Table Of Contents
- How This Strategy Gets You Results
- Step One: Introducing The Components You Need
- Step Two: Your Unique Value Proposition (and hot tips for creating one)
- Step Three: Your Irresistible Offer
- Step Four: Your Landing Pages
- Step Five: Your Google Ads Campaigns
- Step Six: Your Facebook PPC Campaigns
- Step Seven: The Lean “Ongoing Optimisation” Process
How This Strategy Gets You Results
Here’s how my strategy generates more leads at less cost…
1. It Scientifically Targets Your Desired Prospects
You need to display eye-catching ads to web users who have a burning problem you can solve, or want an outcome you can provide, and are in a position to be convinced to take action. This may be via Facebook PPC, or Google Ads Search, or both.
2. It Convinces Them To Click On Your Ad
You need to use your Irresistible Offer (explained below), components of your Unique Value Proposition (explained below), emotional triggers, and smart creative execution to make it difficult for your prospects not to click on your ad.
3. It Carries The Prospect’s Thought Process Through To Your Landing Page
If your prospect searches for “widget paint” then your landing page must talk about exactly that – widget paint, not something even slightly different like widget paint brushes. Providing this hyper-specific and congruent ad to landing page experience is CRITICAL.
4. It Explains How You Can Solve Their Problem Or Provide Their Desired Outcome
Simply explaining “what you do” will not cut it any more. Your prospect needs to know that you “get them” and that you empathise with their struggles or desires. Make sure your landing pages are packed to the brim with proactive salesmanship that clearly presents you as the BEST problem solver or outcome provider.
5. It Automatically Follows Non-Action-Takers With A Secondary Wave Of Ads
You need to use intelligent retargeting methods to display ads to visitors who don’t initially convert on your page. It’s this smart fallback strategy that re-captures timid prospects who ‘sit on the fence’ or feel they have to shop around before taking action.
6. It Learns Constantly, Forever
Every ad, keyword, audience, campaign structure, and landing page must be tested repeatedly, forever – so you learn exactly what works, and what doesn’t. There are multiple magnitudes and layers of testing, too: incremental adjustments or transformational differences to design, copy, layout, emotional triggers, offers, targeting, and campaign delivery. It’s this attitude of “Constant And Never-ending Improvement” that gets you better results.
Step One:
Introducing The Components You Need For This Strategy
Here’s what you need to assemble and launch this lead-generating formula:
- A Unique Value Proposition
Before you assemble ANY collateral for your lead generation campaign, you’ll need a gripping written statement that clearly explains how you’re different when compared against your competitors. This is called your “Unique Value Proposition” and we inject it deep into your ads and landing pages to ensure they cut through the competitive landscape and position YOU as the ideal solution to your prospects.If you don’t have a Unique Value Proposition yet, that’s OK – when you join us, we’ll go through a UVP creation process to create it. You can use the final product in all your other marketing, too. More on this below. - An Irresistible “Value-First” Offer
Next, you need to formulate an Irresistible Offer – a value-packed offer that will be woven in to the core of your ads and landing page. It’s not enough to say “enquire now” or “buy now” anymore — you need to offer something of value for free, even at the start of your sales process. Not sure what that means? Your Irresistible Offer needs to answer burning questions your prospects may have. It needs to solve problems they can’t solve on their own. And it needs to give them a sense of security… that you understand their problem and can create the outcome they want better than anyone else.If you don’t have a compelling offer that your prospects simply can’t ignore, that’s OK – when you join us, we’ll work through an Irresistible Offer creation process to design one. You can also use the final product in all your other marketing, too. More on this below. - Direct Response Landing Pages
Your landing pages play a huge role in converting your paid traffic – they’re the ‘automatic salesperson’ that sells your products or services 24/7. Your landing pages must be hyper-relevant to the visitor’s demographic, psychographic or search intent. They must clearly explain how you are different and therefore better than your competitors. They must use the right emotional triggers so your prospects can relate to you. They must solve burning problems or present desirable outcomes. They must present an irresistible offers and strong calls to action. They must be mobile responsive and provide a visually-appealing experience, and they must be designed in a way that ensures “skim readers” and scanners will absorb your key information as their eyes skate down your page.If you don’t have any dedicated landing pages yet, that’s OK – we’ll create and host them as part of your engagement with us. Read more about landing pages below. - Tightly Targeted, Waste-Free, Efficient Traffic Campaigns
Your traffic campaigns must be engineered to serve the right message to the right people whilst outperforming your competitors and delivering a congruent user experience. To make sure this happens, all campaign components must be working in harmony to achieve this: targeting, ads, ad extensions, waste-reduction strategies, and even initiatives to combat your competitors need to constantly be addressed. And where possible, continual testing should occur on as many components as possible. It’s this combination of art and science (ad writing vs. acting on data) that incrementally improves campaign performance to reduce Cost Per Conversion and get you more bang for your buck. - A Never Ending Optimisation Process
Lastly, you need to continually test, adjust, and optimise every moving part in your campaigns. Why? Markets shift. Ad creative wears out. Targeting methods change as platforms evolve and grow. Some platforms work better than others. And competitors apply pressure, so the ‘click economy’ drives up costs. By testing things like headlines, ad text, ad types and landing page variations you’ll create a compounding series of improvements that add up to an amplified improvement overall. This is the key to the optimisation process: never-ending analysis and adjustment.
Step Two:
Your Unique Value Proposition
The most important foundation your organisation’s digital marketing strategy is a differentiating sentence or statement called a Unique Value Proposition, or “UVP” in short.
A UVP describes the UNIQUE value or benefit(s) your organisation provides to your target market(s), and differentiates you from your competition whilst simultaneously attracting responsive, “ready-to-buy” customers. The key operating word here is “unique” – fundamentally, a UVP addresses one key question asked by your potential customers:
“WHY SHOULD I BUY FROM YOU, AND NOT SOMEBODY ELSE?”
Your Unique Value Proposition should:
- Speak directly to the desired outcomes of your target market,
- Speak directly to your target market, in their own terms, using “you” language, instead of using only “we” or “I”,
- Be stated from your customer’s point of view, and solve a problem or provide an outcome they don’t yet have,
- Contain PROOF that you can make true of your claims,
- Contain unique data points that separates you from your competitors,
- Make it 110% clear that you are THE #1 LOGICAL CHOICE to your prospect, and
- Contain a guarantee and/or elements that will contribute to some form of reduction in risk.
In other words, an effective UVP exists inside the overlap between the needs or wants of your target market, and the unique offering and experience you provide. In a digital marketing context, without a Unique Value Proposition, marketing tools and channels like Google Ads, Facebook PPC, landing pages and websites are undifferentiated ‘shells’ that do not and will not cut through a competitive landscape.
How to create your “Unique Value Proposition” and “Unique Value Statements”
STEP ONE: “Your Desired Customers”
To begin with, you need to get a CLEAR understanding of the hot buttons and psychological drivers of your prospects.
Write down as many responses as you can to the following questions:
- What BURNING problem(s) do your prospects have that they don’t want?
- What ADVANTAGEOUS outcome(s) do they want, but currently don’t have?
- What do you think they need to see in a solution, that will make them consider engaging it?
- Are there any persona types that have varying differences on the above problems, outcomes, or solutions?
- What common, pre-conceived objections or risk-aggravators might these customers or personas have?
- What are common demographic statistics and psychographic drivers of these prospects and persona types?
STEP TWO: “The Value You Provide”
Next, answer the following questions:
Your Value Offering
- What VALUE do you offer your customers, for free?
- What VALUE do you offer your customers, in exchange for their money?
- What VALUE do you offer uniquely, that you competitors do not?
Your Skills
- What skills (AKA your features) do you have, and what result can they produce for your customers (AKA your benefits)?
Your Experience
- What experience do you have, in a quantifiable format? For example, years in business, number of cases completed, etc.
Your Proof Elements
- What testimonials, reviews or other forms of social proof do you have?
STEP THREE: “Your Competition”
Analysing your competition is important – not so much for creating your UVP and UVS, but for analysing your offering at a higher level.
Here are some questions you can ask yourself:
- What VALUE do your competitors offer your customers, for free?
- What VALUE do your competitors offer your customers, in exchange for their money?
- What VALUE do your competitors offer uniquely, that you do not?
STEP FOUR: Compiling This Into A Succinct Written Unique Value Proposition
This is the most difficult part of the process and requires skills in the areas of business analysis, consumer psychology, and copywriting.
Firstly, use the above information you’ve compiled to produce a list of key UNIQUE benefits that you offer your customers.
If you can’t pull out any unique benefits, you mayyyyy have a bit of an identity crisis on your hands. Go back to the drawing board and see how you can re-position your offering so you CAN offer some form of unique value.
Secondly, using this information, create sentences that articulate how WHAT YOU DO UNIQUELY to provide THE BIGGEST OUTCOME(S) YOUR CUSTOMERS REALLY WANT, whilst simultaneously baking in proof, unique data points, a guarantee, an offer that drips in value, and good old copywriting salesmanship and sizzle.
Like I said earlier, this process is easier said than done and takes time, practice and probably multiple iterations to get a final, working result.
When you’re writing your value statements, follow these tips:
- Use ultimate and proximate benefits, NOT features.
- Use real facts and figures, NOT hype-driven exaggerations.
- Talk in the terms of your customer: provide the burning outcome they’re looking for, interwoven with an offer they can’t refuse.
- Leverage the things that make you UNIQUE.
Step Three:
Your Irresistible Offer
Your Irresistible Offer, or the piece of VALUE you’ll give to your prospect at the start of your sales process, is the most important conversion element on your landing page. If you have a limp offer, you’ll have a limp conversion rate. If your offer “sizzles”, you won’t have any trouble converting your traffic.
Caution! Generic Calls To Action (CTAs) Struggle To Differentiate You
If you offer a service or complex product, your initial call to action is probably a telephone conversation with someone from your sales team.
The Call To Action for this engagement could be:
- Get a free quote
- Book a free consultation
- Enquire now
The problem here is that most of your competitors probably offer something very similar… which means you’ll struggle to differentiate yourself. It’s not enough to simply ask for your prospect to get in touch for a free quote or free consultation – you need add additional some additional value to the exchange.
The promising thing is that most general calls to action can be repositioned into Irresistible Offers.
Goal: Convert a bland Call To Action into an Irresistible Offer.
In many cases, a simple ‘enquire now’ offer can be repositioned as an offer that drips in value.
Here are some examples for different industries:
- Cosmetic Surgeons: Enquire Now and get a FREE Cosmetic Surgery Beauty Plan – provide value to your prospects by showing them how they can improve their appearance using your solutions
- Vet: Book an Appointment and get a FREE 27-Point Health Check-Up For Your Dog or Cat – give peace of mind to your prospects by performing a wider health checkup
- Mortgage Brokers: Book your Home Loan Prep & Comparison Session – solve a problem for your prospects by explaining what they need to do to qualify for the home they want (and then give them loan options if they are ready to proceed)
- Artificial Turf: Get A Free Quote & Sample Pack Sent Via The Mail – help your prospects choose YOU by sending them a sample pack in the post
Sell The Sizzle
The key here is to produce an offer that drips in value for your prospect. The prospect must REALLY want to access the information or value you’re offering them. If this ‘sizzle’ doesn’t exist, you’ll get a lax result and the prospect will end up sniffing around your competitors. Ensure your offer (and subsequent sales acumen) appeals to the #1 emotional benefit that must be addressed, to convince the visitor to take action. At a high level, this is either to reduce pain or increase pleasure. There may be other emotional triggers depending on your situation.
Not sure you can produce a tonne of value? Simply show your prospect how they can solve a problem they have or get an outcome they want, in a way that makes them choose YOU over your competitors.
Step Four:
Your Landing Pages
High performing landing pages are just as important as high performing traffic campaigns. If you send your traffic to an inefficient landing page, you’re wasting your click budget. Why? Think of this another way – if your landing page was improved to convert twice as much traffic, you’d halve your Cost Per Conversion. So, a better performing landing page = a better Marketing Return On Investment.
Here’s a process for creating a high performing landing page:
1. Consider Your Visitors’ Level Of Awareness
Before you begin the creation of your landing page, you’ll need to clearly understand the visitor’s level of awareness around your product or service.
Advertising guy Eugene Schwartz coined the “Five Levels Of Customer Awareness” in his book Breakthrough Advertising, and they are inherently important in the landing page production process.
In a landing page context, the five levels are:
Most Aware – Page visitors who know and love what you do. They buy your products and are loyal to your brand. Easy to sell to.
Product Aware – Page visitors who know your product or service, but haven’t bought it. They are familiar with your competitors’ value propositions, and aren’t sure if YOU are the right choice for them just yet.
Solution Aware – Page visitors who know what solution they are looking for, but didn’t previously know about your specific product or service.
Problem Aware – Page visitors who know they have a problem to solve or an outcome to achieve, but don’t know how to solve it yet.
Unaware – Page visitors who don’t know they have a problem, or don’t have an outcome they want to achieve.
The less aware your page visitors are, the MORE salesmanship and direct response collateral is required on your landing page because:
- You may need to explain the problem you’re solving, or the outcome you can provide
- You may need to explain what solutions and options the prospect has
- You may need to convince your prospects that YOU are the best solution when compared against your competitors
Generally speaking, the less aware the visitor is, the longer your landing page will need to be.
2. Consider The Page’s Traffic Source
The type of traffic arriving at your landing page will dictate the complexity and messaging required to get the best response.
- If a page is driven by keyword-centric traffic, you’ll improve the page’s performance by specifically tailoring headlines and supporting text towards these search terms, to improve ad → landing page relevance. Correctly executing this process will improve your page’s conversion strength (its ability to convert a visitor into a prospect) and Quality Score relevance.
- If a page is driven by audience-centric traffic (from a source like Facebook PPC), you’ll need to be mindful of varying demographics and psychographics you’ve chosen to view the page. Visitors are more likely to respond to situations and images they can relate to – sending a senior citizen to a landing page containing pictures of young people might not be a strong conversion strategy. Targeting CEOs? Increase production value. Trying to persuade a younger demographic? Use energetic, inspiring imagery.
3. Make Sure You’ve Addressed These Critical Strategic Elements
When planning, designing, refining and testing your landing page, ensure the following strategic elements have been addressed:
- Offer: Remember your landing page exists to present, justify, and SELL an Irresistible Offer. This offer should fall into a broader sales funnel, and the landing page’s SOLE focus should be to convince visitors to execute this offer, and nothing else.
- User Experience: Make sure the landing page is seamlessly integrated into a logical user experience. Generally, this means means your keyword → ad → landing page → thank you page relevance should be logically organised.
- Quality Score: If the page is a Google Ads landing page, make sure Quality Score has been taken into consideration. Higher Quality Score = lower average CPC.
- Competition: Getting a feel for the playing field is also a good idea. Review the landing pages of your top three competitors to see if they’re doing anything better than you, or something you might not yet be doing.
4. Make Sure You’ve Addressed These Critical Tactical Elements
Every landing page should contain the following tactical elements:
- Headline: Explaining how the offer solves the visitor’s problem, provides an outcome they desire, or presents a unique promise they can’t refuse.
- Supporting bullet points or sentence(s): Containing additional descriptors and value surrounding your offer, and distinct and compelling reasons why the prospect should take action.
- Call To Action (CTA): Explaining the next logical step and a reason to act now. The CTA should also sell the value (what the prospect will get) and be worded in a manner that portrays minimal risk. A strong CTA will also explain what could happen if the prospect DOES NOT take action.
- Paragraphs: Supporting the core points of the headline and opening text. These paragraphs should play on the #1 emotional trigger of the page, and focus on a desire or fear.
- A Persona & Image: Humans do business with other humans, not businesses. A strong landing page will feature a profile of a real person.
- Proof points: Should be woven through the page. Examples of proof points are testimonials, data (number of clients serviced, number of members, number of units sold, etc.), memberships, accreditations, et cetera. At least one form of proof should be above the fold.
- Diagrams and value-adding imagery: Diagrams like charts and data visualisations are efficient at communicating quantitative messages, and images are essential but should not appear tacky (or “stocky”) and should not draw attention away from sales copy.
- Rich but not distracting visuals: Yes, production value is very important, but function and performance is more important than a page that looks ‘nice’.
- Lead capture form: Requesting the bare minimum amount of information required (eg. name, email address). The form should somehow reinforce the VALUE the prospect will receive when they accept the offer, and will demonstrate a concern for the prospect’s data privacy.
- Frictionless mechanics: Whereby the form should complete smoothly, and the transition to the Thank You Page should be seamless.
- Device responsive versions: So the landing page can be viewed, and is effective, on ALL mobile device sizes.
5. Follow These Guidelines When Writing Copy
Follow these guidelines when writing copy on your landing page:
- Landing page copy must take your Unique Value Proposition and overlay it over the unique needs and wants of your customer – in other words, you must demonstrate how your UNIQUE offering provides an outcome your target needs, or a solution to a problem they have but don’t want. This is a sweet spot: aligning your unique offering over your customer’s needs and wants. To take this further, your copy must single out the difference between your “Market Entry” benefits and “Unique” benefits. Market Entry benefits are plain, vanilla attributes that anyone can demonstrate to enter the market. Avoid those at all costs. Unique features and benefits are what sets you apart from your competitors and should be leveraged as much as possible.
- Oh, and it goes without saying – discuss benefits, not features. Features are important, but only when describing a benefit.
- Ensure every element on your page passes the “so what” test. For example, if you tell me you have 10 years of experience, you’ll also need to explain to me how that’s going to help solve my problem or provide the outcome I’m looking for.
- Copy must provide an argument containing a choice of yeses. The more yeses the reader verbally or non-verbally says, the more likely they are to take a desired action.
- Copy must flow logically – small arguments must smoothly flow in the stream of an overall, larger argument that guides the reader into taking action.
- Copy must convince the reader that they’d be worse-off if they DID NOT take up the offer on the landing page.
- Copy must not contain a word or sentence that doesn’t provide some form of value towards the persuasion process. Every sentence should answer a “so what” test – if the sentence doesn’t relate to solving a problem or providing an outcome the prospect needs, it’s noise and should be removed.
- Use bullet points wherever and whenever you can. Generally, people don’t read large blocks of text – they skim through text and scan over paragraphs. When you use bullet points, with bolding and italics, your ‘skimming’ audience will still absorb your critical sales messages.
- When you’re writing paragraphs, use short, simple sentences. And ensure every paragraph works off a desire or fear.
- Use the word “YOU” not “WE” or “I”. Make the experience, argument and logical solution about the customer, NOT about you.
- Try and use the word “you”, “imagine”, and “because” as much as you can. YOU allows you to talk directly to the reader. IMAGINE allows the reader to place themselves in an imaginary scenario where YOU are providing the solution for them… this is a psychology hack that creates a deep association between you and the solution the prospect is looking for. BECAUSE allows you to explain the ‘reason why’ behind your message… allowing you to create a stronger argument.
- Ensure headlines can be digested in less than five seconds. Any more, and you risk losing the attention span of the visitor.
- Ensure headlines address the problem the prospect is trying to fix, the outcome they are desperately trying to manifest, or the unique problem you can provide to them.
- Ensure copy is written to the required level of sophistication and awareness of the audience.
6. Follow These Guidelines When Crafting Layout & Design
Here are design rules and guidelines I generally follow when constructing a landing page:
- A page’s design must be striking enough to capture the attention of users within FIVE seconds. Web users have very short attention spans – they’ll skim, scan, and only “see” the information that stands out the very most. A landing page’s design must portray the value of the page’s offer in the least amount of time possible. Less than three seconds is ideal.
- The page’s layout, and relationship between design elements, must guide the visitor’s eye through a logical, sequential path of written and visual elements. A landing page’s most core components must capture attention via a hierarchy – headline first, sub-headline second, bullet points third etc. Web users are impatient – so the sizzle of the hierarchical components must pull the reader into viewing them sequentially.
- It’s important to use whitespace to accentuate core conversion components.
- On a landing page, there must be one call to action only (possibly repeated throughout the page). It should be the most visible component on the page. Try the “squint test” – look at a landing page and squint your eyes. If you can see the call to action visibly sticking out, the page has used colour and layout to properly position its call to action.
- Proof elements are critical to the success of any landing page, and must be woven throughout all page components (proof comes in many forms – examples are testimonials, accreditation badges, certificates, pictures of real-life examples and video testimonials).
- Typography must be easy to read – this means size, contrast to background, font style, font weight, leading, character spacing etc. must be considered.
- Diagrams and visualisation will be used to decrease the time it takes for a prospect to digest and understand a message. The brain interprets visual information faster than the written word. Charts, graphs and flow charts are examples.
- A page’s colour palette is also very important. There’s no magical colour that makes every page convert, but colour choice, and the relationship between colours on a page DO influence a page’s conversion performance. Ideally, colours should welcome a reader and guide their eyes towards the persuasive components of the page (copy and call to action). A flash of colour in the right place will guide eye flow towards desired components.
- Stock images should be genuine and high quality, but should not distract the reader from the page’s copy and call to action.
7. Follow These Guidelines When Designing Your Pop-Up Form
In most cases, landing pages with a pop-up/modal form generally convert at a higher rate than pages with a form built into the layout of the page.
Here are some guidelines when creating your form:
- Collect the bare minimum amount of information as possible. Ask for a name, email address and phone number only. You can get the rest of the information when you call the prospect. Asking for too much information, too soon, creates friction that may prevent the visitor from taking action.
- Somewhere in close proximity to the form, reinforce the value of the call to action. Provide a few distilled bullet points explaining benefits the prospect will receive. Make it VERY easy for them to understand what they’re going to get.
- Ensure the text on the button reinforces what the user will receive. Don’t use text like “Submit” or “Send Data”. User text like “Request Consultation” or “Get A Quote”.
- Include a statement reinforcing your respect for their data privacy.
8. Make Sure You Address Mobile Traffic
Mobile traffic powers a rapidly increasing segment of the Internet, so it’s important to make sure your landing page converts from mobile traffic.
Here are some guidelines when considering mobile traffic:
- Ensure your landing page displays and FUNCTIONS correctly on all devices. You might consider removing or adjusting components like images and diagrams, as they may not display as intended on small screens.
- Ensure your lead capture form displays and FUNCTIONS correctly on all devices.
- Ensure tracking and remarketing codes fire correctly on all devices.
- Consider adding a “Click To Call” function on mobile landing pages. Some visitors might be ready to call you. Give them a quick and easy way of doing so.
- Test ALL of the above features, at least twice, on different mobile devices.
9. Install Tracking Codes & Remarketing Pixels
It’s critical that you track the performance of your landing page and confirmation page (also known as a Thank You Page). This means monitoring:
- Number of visitors
- Number of conversions
- Traffic sources
- Conversions from different traffic sources
Tracking the above allows you to tweak and optimise performance, therefore allowing you to produce a better campaign ROI. It’s also important to ensure you’ve got correct remarketing pixels installed on all pages. This will allow you to remarket to page visitors who do not convert.
Here are some guidelines:
- Ensure tracking codes for Google Analytics (and/or any other analytics software you may be using) exists on the landing page and also the Thank You Page.
- Setup “goals” in Google Analytics, so you can measure page performance quickly (without having to do manual calculations).
- Ensure conversion codes/pixels for your advertising platforms are installed on the Thank You Page. Some platforms require you to install a pixel on the landing page also.
- Ensure remarketing pixels have been added to all pages.
- Click tracking software is another useful tool that might provide you with insights around user behaviour.
10. Create An Effective Thank You Page
Your confirmation page, or “Thank You Page” (TYP) is an important tool often overlooked.
Firstly, make sure you have a TYP whereby the visitor is taken to a NEW page, instead of receiving a notification inside the landing page itself.
This confirmation behaviour must occur for a few reasons:
- To trigger conversion codes, and Goals in Google Analytics
- To reaffirm the visitor that they’ve made the right choice, and to reiterate the value they’re going to receive
- To present the next logical step in your nurturing funnel or sales process.
Make sure your Thank You Pages have the following:
- Correct tracking and remarketing pixels
- Statements reinforcing the value they’re going to receive
- The next logical value proposition in your funnel, so if the prospect is VERY keen to engage you, they can do so
- At least one form of social proof – this could be a testimonial or case study
Step Five:
Your Google Ads (Search) Campaigns
Here are the features of a high converting Google Ads (Search) Campaign:
Strategic Features
Your Google Ads campaign should have the following strategic features:
- The campaign should be PRIMARILY engineered to address the unwanted problems and/or desired solutions of your target market, with a SECONDARY focus on the benefits/features/facts provided by your business. This approach of solving problems or producing desired outcomes should be baked into ad creative, ad extensions, and keyword selection/targeting.
- Your Unique Value Proposition (the unique features, facts, and benefits offered by your business) should also be baked into ad creative, ad extensions, and landing pages. Boring, generic, unsubstantiated, hype-centric copy like “We Provide The Best Value”, “Best In Class Customer Service”, or “Choose The Experts” will never exist inside an effective Search campaign. Why? These statements provide no value to your prospect’s decision making process.
- Your campaign will be designed to promote tight keyword -> ad -> landing page relevance. In other words, this means a visitor from Google Ads traffic must view a landing page that TIGHTLY matches the search term they entered. To reverse this concept, ad groups containing loosely targeted terms will NOT allow you to create a relevant user experience, because the pages will be too broad in their messaging. Tight keyword -> ad -> landing page relevance will also contribute to a higher Quality Score (QS), which generally translates into cheaper cost per click.
- Your overall campaign Click Through Rate (CTR) must be as high as possible. CTR is a large part of Google Ads’ Quality Score equation. The higher the QS, the cheaper the average Cost Per Click will be. The cheaper the Cost Per Click, the cheaper the Cost Per Conversion. The cheaper the Cost Per Conversion, the more conversions the campaign will produce under a set budget.
- Your campaign’s ads must create some sort of Search Engine Results Page (SERP) differentiation, so your ads look different and stand apart from your competitors when being evaluated ‘in Google’ by the searcher. This could be through the creative use of ad text or the use of different ad extensions.
- Your campaign must be conversion driven. In other words, conversion tracking will be functioning to allow the optimiser to adjust campaign settings to drive conversion growth. Not having conversion tracking is like driving a sports car with an inch of mud covering the windscreen.
- Your campaign must be tested, tweaked, optimised continuously, forever… to eliminate any elements that DON’T produce conversions (prevent marketing waste) and find and amplify components that DO produce conversions. Markets change, and an Google Ads campaign MUST change with it, to keep performing as efficiently as possible.
Tactical Features
Your Google Ads campaign should have the following tactical features:
Tightly Targeted Ad Group Structure
- Your campaign must feature tightly targeted ad groups — meaning the keywords in an ad group will all be of the same, tightly-organised theme. The number of keywords inside of the ad group isn’t important – it can be one or a hundred, but the keywords need to be VERY similar… so that an ad and landing page displayed after being triggered by each unique keyword is highly relevant to that search term.
- Search and Display networks should be separated into their own campaigns.
- Top performing keywords should be placed in their own ad groups (sometimes their own campaign) so they can be carefully optimised for ad → landing page relevance and QS.
Keywords
- Your most effective keywords (a) will be commercially motivated, (b) will possess enough search volume to warrant bidding on them, and c) won’t be too competitive, when compared to your available budget. Generally speaking, the stronger the competition surrounding a search term, the higher its bid price will be.
- Appropriate match types (broad, phrase, exact, broad match modified) should be used tactically to achieve the widest relevance of search intent, and no more. Too wide = unqualified traffic.
- Search Query Reports should be run regularly to ensure waste is not occurring (waste = non-qualified search terms).
- New keywords should be added regularly, using Search Query Reports and keyword suggestion tools.
- Short tail AND long tail keywords should be tried and tested.
- Bids should be modified with surgical precision to deliver the right balance between position and cost. Generally speaking, the higher the position, the higher the cost. The lower the position, the weaker the keyword’s conversion strength.
- Negative keywords at both Ad Group and Campaign level should be added via Search Query Reports. General negatives should also exist “jobs”, “careers”, etc. Negative keywords should also be used for complex ad group setups, where exact and phrase terms are being funnelled into a specific ad group.
Ads
- As described above, your ad copy should be engineered to address the unwanted problems and/or desired solutions of your target market, with a secondary focus on your business’ Unique Value Proposition.
- Your ads should focus on different pain or pleasure points, or emotional triggers, or proof elements, or problem solving, or solution provision, or other psychological tactics designed to generate a high Click Through Rate.
- Your ads should feature extensions (app, call, location, review, sitelink, call-out, consumer ratings, previous visits, seller ratings) where possible. Extensions increase SERP visibility and help influence prospects’ decision making processes.
- Your ads should be A/B tested inside of Ad Groups all the time, forever. The goal of this continual ad testing is to improve CTR and conversion rate.
- Dynamic Keyword Insertion should also be used, depending on keyword selection.
Quality Score Strategy
- The tactical optimisation of your campaign must incorporate a holistic Quality Score strategy, designed to improve and retain Quality Scores.
- Note: High QS comes from (a) a strong landing page experience, (b) strong keyword -> ad -> landing page relevance, (c) a high overall campaign Click Through Rate, and (d) other smaller factors.
Campaign Settings
- Time Of Day/Day Of Week settings should be optimised using conversion data. In other words, times of the day or week that do not produce conversions could potentially be deactivated to save budget for times that DO produce conversions.
- Location settings should be optimised (using conversion data and external geographical requirements) to deploy the campaign ONLY in regions where conversions SHOULD and DO occur.
- Automatic bidding and scripts can be used to improve performance, but only where appropriate. At time of writing this, AI or bots can’t handle EVERY angle of campaign optimisation. Humans are required to inject psychology strategy.
Conversion Tracking
- Conversion tracking MUST be installed and working, either via a Google Analytics import or Google Ads’ own conversion javascript. Conversion tracking is essential for the optimisation process
Step Six:
Your Facebook PPC Campaign
A high performing Facebook campaign will use intelligent targeting to serve your ads to users who are most likely to engage your Irresistible Offer, based upon the platform’s ultra-specific demographic and psychographic data. Instead of reactively showing ads to users who are searching for a solution or outcome (like Google Ads Search), Facebook’s strengths lie in proactively targeting two traffic types:
(a) Cold traffic (are NOT familiar with your business) via their location, demographic, interest, behaviour, or connection data, or
(b) Warm traffic (ARE familiar with your business via sophisticated remarketing audiences. This remarketing strategy allows you to target users who:
- Have already viewed one of your Facebook videos
- Have already visited your website but didn’t convert
- Are on your email list
- Like your Facebook Page
It’s this detailed targeting power that allows you to display different ads to different users, depending on their levels of awareness and position in your sales funnel. If they are cold traffic, you’ll focus more on providing value and explaining your value proposition. If they are warm traffic, you can promote deeper offers and use traditional sales levers like urgency and exclusivity.
More Strategic Features Of A Facebook PPC Campaign
Your Facebook PPC campaign should have the following strategic features:
- Like your Google Ads campaign, your Facebook PPC campaign should be engineered PRIMARILY to address the unwanted problems and/or desired solutions of your target market, with a SECONDARY focus on the benefits/features/facts provided by your business. This approach of solving problems or producing desired outcomes should be baked into ad creative, ad extensions, and keyword selection/targeting.
- Your Unique Value Proposition (the unique features, facts, and benefits offered by your business) should be baked into ad creative, and landing pages. Remember – Boring, generic, unsubstantiated, hype-centric copy like “We Provide The Best Value”, “Best In Class Customer Service”, or “Choose The Experts” will never exist inside an effective Facebook campaign. Why? These statements provide no value to your prospect’s decision making process.
- Unfortunately for us humans are programmed to ignore advertising, so if you want your ads to cut through your prospect’s News feed, your ads should stand out, and be should be contrasting – but shouldn’t look like a traditional ad.
- Facebook is going to favour ads with higher engagement rates. Ads with more Likes, Shares, and Comments will be shown at a cheaper cost per click. So, write your ads in a way that promotes user engagement.
- ALL components of your campaign should be tested: Core Audiences, Demographics, Devices, Platforms, Ad Types, Positioning, to remove any delivery settings that don’t produce results and spend your budget on the components and settings that DO create desired marketing activity.
Tactical Features Of A Facebook PPC Campaign
Your Facebook campaign should have the following tactical features:
Campaign Outcome/Advertising Objectives
- When setting up a new campaign there are a number of different “Advertising Objectives” you can choose from. Because you’re using Facebook PPC to generate leads or enquiries on your own landing page, the Campaign Goal you need to select is “Conversions”.
- Note, in our experience: Facebook’s native Lead Generation form seems like a neat tool but its performance is below par when compared to a traditional Facebook Image/VIdeo ad →Landing Page conversion funnel.
Audience Targeting
Facebook’s targeting function is one of its key differentiating strengths. Facebook’s targeting works by choosing one or more ‘Audiences’ of users. There are three main types of Audiences:
There are three main types of Audiences:
- Core Audiences are audiences created by Facebook that group users together based on factors like geographic demographics, lifestyle/lifestage demographics, purchase-based demographics, etc. This data is pulled from the information people share in their Facebook profiles and the behaviors they exhibit on the platform. Generally, core audiences should be used to target cold traffic. At time of writing this, Facebook’s Core Audience categories are Location, Demographics, Interests, Behaviours, and Connections.
- Custom Audiences are audiences created by advertisers based on your pre-existing email lists, website pixel cookies, Facebook page, or pools of users categorised by their engagement with your Facebook assets (videos, lead ads, or canvas ads). Custom audiences are generally used to remarket to visitors who have interacted with your ads, Facebook page, or website… or are on your email list.
- Lookalike Audiences are audiences created by Facebook’s targeting platform that allow you to target users who share similar demographic and psychographic attributes to your customers, hence the term “lookalike” – the audiences created by this feature will ‘lookalike’ your own current email list, Facebook Page likes, or website retargeting list etc.
Image & Video Ads
- In general, consumers are trained to not see forms of advertising, particularly in close-proximity mediums like social media on mobile devices. This means it’s important to design your ads so they cut through the surrounding ‘noise’ in your prospects’ News Feeds. Unfortunately, you’ll need to compete with cat videos.
- Ads that provoke emotion through story will elicit a response from your prospects more effectively than traditional “enquire now” ads. Try and create rapport in your ads.
- Ads that start with a question that has an implied “Yes” will engage readers.
- Your image selection is VERY important and drives most of the success of your ad. Increase the contrast of the image, and make sure the image tells a story too.
- Facebook Video ads are the new “TV commercial” – if you have the ability to launch video ads, try using these as a ‘value-first’ mechanism. Use video ads to deliver value, and then remarket with ‘enquire now’ ads to those who engage with them.
- Similar to Google Ads ads, your ad copy should be engineered to address the unwanted problems and/or desired solutions of your target market, with a secondary focus on your business’ Unique Value Proposition.
- Your ads should focus on different pain or pleasure points, or emotional triggers, or proof elements, or problem solving, or solution provision, or other psychological tactics designed to generate a high Click Through Rate.
- Your ads should be A/B tested inside of Ad Sets all the time, forever. The goal of this continual ad testing is to improve CTR and conversion rate.
- Ad Frequency shouldn’t increase up by three or four. If this happens, it’s time to adjust your campaign targeting.
- There are many other ad types on the Facebook PPC platform… but they’re not going to function as well as traditional image and video ads (for the purpose of this style of lead generation).
Pixels & Conversion Tracking
- Conversion tracking MUST be installed and working – this is achieved by (a) adding the Facebook Pixel to your landing page and Thank You Page and (b) creating a Custom Conversion that is registered when a user visits the Thank You Page. Conversion tracking is essential for the optimisation process.
Campaign Settings
- Time Of Day/Day Of Week settings should be optimised using conversion data. In other words, times of the day or week that do not produce conversions could potentially be deactivated to save budget for times that DO produce conversions.
- Location settings should be optimised (using conversion data and external geographical requirements) to deploy the campaign ONLY in regions where conversions SHOULD and DO occur.
Step Seven:
The Lean “Ongoing Optimisation” Process
An ongoing, never-ending optimisation process is CRITICAL to the success of your lead generation funnel.
Here’s why it’s so important:
- You’ll reduce marketing “waste”. Using testing, you’ll learn what campaign components (or landing pages) are ineffectively using your budget. Cull this waste, and you’ve instantly got more budget for the campaign components and landing pages that do work.
- You’ll produce valuable psychological insights into your landing page visitors, that can be used in other sales and marketing collateral. Once you understand what drives your prospects and customers to take action online, you’ll be able to use or modify this factual data for other advertising, sales, and marketing initiatives.
- Your market changes over time. With the right information and knowledge, you can adapt and pivot as required.
- It’s fast and inexpensive to create and launch tests and feedback mechanisms. Website feedback mechanisms (examples below) and testing regimes (examples also below), and learning about your traffic and customers, is not expensive at all. Using the tools I mention below, you could setup a website test in under 60 minutes, that could save you THOUSANDS.
- To summarise, website testing and feedback loops are important because you LEARN what sales and marketing collateral works (and what doesn’t). You IMPROVE performance of your sales and marketing ecosystem (online and offline). And you gain valuable INSIGHTS into your customers and your industry.
And lastly, even the smartest marketer in the world won’t know exactly what components will work and what won’t – this is only achieved by testing with real-life market data.
For example:
- Only real-life market data will tell you which headlines work, and which don’t.
- Only real-life market data will tell you which emotional triggers work, and which don’t.
- And only real-life market data will tell you what button colour gets more sales or enquiries.
- This means you need to constantly test and tweak to improve the performance of your digital marketing ecosystem.
Example: How a Single, Isolated Test Can Save You $$$
Let me walk you through a basic scenario:
- Let’s say you have a landing page that converts traffic at 5%.
- So, for every 100 users you send to the page, you get 5 conversions.
- Let’s also say it costs you $200 to get 100 users to your page.
- Using this logic, you’re generating 5 conversions every time you spend $200. That’s $40 per conversion.
- If we run a landing page test that increases conversion from 5% to 6%, you’re now generating 6 conversions per $200.
- That’s $34 dollars per conversion, or one additional lead for the same spend.
Now, assume your monthly budget is $10,000. This means you generate 5000 visitors.
- 5% conversion rate of 5000 visitors: 250 conversions.
- 6% conversion rate of 5000 visitors: 300 conversions.
- Using the logic above, increasing your conversion rate from 5% to 6% will generate you 50 more leads for the same spend, or a saving of $2000 (300 conversions at a cost per conversion of $40 = $12,000).
And lastly, let’s assume the split test took you an hour to setup. Your ONE HOUR of work saved you $2000.
High Level Optimisation Process
Here’s a high level optimisation process:
- Remove elements that create waste (unqualified traffic, poor performing ads, quiet times of day/week, locations),
- Amplify performing elements (improve high-performing keywords, ads, ad extensions, times of day/week, locations),
- Find new opportunities,
- Test new ads/keywords/extensions/audience combination et cetera…
… with the ultimate goal of managing an evolving, responsive, efficient campaign that produces qualified conversions at a cheap cost per conversion.