by Francois Muscat | Apr 20, 2016 | Content Marketing, PPC, Website Optimization
When referring to a landing page, this means the page a visitor arrives at after clicking on an advert. Inexperienced marketers will direct all their PPC traffic to their homepage, but this can be a mistake. Having landing pages tailored to different offers can be just the thing to provide a quality experience for your visitors and to drive conversions.
Great landing pages that convert, have a number of traits in common. While some of these tips may seem obvious, results don’t lie, so let’s look at some pointers:
- The best landing pages are short and sweet, containing the necessary information but not overwhelming the visitor with endless detail. Give the audience the essential information to pique their interest.
- They provide high quality content that inspires trust. Good, relevant and useful content goes a long way with new visitors.
- Good landing pages make conversion easy, with as few barriers between arriving and buying as possible. If forms are required, make them simple and user-friendly. If it’s a download, make the button obvious.
- Don’t skimp on design. The information architecture is vital – you need simple and obvious navigation, with nothing coming between the visitor and the conversion.
- Calls to action are clear as a bell, telling your visitors exactly what to do and how to do it. Use action words to encourage clicking!
- Landing pages need eye catching headlines, with sub-headlines for more explanation. The copy below that should be engaging, aiming to reach the visitor on a personal level.
- Use video where appropriate – if you can provide information and entertainment at the same time, you’re in business!
- Landing pages should be able to convince the user to stay on your page in under 8 seconds. You only have their quick glance, so use colours and fonts that grab the attention.
- Use quality images that emphasise your offering; this will create a better experience overall.
- Make sure the landing page uses the same keywords from the PPC ad text – you don’t want your visitor to think they’ve landed on the wrong page. Give them what they came for and don’t make them hunt for the product in the ad.
- Show testimonials from happy customers: word-of-mouth has always been a driving force of success.
- Make sure your landing page is mobile friendly – this can double your conversions.
- Landing pages that are slow to load are one of the biggest reasons for bounce rates, so keep your images realistic sizes and use a speedy web host.
If your landing pages are a little lacking, contact us for some assistance. We are digital marketing experts and can help get your online marketing strategy back on track!
by Francois Muscat | Jun 1, 2015 | Digital Media Marketing, PPC, SEO
Content and advertisement on the internet is booming and the competition to appear at the top of search results is always increasing. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) are two ways to ensure your content gets found and that you’re able to convert search engine users to paying clients.
While many businesses are still hesitant to start using PPC because it is deemed more expensive, there are quite a few reasons why you should consider this strategy in 2015:
- In many cases, PPC advertising will have a positive impact on your organic SEO initiatives and click-through-rates. Read the results of this study to learn more about how this works.
- While you will be paying per click, you’re only paying when you’ve attracted the attention of an interested potential client.
- You can make your ad extremely niche. With SEO, you’re marketing to the masses and hoping an interested person finds your content. With PPC, you can determine everything from the time of day your ad will appear, geo-target your locations and set preferences such as mobile searches.
- The results are instant. While SEO is more cost-effective in the long run, it takes time for an SEO strategy to gain momentum. With PPC, you can see results almost instantly.
Your best bet is to combine both SEO and PPC so that you can get the benefits of both. Speak to an experienced internet marketing consultant to determine the best strategy for you. Contact WSI Biz for more information today.
by Francois Muscat | May 13, 2013 | PPC
Marketing managers usually have to get approval for the PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaigns they want to run – which means giving the cold, hard figures to their boss. Even if you’re the business owner (and the decision maker), deciding how much you’re prepared to spend on a monthly basis is a huge part of kick-starting your paid search advertising campaign.
There is, however, one thing that’s even more important than your bidding budget – and that’s choosing your keywords. It happens far too often that people choose keyword phrases that are way too broad and not specific to their niche target market. The problem with choosing broad keyword phrases is that you will be competing with too many other bidders in order to reach a too broad audience. A better strategy is to go as niche as possible and find specific, long-tail keywords that speak directly to a potential customer.
An example of a broad keyword phrase would be “learn to cook”. If you’re looking to target a specific group of customers online, you should rather focus on exactly what you’re offering clients and rather choose keywords such as “evening cooking courses for couples” or “gourmet cooking classes for professional chefs”.
One of the reasons why this can be so confusing is that PPC and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) keywords are often very different. While they do overlap in some cases, you will get the most out of our bidding budget if you spend a bit more time finding niche keyword phrases.
If you need help determining keyword profitability, maximum cost per click or keyword research it’s time to talk to the internet marketing pros at WSI OMS. Give us a call to find out how we can help you with your next PPC campaign.
by Francois Muscat | May 2, 2013 | PPC
If there’s one thing that business owners are quick to tell you, it’s that PPC (Pay-Per-Click) marketing is expensive. To a certain degree, this is true (seeing as other lead generation strategies such as content marketing and social media marketing are free and don’t cost you per click).
Here at WSI, our internet marketing experts will tell you that there are definitely certain instances when PPC is the better way to market a product. Mother’s Day promotion gifts, for example, would be one of these instances. Here’s why:
PPC gets you on the first page of Google instantly
Whether you’re selling a Spa Day package, an outdoor adventure experience or promotional products for Mother’s Day, you can’t start planning your online marketing campaign a month or two in advance and expect to end up on the first page of Google’s Search Results.
High SEO rankings take time and if Mother’s Day related keywords aren’t something you’re usually writing content about, there’s a good chance that your content will get lost among the thousands of other web pages. With PPC campaigns, you can get on the 1st page of Google within a day.
Find a very niche audience
When it comes to marketing promotional products, you’re usually looking for a niche audience. We’re not taking about “people looking to buy Mother’s Day presents” – we could mean “man over 50 looking to spoil his wife who likes arts and crafts”. There’s an audience for every product and service out there, no matter how obscure. PPC gives you the opportunity to experiment with different AdWords keywords and advertisements. The best part is that you’re only paying per clicks, so you can try your utmost best to target your ideal consumer (without wasting money on people who wouldn’t convert into clients).
Need help with your PPC Mother’s Day campaign? Give WSI OMS a call today!
by Francois Muscat | Oct 25, 2012 | PPC
Linda Waterhouse is an IC and owner of WSI Web Systems in New Jersey.
Seeing as it is almost Halloween, she fittingly contributed this great post to the WSI OMS blog on the similarities between PPC and a local farm’s Haunted Hay Ride. – Francois Muscat
How PPC is like a Haunted Hay Ride
As I was driving past a farm that it is the Halloween hub-spot in my town, it suddenly occurred to me that their Haunted Hay Ride was very similar to a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign. October is a very busy month for this farm – they put up lots of signs along the road, display mums and pumpkins, and offer a huge cow “moon bounce”, all of which draw extra traffic to the farm. Their “ads” driving “traffic” to their farm remind me of a PPC ad campaign that captures a user’s attention and drives more traffic to a website.
The farm sells fruit and vegetables in the summer and they have a steady trickle of customers come during the summer and early fall. Then the first of October comes (the “start of the PPC campaign”) and overnight the trickle of customers turns into hoards and they have to clear out an additional area for parking to accommodate all of the extra cars lined up along the road. Wouldn’t we love all of our PPC campaigns to attract so much attention and be so successful? But then November 1st comes around and …….. there is nothing. The parking lot is empty. The budget for the PPC campaign has run out.
Actually, this is the way November 1st used to be when I first moved here 15 years ago. The farm didn’t have much more than a shack at that point. As the years passed, the shack became a larger farmstand and they poured a cement floor. They cleared out a parking area and added gravel. Instead of just selling fruit and vegetables, they now sell local honey, buffalo meat, eggs, and decorations. This increase of size, improvement of their grounds, and addition of more wares is similar to doing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) by increasing the number of pages, updating the content and adding more keywords to a website.
Pay per click and search engine optimization
These days, the farm doesn’t close on November 1st anymore. The influx of customers encouraged them to stay open through Thanksgiving for a few years. Later they added a Christmas light show (another PPC campaign!) and sold Christmas trees. The farm is now open from February until New Year’s Eve. With the extra income generated from their “PPC campaigns”, they were able to expand the Haunted Hayride to include a Corn Maze and a Crazy House which added “credibility” and “expertise” to improve their reputation. The local community knows the October Extravaganza is here to stay and word has traveled to communities over 20 miles away.
Optimizing websites by continually adding content and increasing the target geographic area through social media lets Google and other search engines know that those websites are going to be around for a while and will give the visitor the information he was looking for. Now the farm has opened annexes throughout the county. Backlinks, anyone?
When prospects ask me whether they should invest in PPC or SEO, I like to give this analogy to explain the difference in how each approach helps. What analogies have you found useful?
Linda Waterhouse is a Digital Marketing Consultant and owner of WSI Web Systems in New Jersey.
Featured Image courtesy of Stock Free Images.
by Marianna Muscat | Nov 1, 2011 | PPC
Visitors arrive at your landing page for a specific purpose by clicking online PPC ads, links in emails and social media messages you’ve created. But sometimes, visitors ‘bounce’ out as they get there. Why would that happen?
1. It’s different from the ad’s call to action or theme.
How many times have you clicked an ad or link only to find out that the page you land on has nothing to do with the ad or link? That makes it unbelievably irritating for that person who you have probably now lost forever.
2. Your call to action is not structured or confusing.
Ineffective landing pages shout at you, push you around, try to herd you, are bossy. But remember the folks who arrive at your landing page need to immediately know what to do or how to get the info they need. Remember the ‘One Click’ rule. You need to keep it simple and communicate very clearly what you want the visitor to do.
3. You are trying to show off or ore use terms only familiar to you.
Avoid sounding like a snake oil salesman shouting out the miraculous power of your product or service, but then don’t go to the other extreme and end up sounding like a robot either.“Speak human,” “Communicate your brand missions, values, and philosophy in simple terms, using the language of your customers. Speak in a conversational tone, with personality, empathy, and true emotion. Kill corporate-speak, buzzwords, and other language that makes you sound like a tool.”
4. Your content is buried.
You don’t want heavy, bloated landing pages that creak under the weight of their own text. Website copy (not just landing pages) shouldn’t remind visitors of weighty Toombs. Write in crisp, snappy and focused sentences.
5. You’re rushing the goodnight kiss.
Crummy landing pages are like bad first dates. Instead of just enjoying the date and spending a reasonable amount of time building up interest and trust, the bad landing page is pushing the viewer along with excessive demands, unclear goals, and just wanting the reward at the end of it all. Lead gently and make sure you’re not demanding everything as soon as the person arrives to your landing page.
