Category Archives: Pay Per Click

How to Make Money Off “Losing” Keywords

If you’re like most PPC advertisers, you’re probably making excellent money on your bulls-eye keywords.  And if you’re lucky, you’ve got another 10 to 20 ad-groups turning a pretty decent profit…

But let’s be honest…search advertising is a FINITE medium. So when we go beyond the closely related bulls eye terms, you’re struggling to expand.  Sure, you might fantasize about the perfect split test which will turn some of those ‘money pit’ adgroups into a gold mine. But deep down you know, these keywords don’t really belong to you…

They’re someone else’s bulls-eye keywords.  You might even be “cheating” on your bulls eye a little by dreaming about them.  (Is there such a thing as a “keyword therapist?”… there should be!)

The reality of PPC for most advertisers is that after you’ve optimized your campaign – your sales graph just levels off.   And then you just keep on split testing, mining for peel and stick optimization, negatives, and improvements to your ads and landing pages…but mostly this effort just fends off the competition and protects your sales at their current level.

It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It happens to almost everyone…

In fact, a lot of gurus say you need to turn to SEO when you reach this point of diminishing returns in PPC…

But the reality is SEO is extremely hard work.  And, my SEO friends inform me (I’m not an SEO guy)… it’s become almost impossible to succeed unless youown a media network or are willing to go so black-hat you’ll feel like your soul shriveled up and died…

Plus … doing SEO destroys your marketing brain.  (Because it’s so easy to make a profit on free traffic, people who rely on SEO almost never push themselves to really learn CONVERSION)

But… with a quick shift in mindset I can show you not only how you can win this war… but how you’ve actually already won it.  Even with your losing keywords. You just don’t know it…

The thing is… if you’re able to consistently bid on even one high volume keyword, then you, my friend, have a successful offer.

That’s a huge achievement.  It’s also relatively rare--by definition–because there are precious few slots available on Google, Bing, etc.  Which means out of the hundreds or even thousands of people who’ve TRIED to sustain impression share on that keyword it was YOU who shone through to get one of those slots.

The fact of the matter is, for your bulls-eye your offer is an excellent front end.

But what if you thought of your product as a BACK END product for a whole slew of keywords you just haven’t been able to make work. 

Let’s say you’ve chosen to pursue a life selling vegetarian dog food.  (Hey, it’s better than picking up after the elephants in the circus!)  And you’re making good money on Google by advertising on ‘vegetarian dog food’ and closely related terms.

But you can’t expand beyond that, even though you know there are a ton of people who love their dogs and could definitely benefit from the health and longevity enhancement your product provides…

This is where turning your product into a back-end offer comes in…

(NOTE: This is the key point, and it’s something I’ve never spoken about before.  So this would be a great time to stop checking your email, looking at facebook between paragraphs, picking your nose, or whatever else you’re doing which could possibly distract you from profiting from this insight!)

PARADIGM SHIFT: Think of your product as a BACK END JOINT VENTURE for PPC players dominating the keywords you can’t seem to crack!!  

Suddenly you’ve opened up a whole new channel to increase your customer volume…

See, it’s NOT that the people searching for those keywords aren’t good prospects for you.  In fact, in many cases they’re BETTER than those on your bulls eye.  It’s just that either the “center of gravity” for your brand as a whole and/or the economics of the offer you’d need to make to crack it just don’t jive with what those great customers happen to be searching for…

Staying with the Vegetarian Dog Food model, here’s how you’d do it:

  1. Find a list of keywords that have significant traffic, where the intent of the searcher is to improve the well-being and life-span of their dogs. Here are a few examples:
    1. Dog insurance
    2. Dog health
    3. Dog Veterinarian
  2. Make a list of the advertisers for those keywords.  The top advertisers on those keywords often have huge email (and direct mail) lists of BUYERS who own dogs, are interested in protecting their health, and could be be perfect customers for you if they just knew you existed
  3. Form a joint venture with one (or all) of the vendors in the list and have them sell your product as a back end product.
  4. And finally, turn these promotions into evergreen funnels.  Integrate your back-end offer into their systems so that they make sales for you every single day.  (The single biggest mistake I made in the Joint Venture world was not going the extra mile to turn my deals into evergreen profit centers)

The beauty of this process is it helps you break out of your bulls-eye cage and lets you back into the “keyword candy store”.  (Note: You don’t want to START your business in the keyword candy store because you NEED a center of gravity for your brand if you’re going to have a real chance of success out of the gate.  But this strategy helps you dramatically expand your customer base once you’ve established your center)

Done correctly and with the right partners, joint ventures can easily double your sales and quadruple your profits…

And they can seriously mitigate your advertising risk and counter the rising costs of PPC!

In a couple of weeks Terry Dean and I will be launching an extraordinarily powerful, detailed, and very affordable program to show you exactly how to find, set up and profit from joint ventures in the long term. But in the meantime… try breaking out of your keyword cage with the PPC –> Joint Venture mindset shift above!

Onwards!

Dr. G 🙂

Instant Profit Bump? Smack Me with a Spatula!

I WANT TO SMACK MYSELF IN THE HEAD WITH A SPATULA!

Know why?  Because I just did an interview with Ryan Levesque about Email Remarketing…and I couldn’t believe the profitable opportunities I’ve been passing up.   (Why the hell aren’t I doing this yet!?)

YOU! Listen now!  (Seriously, you’ll thank me)

Onwards!

Dr. G 🙂

PS – To learn more about the event Ryan mentions at the end of the interview please click here.  (Of course, this is my sneaky affiliate link, but I really DO wish I could go to this one in particular.  Ryan’s totally obsessed with online marketing and is rapidly figuring out things I never could.  I’m seriously considering paying his outrageous rates to just have him revamp some of my funnels)

Dear Google: How to Make Me Miserable…

I suppose I understand why Google is removing their formerly-extremely-valuable-tools-for-marketing-geeks (The Keyword Tool, Google Reader, RSS Feeds for Alerts, etc).   The bottom line is, the money is in the shallow end of the pool, not the deep end.  If you want to make millions, market to the masses, not to the propeller head, spreadsheet loving, direct-response-education consuming Ph.D marketing junkies like me.

Similarly, I hope you’ll avoid making the mistake of marketing exclusively to the 0.1% of the market who is as knowledgeable, passionate, and expert about your topic as you are.  (Not to be confused with letting the most hyper-responsive customers educate you about the market please)

I don’t fault Google for doing this.  It takes a lot of resources to maintain these things, and the ROI just isn’t there.  It’s smart business.

However, it makes me truly miserable.  Because not only aren’t those tools available for me, but I then have to spend weeks researching work-a-rounds for the systems I’ve taught thousands of people to rely upon.  (Don’t worry, one will be forthcoming shortly to replace the Alerts RSS feed, and I’ve already posted the work-around for the keyword tool in the club)

So in this spirit, I thought I’d try to save Google some time in their efforts to make me miserable by making this list.  Feel free to add to it if you’ve got ideas:

  • I often walk around the house without shoes.  Perhaps Google could hire some small neighborhood children to randomly charge at me when I’m not looking and spit on my feet…
  • In my refrigerator on the right hand side I always keep about 4 containers of organic greens.  Google could, perhaps, hire someone to contaminate them with plutonimum
  • My computers are on the fourth floor of the house.  I have one with Windows XP, and another with Windows 7.  I’m sure they could find a local college kid to program them with subliminal messages that say “there are scorpions and spiders under your bed while you sleep” that flashed at me all day long.  That would be great.
  • I love berries.  They’re good for your immune system, and I’m sure to eat at least a pound every day.  Perhaps Google could arrange to put so much caffeine in my blueberries that I’m promptly driven to an amphetamine psychosis, hospitalized, and no longer able to work
  • Last year we had a flood in our basement.  I particularly enjoyed that experience.  Perhaps they could hire a firetruck to come and pump a few feet of water in?

Anyway, I just thought if the product managers at Google were sitting around brainstorming ways to make me miserable I might as well lend them a hand.

NOW, HERE’S A WAY I CAN MAKE YOU VERY HAPPY.

I’ve recently discovered that most merchant account underwriters are overcharging.  Which means most entrepreneurs are paying way too much.  Plus, most entrepreneurs have NO plan for dealing with merchant account problems associated with sudden growth spurts or spikes in charge-backs, etc.  Which is pretty dumb, because sudden growth spurts always come with those kinds of problems, and sudden growth spurts is what we’re all working to engineer in the first place!

So just go fill out the short contact form on www.MerchantAccountWizard.com to find out how much you can save (FREE ANALYSIS).   Sure, I’ll make a little money if you do decide to switch, but you’ll put a LOT more back in your bank account every year.  If you’re doing any regular credit card processing at all the odds are there are thousands of dollars just sitting on the table.

It only takes minutes to switch, and this is NOT something where we sell your name to dozens of brokers.  I’ve connected with a really good source and you’ll deal with one primary person to figure out the best solution for you.

www.MerchantAccountWizard.com

Because here’s another way to get miserable…

Engineer a really strong monthly income, then have it all come crashing down because the money-movers won’t let you process!

www.MerchantAccountWizard.com

 

All My Free Cheat Sheets, Mp3s, and Videos

Been cataloging and organizing the last 5 years of MP3 interviews, PDF Cheat Sheets, and Conversion Videos…

Thought I might as well give you the benefits of that too 🙂

Right click the image above and you’ll get a PDF full of links to my BEST Cheat Sheets, Interviews, and Conversion Videos…

It’s all my best stuff, all in one place!

(Don’t say I never gave you anything)

Now go turn some visitors into buyers, would you?

Dr. G 🙂

PS – If you haven’t already joined the LIVE CONVERSION WEBINARS club, you should do so now.  If for no other reason than (a) the “best conversion secrets of 2012” video is about to scroll out of the archived club recordings and become a $67 product in it’s own right; (b) the “Persuasion Architecture” bonus audio contains the crowning jewel of all my work for the past 8 years and (c) today you can still download both of these for less than five dollars

PPS – If you’ve been through the hyper-responsive club but never got around to implementing the work (or not quite as thoroughly as you wanted to)–OR–if you’re servicing clients and think whitelabeling Glenn’s hyper-responsive bulls eye research behind you might make you look stronger to your client… get your tuchas over to BullsEyeMaster.com

PPPS – If you’re spending more than $20K/month in paid advertising and would like my team to start optimizing your landing pages and conversion funnel FOR you, well, you may be in luck!

PPPPS – If you’ve got a system that converts really well online but you’ve got NO telephone follow up in place, you really ought to consider letting this funny looking phone genius do it for you on commission.

A ZILLION Ps S:  Would much appreciate you SHARING this page, posting it in your forums, passing around the PDF by email to ALL your contacts, and telling your mama’s how cool it is to have Dr. Glenn’s stuff. (Not particularly modest, but hey, I’m too old for that)

Supercharged Segmentation with Aweber

Hey, most people on my list know the value of segmentation…

Speaking more specifically to a specific audience about a specific problem almost always dramatically multiples response!  Granularity works, the question is always whether it’s worth the extra work.

But what if you didn’t have to DO the extra work?

What if you could:

  • Add people who clicked any given follow up link to a special list?
  • Tag these people so you’d remember their interests?
  • Automatically move people from list to list when they completed one sequence?

Wait Glenn, you say…

Infusion already does this!

True, and I’ve got an account with them too.

But what about those who’ve fallen in love with aweber’s deliverability, lower price, and/or those who’ve built massive lists that are next to impossible to port?  Or marketers who just don’t want to incur the time, energy, and expense involved in switching this critical piece of their e-commerce infrastructure? (Oooooh, look, I said a big word, aren’t I smart?)

You’ll be thrilled to know Jack Born’s developed an amazing tool at a VERY affordable price.  And if you’d like to jump on early using my affiliate link, he’ll also be providing a nice added bonus, described in the audio below. (Listen to the audio for some additional segmentation and email marketing tips gleaned from both of our work with Perry Marshall)



Nuances of Conversion Rate Optimization and PPC Budgeting

Did you ever consider the relationship between your Pay Per Click budget and the time, money, and energy you spend on Conversion Rate Optimization?

Have you ever wondered what stops you from doing more testing?  (Or doing testing AT ALL?)

Listen to this intriguing interview with the author of AdWords for Dummies, Howie Jacobson, Ph.D.  (And myself of course)

Enjoy!

Dr. G 🙂

PS – Howie and I are also offering a new conversion rate optimization service.  Have a look if you haven’t already!

The Strangest PPC Secret

OK, so here’s the strangest clickthrough secret I’ve come across in my years…

Something which has the capacity to take your prospect OUT of a competitive environment and position you as the obvious solution to their problem…

And something largely counter-intuitive, so I need you to stay with me please.

Here’s the secret…

When you’re in a high volume traffic stream, advertising to a specific demographic segment of the market can actual increase your volume of sales and overall profits, even–and sometimes especially–when that segment represents a smaller proportion of people searching.

For example, let’s suppose you’re selling a solution to stop excessive barking in dogs.  Let’s call it the “Shut Up Machine” OK?

OK.  And suppose we’re paying $1 per click for our best performing ad on “stop barking” for this ad:

CTR = 1%  Conversion = 1%
Cost Per Conversion = $100
Conversions Per 1,000 Visitors = 10

Now, let’s further suppose–and these are just wild assumptions since I haven’t actually researched this market–that the search volume in this market breaks down as follows:

  • Women Under 40 = 35%
  • Women over 40 = 30%
  • Men Under 40 = 15%
  • Men Over 40 = 20%

Common sense might suggest you’d need to keep the generic ad, because there’s no demographic which makes up the overwhelming majority of the market.  (So one might think that advertising to women only, for example, would drop our clickthrough by 35%, since women represent 65% of the search volume).

But in many cases I’ve seen this just isn’t true.    Especially if you’ve analyzed your BUYERS and found a bias therein.

For example, suppose ShutUpMachine.com’s buyers were 50/50 men and women, despite the fact women outnumber men 2 to 1 in search.  What this says is, men are disproportionately responsive.

Now suppose we dig even further (by surveying our buyers) and discover that 80% of our male buyers are over 40. (We’d expect only a slight bias towards the over 40 range given the search volume breakdown above) .

This tells us that men over 40 are especially responsive to our offer.  Indeed, 40% of all our customers are men over forty  in this scenario (50% of all customers are men x 80% of male customers over forty = 40% of all customers) , even though this demographic represents just 20% of the search volume.

In other words, men over 40 are twice as responsive to the generic offer.

Can you imagine what would happen to the system if you optimized it for them?

Here’s what I’d do in that situation…

I’d aggressively test optimizing a WHOLE PATHWAY for men over 40.

So we might write an ad like this:

And then we’d land them on a page with a story from a man in his 40s who wants nothing but some peace and quiet when he comes home from a hard day, finally finishes taking care of wife and kids, and just wants to relax.

We’d paint a before and after picture with that story…

And because we’d knock our visitor out with the “Holy Crap!  This is exactly for me!” experience, we’d probably get an even higher conversion rate on the landing page.  Let’s assume 50% higher.

What might the numbers look like?

This is the strangest secret…

Because often when you’ve done this kind of analysis of your buyers to isolate the most responsive demographic, you can create a situation where the CTR doesn’t drop at all.

In other words, you might be targeting a much smaller percentage of the market, but their click responsiveness makes up for their lack of presence in the market as a whole. (And even when that’s not the case, you can often make up for it with increased landing page conversion)

For example, you might see something like this:

A few important things to note:

  • Even though the CTR is the same from the PPC engine’s perspective, the truth is you’re getting a 5% clickthrough from your target audience.  You just can’t SEE that because you can’t restrict the exposure to the rest of the audience in general PPC advertising. (Sometimes you CAN do this with email buys and banner advertising, but you’ve gotta be very, very careful because advertising vendors will often jack up the price for these kind of “selects” more than the increase in responsiveness warrants.  Run your spreadsheets and know your numbers before testing this!)
  • Even though the price per click is the same, we get a bump in conversion by taking the prospect OUT of the competitive environment and re-assuring them we are the ONLY vendor positioned to meet their unique needs
  • As with so many other things in marketing, going after a “higher percentage of a smaller percentage” is so often the answer
  • There’s nothing to stop you from developing ANOTHER site for women over and under 40, etc.  in order to look for more volume with additional conversion bumps.  However, by rank ordering your customer demographics in terms of responsiveness you’ll be able to estimate the effectiveness of these efforts as compared to the time and money you need to allocate to accomplish them.  (In the example above, we found women were modestly less responsive than men as a whole.  Still, you should expect SOME increase in conversion due to the demographic segmentation (assuming you’ve studied how the product plays out differently in their lives), so it’s just a matter of math to guestimate which segments are worthwhile to pursue as such, and in what order.
  • There’s also nothing that stops you from ALSO running the generic ad if it’s profitable.  (You should test  running both a generic and a segmented ad vs. running only the segmented ad)

If any of this math was hard to follow, let me restate it in simple English…

  • If you survey your customer database, you might find you’ve got more women than men, more young people than older people, etc.
  • Compare the percentages you find in your customers to what Quantcast.com and/or Alexa.com says about the demographic breakdown for search volume in your market.  (Enter a few of the top search engine ranked websites to find out)
  • If you DO find your percentages are different than what you see in Quantcast, etc, that probably means there’s a demographic group that’s MORE responsive to your offer than average…
  • Test targeting a teaser ad and landing page to THAT unique demographic and see what happens

Yah?

Got get’m!

Onwards and Upwards My Fine Marketing Friends…

You can clear away SO much confusion if you’ll just take the time to master a few fundamental conversion principles.  And now you can watch me do it LIVE on site after site.  (Get started as of the time of this post for less than $5)

Dr. Glenn :-)

Your “Web Sales Hero(tm)”

PPS – Want a simpler way to increase your conversions?   Put evangelistic audio testimonials  on your site. Listen, testimonials sell, but they’ve got to be done right.   You want to support the specific claims you make in your USP with specific results obtained.  And you need to get the customer to describe their results in contagious, emotionally compelling language that BRINGS THE TESTIMONIAL TO LIFE.   (Do It Yourself |   Let Us Do It For You)

PPPS – The above example is hypothetical.  Please don’t attempt to advertise with these specific ads.


Make More Money By Turning OFF Your Advertising

If the escalating expense, difficulty, and time to generate a high volume of profitable internet sales is crippling your growth–or crushing  your morale–I’ve got a very important audio for you to hear today…

Because it’s entirely possible that…

“You Can Make More Money by Turning Off Your Time Killing, Morale Crushing, Migraine Inducing, Pain-in-the-Ass Advertising System!”

Listen to this interview with Ryan Levesque, my partner in an extremely weird new marketing experiment which just might be your saving grace 🙂

Retargeting – How to Research and Launch a Retargeting Campaign

GUEST POST:

——–

How to Research and Launch a Retargeting Campaign

Retargeting is an online advertising practice that serves your ads to users after they leave your website. Your ads appear all over the web, allowing you to stay in front of your audience even when they’re browsing other sites.  The average American is exposed to over 3,000 advertising messages daily, but most can only specifically recall 2 ads that they’ve ever seen.  Retargeting is a great way to combat so-called “banner blindness,” people’s tendency not to recall online ads, and help you launch a successful branding campaign and remind users of your products and services even if they aren’t on your site.

Here are some important considerations prior to launching a retargeting campaign:

Determine Your Objectives

Take a moment to think about your marketing goals.  What, specifically, are you trying to accomplish?

Do you have only a few website visitors?  If your goal is to drive initial web traffic, retargeting is not the right solution.  You should work on improving your organic search rankings with SEO, and should implement a mix of paid search and display advertising campaigns to get people to your site.

Do you have some traffic coming to your site, but want to improve your conversion rates?  In this case, retargeting is a great solution.  Even if your web traffic isn’t quite as high as you would like it to be, it still could be a good idea to add retargeting into your marketing mix.  Adding retargeting to existing search or display campaigns is a great way to court new site visitors without forgetting about your previous visitors.

If you’ve decided that retargeting is the right (or one of the right) solutions for you, follow the steps outlined below to get started.

Segment your audience

Divide audience into segments based on purchase intent and show them ads accordingly.  Site visitors who only go to your site’s homepage may not yet know much about you, so you should target them with branding ads to get them more familiar with you and your product or service.  However, if a user goes to a specific product page, they may be closer to buying.  In this instance, you may have better results showing ads with specific deals or incentives tailored to the product they looked at.  The most successful retargeting campaign will not treat all site visitors alike.

Set a Frequency Cap

It’s highly recommended to set a frequency cap for your retargeting campaign.  You want your brand to be remembered, but you don’t want your users to feel overwhelmed.  Setting a strict limit on the number of times any given user can see your ads will prevent them from feeling like they’re being followed around the web, as overexposure can lead to negative associations with your brand.

In addition to negative brand associations, you don’t want to run the risk of “banner blindness,” the very problem retargeting sets out to defeat.  If you expose your users to your ads constantly, they will begin to ignore them, diminishing the effectiveness of the retargeting campaign.

Set Conversion and Burn Pixels

A conversion pixel is a snippet of code which tracks when the user converts (for example, makes a purchase or fills out a lead form).  The burn pixel is another snippet which tells your retargeting provider to stop serving ads to the converted user.

This is particularly important if you’re targeting ads related to a specific product or service.  If you’ve been showing a user an ad for a particular suitcase, and then the user purchases is it, there is no constructive purpose to continuing to show them the ad.  If anything, it is likely to have a negative effect on the user who could easily get annoyed seeing ads for a suitcase they already own!

Test!

Retargeting can improve conversion rates by up to 300%.  But don’t take my word for it.  If you implement a retargeting campaign, test the results yourself by comparing your traditional display ads’ performance with your retargeting ads’ performance.

And don’t forget to constantly A/B test the copy and creative for your retargeting ads to make sure you’re always putting your best foot forward.

About the Author:

Caroline Watts is a marketing associate at ReTargeter, an online ad platform specializing in retargeting.

My Deepest, Darkest Secret

I really shouldn’t tell you this…

Every fiber in my being tells me it’s wrong…

It shouldn’t be like this…

I shouldn’t behave like this as a professional marketer, psychologist, and family man…

And I know many of you will drop me down several levels of respect when I reveal it…

Because there are some things we shouldn’t do as marketers (human beings!) no matter what the rewards…

But I’ve got ONE deep, dark secret which I’ve been holding way too long and it’s killing me…

So I weighed the options, considered the consequences, and have decided I’m ready to reveal the truth.

And the truth is (I totally can’t  believe I’m going to say this)…

I LIKE “SOUTH PARK”

There.

It’s out.

The shameful truth… I’m so embarrassed.

It started about 15 years ago when I had an eleven year old patient who started talking about the show, and I needed to tune into what he was saying.   (At the time, I had to watch LOTS of adolescent shows and listen to adolescent music to stay “hip” and able to connect with the kids)

And, what can I say, it got me…

I would feel a sense of inner disgust (even if you love it, you’ve gotta admit, it’s totally gross and “wrong”), but was simultaneously glued to the screen, laughing my a__ off… all by myself whenever my wife left the room.

I knew I was hooked when I kept watching even after I had retired from my psychology practice.  “Just one more show” I’d say to myself.  “I can quit anytime I want to!”

So there you have it.

Someone you might have thought was a perfectly respectable, a pillar of the community…

Somebody famous for rocking the house in a suit and tie with a highly intellectual marketing speech…

A respectable doctor, secretly and maniacally laughing at an adolescent TV show any chance he could get.

Why am I telling you this?

Because if I were in your target market and you didn’t know my deepest, darkest secret, you’d be missing out on a whole set of metaphors and stories to use to connect with me.

And you know what?

MOST marketers do NOT know their market’s deepest, darkest secrets.  Most marketers barely know their market’s demographics (and are stumped when I ask them the difference between the demographics of their prospects and the demographics of their buying audience)

Getting at the market’s deepest, darkest secrets is at the core of effective emotional marketing.

To do it, you’ve gotta know how to interview people in a group to get them sharing, and make it socially acceptable to share things which they think are evil.

OH… and you’ve got to be comfortable with your OWN deepest, darkest secrets as well, or else you’ll prevent your audience from sharing theirs with you!

Want my personal help to dig into your market and pull out the profit-bearing insights only a trained eye can ever really see?  On January 1st, 2016 I’m going to be opening my coaching practice for the first time in three years…and perhaps the last time ever.  If you’ve got ANY interest in working with me directly, read the letter, get on the priority notifications list, and then watch your email on New Year’s morning.

Onwards!

Dr. G 🙂

PS – “OMG, they killed Kenny!”

www.GlennCoach.com       www.MakeThemBuy.com