the landing page.

5.)    Offer links to more information or to other pages on your website.
Link to the website at the top and the bottom of the landing page and from your logo.  Add “read more” links to your bullets points, which will allow the uses to find more information.   Remember you do not want to use too many links out because this will distract them from the purpose of the page, but not using any, the user will use the back button and navigate off the page, which is the last thing you want to have happen.

Everything else will distract you from your purpose.  Yes your pages should look good and be visually appealing, but they should be simple.  Make sure all content is fact and not marketing jargon, also provide links to read more.  Read more about this in Technique: How to build the best PPC landing page , 7 deadly sins of landing page design and 8 Dimensions Of Excellent Landing Pages.

Airplane image courtesy of Flickr user: Rennett Stowe

Bullhorn image courtesy of Flickr user: LuMaxArt