Search engine advertising is a key factor in most successful online marketing campaigns. Yet many of these campaigns return poor results due to a failure to properly understand the customer expectation. Whether you are using Google AdWords or other forms of pay-per-click advertising, getting the traffic to your site is only half of the job. Your campaign has to convert those visitors into customers.

Imagine you own a high-street shop. Now, imagine the shop assistant you hired – who costs you money every day in salaries and benefits – has the sales acumen of a mushroom. Let’s call him Barry.

When a customer enters the store and asks for a new watch, Barry leads them to the middle of the shop and tells them to find it themselves. When new customers enter the store looking lost, Barry ignores them, hoping they will just serve themselves. Barry never knows the price of any of his products and doesn’t even know whether the store has certain items in stock. When someone actually tries to buy something, Barry delays the purchase by insisting a detailed form for membership of the store loyalty program needs to be completed before money can change hands. Understandably, the customers leave in frustration without buying anything.

Would you continue to pay money to Barry or should he begin photocopying his resume?

We may not employ shop assistants online, but we do pay ongoing fees for marketing services that are supposed to convert website visitors into sales. Search engine advertising, often called pay per click or PPC advertising, is your online version of Barry. Yet, far too many online businesses continue to pay a PPC ‘salary’ when their PPC campaign is not producing sales.

The goal of a successful PPC campaign is to attract quality targeted traffic to your website so you have a greater chance of selling your products. Sadly, many businesses continue to chew through their search engine advertising spend without optimising their campaigns to provide conversions. This trend produces a poor return on investment, with each sale costing far more to achieve than it should.

Various studies have shown that sales conversions can be improved by as much as 20-50% by carrying out some simple optimisation tips. Therefore, you are leaving a huge amount of money on the table by not planning some key steps between your PPC campaign and your website.

How does your website follow through on the promise created by your PPC advert? Are you paying for a campaign that is not adequately converting visitors into customers?

Let’s apply what we’ve learned from observing Barry.

1. Lead the customer to the sale

If the advert announces a great deal on watches, when they click through to your website, the first thing they expect to see is a great deal on a watch. If the promise isn’t fulfilled straight away, you risk the potential customer hitting the back button and trying the next link. One of the most common mistakes with PPC campaigns is linking through to the home page. The home page may seem like an obvious entry point to the site, but it rarely converts customers. It is like placing a second shop doorway in front of the one they have just entered through. You know what they are looking for because of the format of the advert, so use that knowledge to take them directly to the best possible page to answer their request.

It can be very effective to create completely new pages in your website specifically for this purpose. If your great watch deal normally sits on a page surrounded by other deals or extraneous information, you risk providing too many distractions. Create a simple, fresh landing page where the only focus is the deal you are pushing. They’ve clicked on a link promising a watch bargain, and wham – the page is solely dedicated to the best watch deals you have.

2. Provide quality service

Don’t leave the customers to fend for themselves, hoping they will buy without your intervention. They won’t.

Craft copy that clearly motivates a sale by pointing out the unique benefits of your offer, while providing a clear and simple path to complete the transaction. You may consider stripping out your usual, complex navigation structure (far too distracting) in favour of one or two links that lead directly to the information related to closing the sale. For example; one link for details on shipping, etc, and another link or button to accept the deal and lead the customer to the shopping cart.

3. Create trust with the customer

Trust is one of the most important factors in customer conversion. Customers are far less likely to complete a sale if they have any doubts whatsoever about the reliability of your online business.

Make sure there is enough information to answer any possible questions they may have. If you have strong testimonials, it may be worth including a link for customers to read them. If you are able to provide certain guarantees, make sure the customer is well aware of all related conditions. (For example; your returns policy). If you can alleviate the customer’s fears about the sale, reducing their risk of financial loss or product disappointment as close to zero as possible, you will see an increase in conversions.

4. Simplify the sale

The customer clicked through your link for one reason only. Therefore, don’t take the opportunity to force them to register or complete questionnaires or search through unrelated items before finalising the sale. If your current shopping cart configuration requires more than a couple of clicks to finalise and make payment, you risk the customer abandoning the process.

If your sales pitch has convinced them to part with their cash, why take them on unrelated tangents? Ask only for the information you need to complete the sale and ship the item, no more. If you can, reduce the entire process, from PPC advert to completed shopping cart, to as few clicks and keystrokes as possible. The easier you make this process, the lower the risk of customers leaving the store empty handed.

Fire Barry

Don’t let your online ‘sales assistant’ behave like Barry – optimise your search engine advertising campaign to provide streamlined and easy sales to your target audience. After all, do you want to keep paying every day for a service that drives customers away?

Managing a detailed PPC campaign can be time-consuming and difficult. If you want to extract the best price-per-click while maintaining a strong flow of traffic eager to buy your products, Planet Domain has a Search Engine Advertising service that provides a dedicated and experienced account manager to refine and administer your strategy.

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