The Strangest PPC Secret
Posted on 22. Apr, 2012 by Glenn Livingston, Ph.D. in AdWords, Blog, Content Network, Overture (yahoo search marketing), Pay Per Click, Quality Score, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Traffic
OK, so here’s the strangest clickthrough secret I’ve come across in my years…
Something which has the capacity to take your prospect OUT of a competitive environment and position you as the obvious solution to their problem…
And something largely counter-intuitive, so I need you to stay with me please.
Here’s the secret…
When you’re in a high volume traffic stream, advertising to a specific demographic segment of the market can actual increase your volume of sales and overall profits, even–and sometimes especially–when that segment represents a smaller proportion of people searching.
For example, let’s suppose you’re selling a solution to stop excessive barking in dogs. Let’s call it the “Shut Up Machine” OK?
OK. And suppose we’re paying $1 per click for our best performing ad on “stop barking” for this ad:
CTR = 1% Conversion = 1%
Cost Per Conversion = $100
Conversions Per 1,000 Visitors = 10
Now, let’s further suppose–and these are just wild assumptions since I haven’t actually researched this market–that the search volume in this market breaks down as follows:
- Women Under 40 = 35%
- Women over 40 = 30%
- Men Under 40 = 15%
- Men Over 40 = 20%
Common sense might suggest you’d need to keep the generic ad, because there’s no demographic which makes up the overwhelming majority of the market. (So one might think that advertising to women only, for example, would drop our clickthrough by 35%, since women represent 65% of the search volume).
But in many cases I’ve seen this just isn’t true. Especially if you’ve analyzed your BUYERS and found a bias therein.
For example, suppose ShutUpMachine.com’s buyers were 50/50 men and women, despite the fact women outnumber men 2 to 1 in search. What this says is, men are disproportionately responsive.
Now suppose we dig even further (by surveying our buyers) and discover that 80% of our male buyers are over 40. (We’d expect only a slight bias towards the over 40 range given the search volume breakdown above) .
This tells us that men over 40 are especially responsive to our offer. Indeed, 40% of all our customers are men over forty in this scenario (50% of all customers are men x 80% of male customers over forty = 40% of all customers) , even though this demographic represents just 20% of the search volume.
In other words, men over 40 are twice as responsive to the generic offer.
Can you imagine what would happen to the system if you optimized it for them?
Here’s what I’d do in that situation…
I’d aggressively test optimizing a WHOLE PATHWAY for men over 40.
So we might write an ad like this:
And then we’d land them on a page with a story from a man in his 40s who wants nothing but some peace and quiet when he comes home from a hard day, finally finishes taking care of wife and kids, and just wants to relax.
We’d paint a before and after picture with that story…
And because we’d knock our visitor out with the “Holy Crap! This is exactly for me!” experience, we’d probably get an even higher conversion rate on the landing page. Let’s assume 50% higher.
What might the numbers look like?
This is the strangest secret…
Because often when you’ve done this kind of analysis of your buyers to isolate the most responsive demographic, you can create a situation where the CTR doesn’t drop at all.
In other words, you might be targeting a much smaller percentage of the market, but their click responsiveness makes up for their lack of presence in the market as a whole. (And even when that’s not the case, you can often make up for it with increased landing page conversion)
For example, you might see something like this:
A few important things to note:
- Even though the CTR is the same from the PPC engine’s perspective, the truth is you’re getting a 5% clickthrough from your target audience. You just can’t SEE that because you can’t restrict the exposure to the rest of the audience in general PPC advertising. (Sometimes you CAN do this with email buys and banner advertising, but you’ve gotta be very, very careful because advertising vendors will often jack up the price for these kind of “selects” more than the increase in responsiveness warrants. Run your spreadsheets and know your numbers before testing this!)
- Even though the price per click is the same, we get a bump in conversion by taking the prospect OUT of the competitive environment and re-assuring them we are the ONLY vendor positioned to meet their unique needs
- As with so many other things in marketing, going after a “higher percentage of a smaller percentage” is so often the answer
- There’s nothing to stop you from developing ANOTHER site for women over and under 40, etc. in order to look for more volume with additional conversion bumps. However, by rank ordering your customer demographics in terms of responsiveness you’ll be able to estimate the effectiveness of these efforts as compared to the time and money you need to allocate to accomplish them. (In the example above, we found women were modestly less responsive than men as a whole. Still, you should expect SOME increase in conversion due to the demographic segmentation (assuming you’ve studied how the product plays out differently in their lives), so it’s just a matter of math to guestimate which segments are worthwhile to pursue as such, and in what order.
- There’s also nothing that stops you from ALSO running the generic ad if it’s profitable. (You should test running both a generic and a segmented ad vs. running only the segmented ad)
If any of this math was hard to follow, let me restate it in simple English…
- If you survey your customer database, you might find you’ve got more women than men, more young people than older people, etc.
- Compare the percentages you find in your customers to what Quantcast.com and/or Alexa.com says about the demographic breakdown for search volume in your market. (Enter a few of the top search engine ranked websites to find out)
- If you DO find your percentages are different than what you see in Quantcast, etc, that probably means there’s a demographic group that’s MORE responsive to your offer than average…
- Test targeting a teaser ad and landing page to THAT unique demographic and see what happens
Yah?
Got get’m!
Onwards and Upwards My Fine Marketing Friends…
You can clear away SO much confusion if you’ll just take the time to master a few fundamental conversion principles. And now you can watch me do it LIVE on site after site. (Get started as of the time of this post for less than $5)
Dr. Glenn 
Your “Web Sales Hero(tm)”
PPS – Want a simpler way to increase your conversions? Put evangelistic audio testimonials on your site. Listen, testimonials sell, but they’ve got to be done right. You want to support the specific claims you make in your USP with specific results obtained. And you need to get the customer to describe their results in contagious, emotionally compelling language that BRINGS THE TESTIMONIAL TO LIFE. (Do It Yourself | Let Us Do It For You)
PPPS – The above example is hypothetical. Please don’t attempt to advertise with these specific ads.
Make More Money By Turning OFF Your Advertising
Posted on 10. Apr, 2012 by Glenn Livingston, Ph.D. in AdWords, AdWords Cost, Blog, Campaigns, Content Network, conversion, Copywriting, Decision Making, Hyper Responsive Marketing, Information Marketing, Inspiration, MSN, Overture (yahoo search marketing), Pay Per Click, Quality Score, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Traffic
If the escalating expense, difficulty, and time to generate a high volume of profitable internet sales is crippling your growth–or crushing your morale–I’ve got a very important audio for you to hear today…
Because it’s entirely possible that…
“You Can Make More Money by Turning Off Your Time Killing, Morale Crushing, Migraine Inducing, Pain-in-the-Ass Advertising System!”
Listen to this interview with Ryan Levesque, my partner in an extremely weird new marketing experiment which just might be your saving grace
Make More Money By Turning OFF Your Advertising
Posted on 10. Apr, 2012 by Glenn Livingston, Ph.D. in AdWords, AdWords Cost, Blog, Campaigns, Content Network, conversion, Copywriting, Decision Making, Hyper Responsive Marketing, Information Marketing, Inspiration, MSN, Overture (yahoo search marketing), Pay Per Click, Quality Score, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Traffic
If the escalating expense, difficulty, and time to generate a high volume of profitable internet sales is crippling your growth–or crushing your morale–I’ve got a very important audio for you to hear today…
Because it’s entirely possible that…
“You Can Make More Money by Turning Off Your Time Killing, Morale Crushing, Migraine Inducing, Pain-in-the-Ass Advertising System!”
Listen to this interview with Ryan Levesque, my partner in an extremely weird new marketing experiment which just might be your saving grace
Retargeting – How to Research and Launch a Retargeting Campaign
Posted on 17. Jan, 2012 by Glenn Livingston, Ph.D. in Blog, Pay Per Click, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
GUEST POST:
——–
How to Research and Launch a Retargeting Campaign
Retargeting is an online advertising practice that serves your ads to users after they leave your website. Your ads appear all over the web, allowing you to stay in front of your audience even when they’re browsing other sites. The average American is exposed to over 3,000 advertising messages daily, but most can only specifically recall 2 ads that they’ve ever seen. Retargeting is a great way to combat so-called “banner blindness,” people’s tendency not to recall online ads, and help you launch a successful branding campaign and remind users of your products and services even if they aren’t on your site.
Here are some important considerations prior to launching a retargeting campaign:
Determine Your Objectives
Take a moment to think about your marketing goals. What, specifically, are you trying to accomplish?
Do you have only a few website visitors? If your goal is to drive initial web traffic, retargeting is not the right solution. You should work on improving your organic search rankings with SEO, and should implement a mix of paid search and display advertising campaigns to get people to your site.
Do you have some traffic coming to your site, but want to improve your conversion rates? In this case, retargeting is a great solution. Even if your web traffic isn’t quite as high as you would like it to be, it still could be a good idea to add retargeting into your marketing mix. Adding retargeting to existing search or display campaigns is a great way to court new site visitors without forgetting about your previous visitors.
If you’ve decided that retargeting is the right (or one of the right) solutions for you, follow the steps outlined below to get started.
Segment your audience
Divide audience into segments based on purchase intent and show them ads accordingly. Site visitors who only go to your site’s homepage may not yet know much about you, so you should target them with branding ads to get them more familiar with you and your product or service. However, if a user goes to a specific product page, they may be closer to buying. In this instance, you may have better results showing ads with specific deals or incentives tailored to the product they looked at. The most successful retargeting campaign will not treat all site visitors alike.
Set a Frequency Cap
It’s highly recommended to set a frequency cap for your retargeting campaign. You want your brand to be remembered, but you don’t want your users to feel overwhelmed. Setting a strict limit on the number of times any given user can see your ads will prevent them from feeling like they’re being followed around the web, as overexposure can lead to negative associations with your brand.
In addition to negative brand associations, you don’t want to run the risk of “banner blindness,” the very problem retargeting sets out to defeat. If you expose your users to your ads constantly, they will begin to ignore them, diminishing the effectiveness of the retargeting campaign.
Set Conversion and Burn Pixels
A conversion pixel is a snippet of code which tracks when the user converts (for example, makes a purchase or fills out a lead form). The burn pixel is another snippet which tells your retargeting provider to stop serving ads to the converted user.
This is particularly important if you’re targeting ads related to a specific product or service. If you’ve been showing a user an ad for a particular suitcase, and then the user purchases is it, there is no constructive purpose to continuing to show them the ad. If anything, it is likely to have a negative effect on the user who could easily get annoyed seeing ads for a suitcase they already own!
Test!
Retargeting can improve conversion rates by up to 300%. But don’t take my word for it. If you implement a retargeting campaign, test the results yourself by comparing your traditional display ads’ performance with your retargeting ads’ performance.
And don’t forget to constantly A/B test the copy and creative for your retargeting ads to make sure you’re always putting your best foot forward.
About the Author:
Caroline Watts is a marketing associate at ReTargeter, an online ad platform specializing in retargeting.
My Deepest, Darkest Secret
Posted on 22. Jul, 2011 by Glenn Livingston, Ph.D. in Blog, Pay Per Click, Quality Score, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
I really shouldn’t tell you this…
Every fiber in my being tells me it’s wrong…
It shouldn’t be like this…
I shouldn’t behave like this as a professional marketer, psychologist, and family man…
And I know many of you will drop me down several levels of respect when I reveal it…
Because there are some things we shouldn’t do as marketers (human beings!) no matter what the rewards…
But I’ve got ONE deep, dark secret which I’ve been holding way too long and it’s killing me…
So I weighed the options, considered the consequences, and have decided I’m ready to reveal the truth.
And the truth is (I totally can’t believe I’m going to say this)…
I LIKE “SOUTH PARK”
There.
It’s out.
The shameful truth… I’m so embarrassed.
It started about 10 years ago when I had an 11 year old patient who started talking about the show, and I needed to tune into what he was saying. (At the time, I had to watch LOTS of adolescent shows and listen to adolescent music to stay “hip” and able to connect with the kids)
And, what can I say, it got me…
I would feel a sense of inner disgust (even if you love it, you’ve gotta admit, it’s totally gross and “wrong”), but was simultaneously glued to the screen, then finally laughing my a__ off… all by myself while my wife left the room.
I knew I was hooked when I kept watching even after I had retired from my psychology practice. ”Just one more show” I’d say to myself.
So there you have it.
Someone you might think is perfectly respectable, a pillar of the community, known to rock a room with a suit and tie and a highly intellectual marketing speech, secretly and maniacally laughing at an adolescent TV show any chance he can get.
Why am I telling you this?
Because if I were in your target market and you didn’t know my deepest, darkest secret, you’d be missing out on a whole set of metaphors and stories to use to connect with me.
And you know what?
MOST marketers do NOT know their market’s deepest, darkest secrets. Most marketers barely know their market’s demographics (and are stumped when I ask them the difference between the demographics of their prospects and the demographics of their buying audience)
Getting at the market’s deepest, darkest secrets is at the core of effective emotional marketing.
To do it, you’ve gotta know how to interview people in a group to get them sharing, and make it socially acceptable to share things which they think are evil.
OH… and you’ve got to be comfortable with your OWN deepest, darkest secrets as well, or else you’ll prevent your audience from sharing theirs with you!
In a few weeks I’m going to be launching a very low end monthly webinar all about emotional marketing… I hope you’ll watch for it and join us. (I’m going to price it at a no-brainer level at first, maybe even as low as $17/mo, because in assessing what people really still need who’ve been through my systems, it’s this kind of personal experience in critiquing sites from an emotional perspective, finding emotional hot buttons, and translating them into the right consumer language and imagery to drive purchase)
Keep your eyes out.
Dr. G
PS – “OMG, they killed Kenny!”
Hyper Responsive Club | Total Conversion Code | Emotional Interviewing Service | Coaching | Hourly Consults
My Favorite Motivational Video (Ever)
Posted on 18. Jun, 2011 by Glenn Livingston, Ph.D. in AdWords, Blog, Inspiration, Pay Per Click, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Whenever I feel a little stuck in my business or my life, I watch this video to be sure I’m not doing what this guy did, review my plans, and move on with inspiration (seriously). Thanks to Bryan Todd for sharing it with me last year!
PS – In my opinion, anyone spending more than $1,500/mo in AdWords should at some point have Bryan review their campaigns. Perry Marshall himself suggests there are many things Bryan knows about AdWords that Perry does not. Here’s my sneaky affiliate link for the consultation with Bryan Todd. Oh, and just in case you’ve never heard it, here’s a link to a very revealing interview I did with Bryan a few years back about what distinguishes the winners from those who continue to flop and flounder in Adwords
Bing Quality Score Best Practices
Posted on 13. Jun, 2011 by Glenn Livingston, Ph.D. in Blog, MSN, Pay Per Click, Quality Score, Search Engines, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Hey, guess what PPC fans?
Now there’s TWO quality scores to contend with… oh joy oh joy!!!
Even better, there are NEW CHANGES to MSN’s quality score which are about to rock your world.
Never fear, Nicole Mennicke from Rocket Clicks to the rescue.
Below you’ll find a SHORT MP3 and MSN Quality Score Cheat Sheet .
(Don’t ever say I didn’t give you nothin’)
Dr. G
RocketClicks PPC Management | Do It Yourself | Coaching | Total Conversion Code | Choosing Profitable Markets
2nd Most Unusual Jungle Marketing Idea Ever
Posted on 31. May, 2011 by Glenn Livingston, Ph.D. in AdWords, AdWords Changes, AdWords Cost, Blog, Copywriting, Pay Per Click, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
(Of course, as you probably know, I’m also an affiliate, and you’ll be helping finance my “master plan” if you should buy anything after clicking and/or attending the FREE event)
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