Grok dot com has some good suggestions for improving your lead generation landing pages. In a nutshell:

1. Split your forms into two parts
2. Use more than one lead generation form
3. Don’t ask for the lead too early
4. Use PPC effectively
5. Be aggressive in your optimization

This is all great advice and I’m particularly intrigued by the last three. While all five of these are great suggestions, Nos. 3 and 5 should be intuitive for anyone using landing pages as lead generation tools. But No. 4 isn’t so intuitive. I like the persona marketing idea presented in the Jenny Craig ads.

If you’re going to use pay per click ads to drive traffic to landing pages that target market using the persona marketing strategy, make sure that your ads appeal to the same target market as the landing page. In other words, infuse your ad copy with the same persona language. Otherwise, you’ll be paying for untargeted clicks. People who don’t fit into your target mix will know that ad was not meant for them and they’ll bounce.

Do you need a long landing page? It really depends. There are times when a long landing page is beneficial, but generally speaking I’d say a landing page doesn’t need to be any longer than it needs to be.

In some sectors, a long landing page can be beneficial. Financial analysts, for instance, like lots of figures. So if you are asking for thousands of dollars in investment money and you expect to close the sale then you might need to provide a great deal of information in order to satisfy the needs of your target audience. With other sectors, that long landing page and minute details could be detrimental. It behooves you to know your audience.

But it’s more than just target marketing too. There are other factors that should determine the length of your landing page. What are you asking for? If you are just asking for subscribers to a newsletter then your landing page doesn’t need to be that long. If you are asking for a big commitment or a long-term commitment then your landing page might need to be longer. However much detail is necessary for a person to make a reasonably informed decision should be your guiding principle. If a good decision requires lots of information then maybe a long landing page is necessary.

Have you always wanted to learn how to effectively launch a pay per click campaign for either yourself or your company? Pay Per Click can easily propel your company to the next level but it can also eat through your entire budget if done incorrectly. If you have been spending money on pay per click for your company and have seen nothing but negative results than PPC Summit is a must attend event.

PPC Summit is an event that is held every year that allows you to interact with pay per click experts in the industry and learn helpful tips and tricks that will allow you to become an expert in the field. This interactive two day event will introduce you and teach you how to catch up to your successful competitors and move past them in the PPC race. This two day even is designed to teach you how to make more money using your pay per click campaign. Everyone from webmasters to creative directors can benefit from this amazing two day event. No other pay per click event can bring this much knowledge and expertise under one table and allow you to walk away with this much information on how to better your online game.

PPC Summit will guide you how to effectively set up PPC campaigns in Google, Yahoo and MSN. It is important to know all three search engines and not just Google because you will generate traffic from all three search engines. It is important to keep your options open as a business. PPC Summit will also help with the process of identifying the right keywords for your ads to attract only the most qualified visitors. It will also help you with different management strategies such as bidding on keywords and maximizing the potential with effective landing pages.

This event brings a certain knowledge and expertise that you will not be able to acquire at any other training event. This event clearly highlights and A to Z agenda on every aspect required on creating and managing a successful pay per click campaign. If you have in an in house pay per click manager this would be an ideal training to sharpen the blade on your PPC approach.

Pay Per Click Journal is now offering a 10% off discount for anybody interested in attending this event. By using Pay Per Click journals coupon code, PPCJ, you will receive a 10% off discount at check out. If you have an organization that has had very little to no success using pay per click than it is time visit this summit and expand your knowledge before you burn through any more of your company’s money.

OK, PPC Hero beat us to it, but we wanted to talk a little bit about how Google Insights, the latest Google tool, can be used for your PPC campaigns.

There are several ways, actually. But just to highlight some of the useful features of Google Insights, here’s a list of some of the cool things you can do:

• Compare search volume for your key terms
• Study keyword trends over a period of time
• Analyze regional interests for specific keywords and websites
• See which search terms are rising in popularity (or falling)

There’s plenty more, but I like the way PPC Hero has broken down the ways you can use these tools:

• Geo-targeting (very useful for local businesses)
• Budget planing (corresponds to our post yesterday)
• Research before your research (”pre-keyword-research-research”)

It’s true. You can use Google Insights for all of these uses, and a whole lot more. I’m particularly intrigued by the budget planning. As stated yesterday, wise advertisers create a budget and adjust it based on expected sales volume or revenues throughout the year - essentially, paying attention to your seasonal trends. Google Insights can help you identify those seasonal trends more easily, not only for sales, which you should have an idea of anyway, but for search terms, which is highly valuable.

Let’s say that you know your peak season is Christmas. For most retailers, that means between Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. But what if you could find out that people start searching for Christmas gift ideas in August? If your gift shop’s keywords experience search spikes during your off season then you’d want to know that, right? Technically speaking, it’s more important to advertise during peak search times than during peak buying times. By the time consumers are ready to purchase, they’ve already done the research and if they are making their purchase online then they already know where they want to buy from. Since the majority of Internet users research their purchases online before actually making a purchase - whether they purchase from an online store or a brick and mortar store - it makes sense to find out when your keywords are most popular in the search engines. Google Insights can help you do that.

Do you know your peak seasons? You should. And it helps to know when the start and when they end because when it comes to advertising, how much you spend is vitally important. But just as important is how much revenue you bring in the door as a result of that advertising.

If your peak season is Christmas, for instance, you know that you can count on a certain amount of business based on the economy and the mood of the marketplace. But if you don’t advertise to bring people to your shop then you likely won’t get as much business as you would have. You probably have a budget to help you stay on track, and that’s a good thing. But what about your slow seasons?

Do you keep spending the same amount of money on advertising during your slow seasons? If so then you are probably losing money.

No matter how much money you spend, there is no guarantee you’re going to get new business based on that advertising spend. Therefore, it makes sense to scale back on your advertising during the slow season and use that money for advertising for your peak season. But you don’t want to stop advertising altogether. What you want to do is spread your budget out across the entire year.

Here’s what it looks like: Let’s say your advertising budget is 15% of last year’s revenue, which was $100,000. So you know you’ll spend 15,000 on advertising in the coming year. You can do it in one of two ways:

1. Month-to-Month Comparison - Your advertising budget is set at 15% of the revenue for the same month last year (i.e. June 2009/June 2008).
2. Monthly Adjustments From The Whole - You take your 15% and move it up or down for each month depending on your expected revenue

There are advantages to doing it either way, of course. If you choose the first method and your revenue in July of last year was $5,000 then you know you’ll spend $750 in advertising for that month. It’s an easy way to keep track of your spend. By the end of the year you will have spent 15% of your total yearly revenue from the previous year on your advertising efforts.

On the other hand, if your base is 15%, using the second method, what you want to do is figure out your average month. Take your total revenue - $100,000 - and divide it by 12, which comes to $8,333.33. That’s your average revenue for any given month so for months that you earned that much, or close to that much, in the previous year you’ll spend your 15% of total advertising revenue for the year during that month. In other words, you’ll spend $1,250 on advertising for any month during the year that hits around that revenue figure for the corresponding month of the year before. Example:

Last year you brought in $8,050 in January, $8,290 in March, $8,445 in May, and $8,300 in August. For each of those months you’ll spend $1,250 in advertising. But what about months that are above or below those revenue figures?

You’ll need to establish a window for each percentage of ad spend. For instance, you’ll spend 15% for expected revenues between $8,000 and $8,500. Make percentage adjustments for each $500 window above and below that. The percentage can be any figure you want but make it the same for both above and below. So if you adjust the ad spend by 2% for each $500 window, do that for the window below $8,000 ($7,500-$7,999) and the window above ($8,500-$8,999). Based on these windows you’re ad spend will be 13% and 17%, respectively.

How much you adjust for each window and the size of each window above and below your average revenue figure is up to you, but you want to be consistent in your approach. It’s a little more complicated doing it this way but it’s a good way to control your ad spend.

One often overlooked strategy for using pay per click advertising to use it as a lead generation tool. Everyone goes for the close when they might actually make more mileage going for the prospect and waiting till later to make the sales pitch. Here are five principles to incorporate into your next PPC campaign to help you generate more leads that you can use to later close the sale:

1. Write your landing page around capturing an e-mail address: Yes, you can actually get more leads by driving your website visitors to a call to action that asks them for an e-mail address and nothing more. Instead of going for the sale, go for the quick and easy snag: the private contact information.
2. Offer something valuable for free: It can be an e-book, a digital product such as a podcast or video, a video game, a promise, anything that the prospect would consider valuable. The catch is, it has to be considered valuable by the people in your target audience or they won’t give you their e-mail address. Offer a freebie and see how many people give you their e-mail address for free.
3. Use the word “Free” in your PPC ad: That’s right, “free” gets people’s attention. Tell them right up front what you have to offer and watch those clicks just roll right in. Don’t be deceptive; tell them the truth - and they will fall all over themselves to give you what you want.
4. You don’t have to be No. 1: The best position in the PPC lineup is No. 2 or No. 3. Find out who is the highest bidder and underbid them a tad.
5. Target the right keywords: But don’t target too many. Have a tight keyword group and target it heavily. You’ll get the leads you want if your keywords are right.

Lead generation is very important in any marketing plan. Use pay per click advertising to generate leads and you can sell those leads your product or service later.

If you use MSN adCenter’s API then you should take note that you have only four days to upgrade or lose it all. The deadline for upgrading is August 14. The MSN team has a live webcast scheduled for August 19 and will be ready to take your questions. For more information, go to the adCenter blog.

Google AdWords was down yesterday for system maintenance so if you tried to login and couldn’t - that was the problem. It happens every month.

Google Insights has launched. Really, nice tool!

Yahoo’s Search Marketing blog is loading slowly. I’d link to it; I keep getting a database error. Sorry, Yahoo!

Have you launched your back to school pay per click campaigns yet? It’s time. If you have not already done so then now is the time to get those back to school PPC campaigns optimized and activated. The first day of school is just around the corner.

So what types of products are great for selling this time of year?

• School Supplies - Of course. Every student, from pre-school to college, will need school supplies. Now is the time to get that advertising campaign going.
• Personal Electronic Equipment - Laptops, PDAs, iPods, cell phones, etc. High school and college students especially may be looking for new equipment. Now is not the time to focus on repairs. Students going away to college will want to enter their new school with a new laptop or cell phone and your back to school special could help them get what they want.
• Textbooks - College textbooks do especially well online. If you sell textbooks and electronic books, or digital products, then now is the time to start that back to school advertising campaign. But don’t put your electronic and paper keywords together in one ad group. Separate them for more effective PPC campaigns.
• Student Loans - Yes, we’re talking about financial aid here. New and returning college students will need student loans. If you provide student loans then now is the time to advertise.
• Clothing & Apparel - Students love entering their first day of school showing off their new clothes. Shirts, pants, dresses, purses, makeup, jewelry, accessories, these are all great items to advertise and now is the time to get the word out about your back to school special. If you run a retail store near a college campus, this is the perfect opportunity to advertise.
• Other retail - No, seriously. Any kind of brick and mortar retail shop near a college campus can capitalize on those students getting ready for classes. PPC advertising provides a great opportunity to catch their attention, and you know those college kids are online. So why not advertise?

August is always a good time to kick off your back to school pay per click advertising campaign, no matter what business you are in. If your target market is college students then the perfect opportunity to catch their attention is now - while they’re thinking about going back to school.

The two most important parts of your PPC Quality Score are your keywords and your ad text. The two go hand in hand, like bread and butter. Here are few tips to help you make the tweaks you need to make without killing your quality score:

• Don’t make too many changes at one time - It takes Google a while to assess changes you’ve made to your account. It could take a couple of weeks for an ad text change, for instance, to be reassessed. If you make too many changes at one time you’ll see a lot of fluctuation in your quality score.
• Keep keywords in tight ad groups - Don’t use every keyword on your list in your ad groups. Match your ads with your keywords properly and keep them together.
• Don’t delete your old ads - As you test new ads, don’t delete the old ones. Pause them instead. This will ensure that you keep your keywords associated with the text in those ads.
• Don’t move all of your keywords together - This gets back to making sweeping changes. You can actually lower your quality score by moving one or two keywords to another ad group. If you move your entire list of keywords to another group then you can disassociate your keywords from ad text that is performing well. It’s like starting over.

Your Quality Score is like your credit score. Safeguard it. It if tanks then you’ll have to spend time rebuilding it. While that is possible, it will cause your ad campaigns to lose traction.

Google AdWords has announced that it is adding new features to the Content Network part of its advertising platform:

* Frequency Capping: Enables advertisers to control the number of times a user sees an ad. Users will have a better experience on Google content network sites because they will no longer see the same ad over and over again.

* Frequency Reporting: Provides insight into the number of people who have seen an ad campaign, and how many times, on average, people are seeing these ads.

* Improved Ads Quality: Brings performance improvements within the Google content network.

* View-Through Conversions: Enables advertisers to gain insights on how many users visited their sites after seeing an ad. This helps advertisers determine the best places to advertise so users will see more relevant ads.

I think these are great changes. I particularly like that last feature. When you can see how many ad viewers have visited your site from another site on which your ad was displayed, you’ll get real reporting on which you can base real decisions. Your advertising will be tremendously improved upon and then it only gets better from there. To read more about how Google will use cookies on the Content Network, read their privacy policy here. It should give you some insight into how this new policy can benefit your advertising campaigns.

Pay per click advertising is an advertising model that is based on the use of proper keywords. You can bid on the most valuable keywords available for your niche, but are those keywords the right keywords for your business? The right keywords are always those keywords that are most effective in reaching your target market.

Proper keyword bidding begins with research. You must be thorough. Don’t cut corners. Find all the keywords that are appropriate for your niche and single out the ones that more important for your business.

After you’ve found the right keywords for your business, find the right ones for your campaign. Even good keywords for your business may not be right for a particular campaign. You want to target your campaign effectively for your business and reach the right customers.

Another thing to think about with your keywords is ensuring that you get the right match types. This is very important. Are your keywords better suited for a broad match or for an exact match? This is where knowing your potential customers’ search habits will come in handy. But not just that, it also helps to know what will be found if either search method is used. Who is going to see your ad if the broad match is used? Who is going to see it if the exact match is used? That’s the nitty gritty and you’ve got to get down to it.

Keywords are the most important part of any pay per click campaign. Your advertising efforts will rise and fall on the right keywords, the right bids, and the right keyword match types. Put some thought into it.

Here’s a great blog post on the MSN adCenter blog. Essentially, they’re saying that there are five ways to make your landing page more relevant to your visitors and I agree wholeheartedly. These are fabulous ways to increase the relevancy of your landing pages:

• Search applicability
• Keyword prominence
• Load speed
• Actionable call to action
• Builds trust

The great thing about these suggestions is that they are important no matter what PPC provider you are using. Whether advertising through Google AdWords or MSN adCenter, you’ll need to incorporate these five things into your landing pages if you want to be effective. But what do these things mean?

Search Applicability
You want your landing pages to line up with the content in your ads. Think about the search process. A user types in a keyword and sees a SERP. Your ad is matched with the keyword that is used for the search. Likewise, your landing page needs to correspond with that as well.

Keyword Prominence
Make sure your landing pages use the keywords that are most important to your users.

Load Speed
How long does it take to load your page? Huge graphics and large files tend to slow down load time. But load speed also can lower your quality score so make sure you design a landing page that loads quickly.

Actionable Call to Action
Is your call to action clear? Spell out specifically what you want your site visitor to do.

Build Trust
Make sure your landing page visitors understand that you provide security and privacy. Don’t lie or be untruthful, but make sure that you offer a clear understanding of your site’s security, privacy, costs of shipping, etc.

If you do these five things well you’ll go a long way to increasing your landing page relevancy and convert more traffic to sales.

Which is more effective, pay per click or display advertising?

The debate has been going on for almost ten years now. The truth is, most people don’t click on the ads at all, PPC or display. But with display advertising, you pay for the space up front. With pay per click, you pay only after the visitor has visited your website. But when you pay has nothing to say about which method of advertising is more important.

PPC is actually a better deal for most advertisers because you can adjust what you are willing to pay for an action. You don’t get that many options with display advertising. However, online display banner advertising is very good for branding of your company and website.

If your ROI is down, you still pay the same. With PPC, if your ROI takes a downturn then you can lower your keyword bids or shut off your advertising completely. That makes pay per click much more flexible an option for most advertisers and that flexibility often can turn into a profit. All you really have to manage is your budget and ROI. Everything else takes care of itself.

The three basic pay per click campaign components are:

• Keywords
• Ad Content
• Landing Page

You cannot run a successful pay per click campaign without these three components. But which one is most important?

First, keywords are a necessary component of any pay per click campaign because you’ll never be successful in reaching your target audience without them. Your ad content, however, is dependent upon the proper keyword research and whether or not you target the right keywords. But it’s also important in getting the click and driving traffic to your landing page. The landing page is the component that closes the sale. It too is reliant upon the proper use of the right keywords. But keywords alone won’t close the sale. Your content must sale and drive the site visitor to the right course of action.

Which component is most important? They should all work together toward the same goal. When they do that successfully then you’ll increase your conversions and ROI.

One of the most important aspects of running a pay per click campaign is the time factor. Don’t just expect windfall results within one month. Take your time and build your campaign slowly by engaging in periodic ad testing, a daily budget, and bidding tweaks. This is very important.

Your ad testing should simply be an A/B test comparing your current ad text to a new ad and you can do this weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or even quarterly. I recommend monthly. You’re trying to take the world by storm tomorrow. You’re building your campaign one day at a time.

The daily budget will prevent you from spending everything you have too soon. It allows you to make mistakes without breaking the bank. You can test your ads and tweak your bids with comfort.

Bidding tweaks are necessary because if you stay at the same bid day in and day out then you will rise and fall with the tide. More often than not, you’ll fall. One day your ads may be in the No. 1 spot, but it could be a day when you’ll get few clicks and most of them worthless. A day at the beach, for instance. But the next day you might be on page 10. Stabilize your placements by tweaking your bids periodically. Maybe not every day, but you definitely want to look at them a couple of times a week.