One of the best aspects of search engine marketing (SEM, or Pay-Per-Click) is the notion that we can use it as a tool to target very specific audiences.  We can do that in a number of ways, including:

• Keyword targeting (use this to reach only those searching for “auto insurance”)
• Day-part targeting (use this to show ads in search results only during your business hours)
• Ad Copy targeting (tailor your ads to speak to a specific user behavior, such as those who are looking to buy insurance, and not those who are looking for insurance jobs)
• Geographic targeting (also known as “location targeting”)

Geographic targeting is the notion that, within an SEM campaign, you are reaching out to an audience that is qualified via their physical location.  If you are the owner of an insurance agency that is licensed to sell policies in Wisconsin, it stands to reason that the only geographically-relevant audience are those search engine users within the Wisconsin state boundary.  Any pay-per-click traffic that arrives at your agency’s web site from California, for example, is likely to be a mismatch for both your agency and the visitor (why would I want to research an agency that is ineligible to sell me insurance?).

The result?  A visitor to your web site that not only has no relevance to your agency’s offering, but also has counted against your pay-per-click budget.

On the other hand, reaching the right audience geographically can be a big benefit to your SEM campaign. Search engine users (especially in the insurance landscape) greatly value search results that show local businesses. Often we hear from agency partners who have a competitive edge over the carrier conglomerates with their customer base simply because they are local – there is a sense of comfort for insurance shoppers that they can physically visit their agent in times of need.

So – how do we use SEM to target this very geographically-qualified audience? Here are two ways to do that:

Tell your SEM campaign where it can/cannot show your ads

Your SEM team is should be adept at discussing and executing the right location-based strategy for your pay-per-click campaign. Whether you want to target an entire state, specific cities, or even a specific mileage radius, your SEM campaign should be built to reflect the geo-targeting that is customized for your agency. Your SEM team will tell Google not only where to show your ads, but just as importantly, where not to show your ads.

Use location-based keyword searches

Another method to target those searching for geographically-specific information is to target those terms in our keyword list. Launching your SEM campaign with the settings listed above will make sure that your ads aren’t shown outside of a target location, but what if your Wisconsin insurance agency wants to be sure that your ads appear at the top of search results for those queries that include a geographic qualifier, such as milwaukee insurance, fon du lac auto insurance, and insurance in Oshkosh, wi? To ensure that you put your ad front and center when these search terms are used, your team should build these terms (and any close iteration) into your campaign through extensive keyword research.

Keyword targeting in conjunction with location-based settings is a great way to reach the audience that will drive search engine traffic that is most valuable for your agency, and is just one of the facets of search engine marketing can reach the right audience for you.

About the Author: David Osowa is the Director of SEM at Astonish. Contact him at sem@astonish.com for more information on location-based targeting via search engine marketing.

SEM performance, when it comes to our agency partners, can be analyzed in two ways:

To a large extent, the SEM department strives to drive qualified traffic to your VIO, with the ultimate goal of converting that traffic into “quotable” opportunities (i.e. a visitor who is looking to obtain an insurance quote from your agency).  I use many different methods and tactics to drive as much qualified traffic as possible to your agency, so that you aren’t wasting SEM budget on clicks that aren’t valuable to your agency – specific keyword research (at the very least, we are advertising on specific insurance products, not informational keywords), geographic targeting (so that you aren’t wasting budget on clicks from outside of your target area), and “day-parting” (the practice of showing your ads in search results primarily when your agency is open and able to handle quote inquiries).  Of course, you’re liable to receive traffic and lead inquiries (calls or quote request forms) from people who are less qualified, but these are the methods that we employ to limit those instances.

But what happens after you’ve received a quote inquiry from SEM?  You’re highly visible in search results for your target keywords, you’ve enticed someone to click on your specific ad, and you’ve given the user enough information that they’ve decide that they want more information from your agency via form or phone.  Now what?

Here are three tips to take advantage of the leads that come through your SEM, giving you the best chance to turn leads into customers:

SEM can be a very valuable source of qualified leads for your agency — the person that tries to contact you via SEM has already performed a keyword search, seen your agency’s advertisement, and clicked through to your site. At this point, you’ve got a very interested audience – wouldn’t YOU want to take advantage of these leads?

One of the most important qualities of an SEM (Pay-Per-Click) strategy is the ability to convert site visits into actual lead opportunities. After all, besides the branding lift associated with site traffic, your most valuable visit is the one that turns into an action that benefits your agency’s bottom line. When it comes to paid search traffic, the desired action is to either:

1) Complete an online quote request form, or

2) To contact your office via dedicated SEM phone number

Both have a bigger impact on your policies activated than a simple click.

Of the myriad metrics that are available to us in SEM to determine performance, the one that tracks our ability to transition clicks into leads is called conversion rate. This ratio is simply the total number of contact points over the total number of site visits, and looks like this:

Conversion rate = (SEM phone calls + SEM quote forms completed) / total SEM visits

To that end, I am always tracking the SEM department’s performance at converting traffic into leads by comparing our client’s performance to industry-specific benchmarks. A recent study shows just how effective the Astonish SEM program is at driving valuable traffic to your agency’s site.

Pay-Per-Click vendor Wordstream just finished a study on SEM spending and conversion rates amongst some of the more competitive markets in the search landscape, and it highlighted some interesting findings.

First of all, to no one’s surprise, the Finance vertical (which includes and is heavily influenced by insurance-related searches) was the most competitive landscape in paid search advertising. The top two advertisers amongst this group were State Farm and Geico (again, unsurprisingly). The costs and conversions were the highest amongst the industries, highlighting the importance of having a dedicated SEM program to help you navigate this important, but crowded, marketplace.

Second of all, and something that I found most interesting, was that this presented a couple of benchmark metrics for Astonish to use in assessing our own client’s performance. The one that sticks out to me is the average conversion rate (the % of people who completed an action after clicking on a PPC ad) across the entire industry is just over 6%. I’m pleased to say that Astonish PPC conversion rates are exceeding that industry benchmark. In 2012, 10% of all paid search visitors (to Astonish clients’ sites) are converting to a quote request form completed. This means that Astonish SEM campaigns outperform the industry by a whopping 66% when it comes to converting everyday traffic into leads.

Author: David Osowa is the Director of Search Engine Marketing at Astonish. He manages and optimizes hundreds of PPC campaigns on behalf of Astonish clients to get them the best possible lead opportunities available.

Have you ever done a Google search, looked at the paid search advertisements on the top and right side of the search results, and thought … “What does that advertisement have anything to do with my search?”

Recently, I executed a search for the keyword “insurance”.  Amongst all of the competition for top billing in these search results, I saw an ad for “Assurance Wireless” promoting a free cell phone:

Obviously, this is a poorly placed PPC advertisement.  The advertiser didn’t want to appear in results for the highly competitive and highly searched term “insurance”.  The obvious mistake is that the advertiser (either intentionally or not) targeted the misspelling of their brand name “Assurance”.  The advertiser will not be happy when it realizes that a large percentage of their paid search budget is eaten up by clicks that come from a keyword that isn’t relevant to their business at all. Inevitably, search engine users will see this ad, click through (perhaps by mistake) to the advertiser’s site, and quickly exit, obviously with a poor user experience.  The advertiser has potentially just paid $25-$30 for each click on this mistakenly placed advertisement.  That is an expensive mistake.

This is an extreme example of poor ad copy construction, but it got me thinking about three common PPC ad copy mistakes that advertisers often make.

Mistake #1: Using your brand name in the ad’s headline

The “headline” in a PPC advertisement is the blue bolded line at the top of every text ad.  It is the attention-grabber, the first thing that your audience sees when your ad comes up in search results.  One hint: don’t waste that space on introducing your company’s name.  Chances are (and I’m sorry to break the news), your small company doesn’t carry enough brand recognition to become an asset in text-based advertisements.  If someone searches on the term “auto insurance quote”, they’re not necessarily looking for a specific company (like yours), they’re just looking to get a quote.  So, instead of mentioning your company in the headline, why not focus on what is going to be most effective in drawing in the audience?  The first thing that searchers should see is the benefits of your “product” — such as “Free Auto Insurance Quote”.  Don’t waste valuable space on your company’s brand, unless you’re a company with strong brand recognition (like Geico).  Besides, if someone is actually looking for your company by name, you’ll show up in search results regardless (because you ARE advertising for your company’s name … aren’t you??).

Mistake #2: Don’t be too broad in your ad copy

Make sure that your ad is as close to the search query (the term that search users choose in Google) as possible. Be as specific as possible.  In keeping with the insurance example from above, imagine that you are an agency looking to attract new customers for home insurance, auto insurance, and flood insurance. Make sure that your ads for each category are specific to that search as possible.  When someone searches for “flood insurance”, make sure that the ad they are served doesn’t reference a broad and generalized “insurance company”.  Instead, make sure that you include language specific to “flood insurance”, otherwise your competition will have a leg up on you.

So, tailor your ad copy to each type of keyword search that you are targeting – don’t run a homogenized “insurance”-based ad copy for each type of insurance, make sure you speak to the search engine user’s intent with specific language in your ad.

Mistake #3: Target the audience that is at the end of the buying cycle

In other words, we want to attract search engine users who are ready to perform a specific action – such as “get an insurance quote” or “buy auto insurance”.   These people are the most qualified audience out there, those who have signaled their intent to purchase with their keyword search.  Not only do we want to show up on keywords like those I just mentioned, but we want to emphasize those behaviors in our ad copy.

Too many advertisers use broad language in their ads, with the hope of attracting as many users as possible.  I’ve actually seen some ads with the headline “Curious about insurance?” – an attempt at generating visits to the advertiser’s web site, no matter what the user is looking for.  Instead, make sure that you don’t waste your PPC budget on people at the top of the sales funnel (those who are just browsing, or are curious) by offering ad copy that speaks specifically to those who are close to purchasing.  Use language like “Buying auto insurance?”, “Need a home insurance quote?” , or “Get a fast and free business insurance quote now”.  Not only will you appeal to those who are near the end of their search, but you’ll actually dissuade those who are just browsing (and thus saving your PPC budget for more serious shoppers!).

The lesson, when constructing paid search advertisements, is to speak to your audience as specifically as possible.  It will benefit your campaign by providing just the traffic that you are searching for.

It’s a question that I am often asked by my clients who are looking to launch their digital marketing strategy: should they focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Pay-Per-Click (SEM, PPC)?

Too many people are under the impression that their online marketing presence should be guided by one strategy or the other.  I’m here to tell you that the most effective digital marketing strategies take a blended approach, using components of both tactics.

SEO and SEM strategies are complementary ways of achieving the same goal: prominent inclusion in search engine results that lead to traffic to your website.  However, while each is effective and critical tools in your digital marketing arsenal, they each have unique principles that can help you reach your objectives.  Let’s take a look.

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the tactic of using your site’s content, linking structure, blog posts, and social media exposure (amongst other things) to help you rank organically in search engine results. Search engines take all of these cues into consideration when deciding where to rank your site in their results for a particular keyword, like “auto insurance in Rhode Island”. SEO is the critical foundation to your website’s visibility in search engine results. The things that you do to optimize your online content and relationships will have a long-lasting effect on your rankings in search engines.  However, those effects, while critically important, might take a long time to take hold in the search results.  Google indexes your content at its own pace, and the general rule of thumb that search engine marketers go by is that it can take between six and nine months before you begin to realize the results of your on-site optimization.

On the other hand, SEM has more of an immediate impact. Once you build a campaign that targets your specific keyword set, and you set that campaign live, you are eligible to see an instant impact on your traffic and visibility in search engines.  While inclusion in organic search results are merit based, your SEM campaign can force Google (or any other search engine) to place you within the top results of some competitive keywords.  With that newfound visibility, your website is bound to see traffic increase.  That’s what the pay-per-click model does for marketers.   However, the effects of your SEM campaign are not as long lasting as your SEO strategy – that is, unless you have an unlimited marketing budget.  You see, your site is guaranteed inclusion in search engine results for only as long as your campaign is funded.  As soon as your campaign has generated enough clicks to exhaust your budget, your traffic will stop.  The great thing about SEM is that it is a guaranteed source of traffic – if people aren’t clicking on your ad and visiting your site, you don’t pay a cent!

Now that we’ve reviewed the different characteristics of SEO and SEM strategies, it is important to note how they work together.  In fact, our best e-agencies have told us that the best performing digital marketing strategy leverages both SEM and SEO in tandem.  This blended strategy has helped them appeal to a broad and comprehensive audience, and has resulted in their website being a more prominent piece of customer acquisition.

Here are three reasons why you should have SEO and SEM as part of your site’s digital marketing strategy:

These are just three reasons for you use SEO and SEM in a blended strategy.  Doing so will give you a well-rounded digital marketing presence, and likely drive enhanced search engine traffic as a result. Stay tuned to this space for more reasons why you should focus on a blended approach to digital marketing.

It’s that time again – a time when we are reminded to be thankful for what we have, and look forward to things (and gifts!) yet to come.  Most people, this time of year, are asking for jewelry, clothes or video games to satisfy themselves this holiday season.  But you, the savvy marketer, know better than that.  What you want, what you REALLY want, is an optimized and profitable SEM campaign.  This blog post is here to give you some hints as to what you should be asking for from your successful SEM campaign.  If you’ve been on digital marketing’s “Nice” list, your campaign might demonstrate some of these characteristics.

Wish #1: A high conversion percentage (conversions/clicks)

Too many marketers focus on click through rate (CTR, clicks/impressions), when the more important metric is conversion percentage.  With pay-per-click advertising, maximizing your visits is the key to a successful campaign.  After all, the campaign that produces 100 clicks but no conversions is a very expensive branding effort, but the campaign that produces 1 click and 1 conversion provides a positive ROI.

Do these two things to maximize impact of your paid search traffic:

Detailed ad copy should not only persuade search engine users to click on your ad, it should also dissuade unqualified visitors from clicking.  If a user is looking for a red widget, but you only sell blue widgets, detailed ad copy will be attractive to blue widget seekers who are hit with a targeted advertisement, and red widget buyers will be directed away from your ad before they waste your money with a click on your PPC ad.

A landing page, for paid search campaigns, should focus on your conversion point.  Don’t waste space (and your visitor’s attention span) with too much content or too many links pointing away from the page. They’ll have no choice but to focus on your conversion point (contact form, “purchase” button, white paper download).  That focus will translate into a higher percentage of visitors who convert into potential customers.

Wish #2: A decreasing cost per lead

Digital marketers are often focused on a revenue (or potential revenue)-based metric. Cost per lead (CPL) is often a great way to measure your campaign’s performance. Often, CPLs are at their highest at the inception of your SEM campaign, but gradually decrease with constant monitoring and optimization. Generally, the longer your campaign runs, the lower your cost per lead (ideally!).  Keep in mind that clicks (and subsequently, conversions) are more expensive during certain parts of the year (lower search volume during the summer leads to greater competition amongst advertisers), so it is best to take a year-over-year view of your campaign’s performance.  But in general, you should see some efficiencies in your campaign as time goes by.

Constant improvement of your CPL (which is directly impacted by your cost per click) is dependent on constant monitoring of your campaign’s keywords (and groups of keywords, called Ad Groups).  Make sure that you change your keyword bids to reflect the performance of each keyword – increase your bids for those terms that have produced conversions at a tolerable CPL, decrease bids for those keywords that are driving traffic (and eating up budget!) with little return.  Be sure to give your campaign enough of a sample size before making decisions, I usually like to wait for at least 100 clicks before I have enough data to make an informed decision.

Wish #3: More budget!

Okay, I get it.  Every marketer has limited budgets, except, apparently, for these guys.  And one of the beautiful things about SEM is that you can set your marketing budget to whatever you are comfortable with.  But if you DO find yourself with some extra marketing budget at the end of 2011, be sure to put it in the right places.  SEM campaigns will give you a detailed view of which pieces of your campaign are working most successfully, and you’re digital marketing team can help you allocate that budget in the right places. After all, it might be useful to put more budget to search marketing during a potentially slow time of year.

2011 has been a great year, as Search Engine Marketing Continues to be a vital part of your digital marketing strategy. Here’s hoping that, when you open your SEM stocking this Holiday season, you find more candy (conversions and customers) than coal (high CPC’s and no traffic!).

One of the great things about a pay-per-click campaign in Google is the ability to access a myriad of data points to judge the effectiveness of your strategy.  The idea is to use all of the data available at your fingertips to make small changes to your campaign so that you can achieve two simple goals:

Sounds simple, doesn’t it?  It is – until you get a look of all the data that gets generated from a paid search campaign.  By the time most advertisers finish looking at their CPC (cost per click), CTR (click through rate), Cost per conversion, conversion rate, etc, their head begins to spin.

With so much information, it’s important to decide which is important enough to act on. My rule of thumb when it comes to deciphering this information is simple: your most important data is closest to your bottom-line business goals.  Why worry about CPC, when cost per lead is closer to the actual sale?  Why worry about the percentage of people who click on your ad (click through rate), when you can focus on the percentage of clicks that turned into a “conversion” (conversion rate)?

When I am working with one of our agency partners on their insurance marketing SEM, and need to do a “quick and dirty” assessment of their campaign’s performance, I have some go-to metrics that I look at first. Let’s take a look at three of them:

• How much have I spend already on this campaign?
• When is my budget projected to run out, based on campaign spending so far?
• What campaigns are spending the most?

After you get a handle on how much you’ve spent, you can get started on looking at metrics that show how your money is performing.  And the first thing I look at is…

One caveat:  as I mentioned in the beginning of this post, the most valuable metrics get as close to the “sale” as possible, so the ultimate indicator of performance is cost per sale (or cost per customer).  If you can directly attribute online sales to your SEM campaign, use a cost per sale as your substitute for CPO — this metric will tell you if your generated revenue is more than your investment in paid search.

• Is my website (more specifically your SEM landing page) effective at driving business?
• What keywords are most successful at driving conversions, and which keywords are just costing me money with very little return?

Your campaign’s conversion rate is a good indicator of how your landing page is performing.  If the page to which you are driving traffic is built with your conversion point in mind (a quote request form, for example), your conversion rate will benefit.  Since you’ve paid for the visitor’s click, you might as well pay attention to their behavior after they have cost you money. Your conversion rate will tell you if you are successful at converting costly visits into conversions.

Your campaign is capable of tracking conversion rate at the keyword level, which is a GREAT metric to be more efficient with your costs.  Does a particular keyword have a high conversion rate?  React to that by pushing up your bid and making that profitable keyword more visible.  Is there a certain set of terms that are costing you money but not producing conversions?  Pause or de-emphasize that term.

Use these metrics as a starting point in evaluating paid search marketing campaigns.  They’ll help you sort through all of the data that you can find in Adwords (or the SEM report that your marketing partner sends to you!), and get to the information that really matters.

If you get lost in all that data just remember to ask yourself one very important question: which data most directly impacts my bottom line?

In Malcolm Gladwell’s renowned national best-seller, The Tipping Point, the author describes countless examples in which small, seemingly insignificant occurrences in the world caused dramatic change. In the most famous example, he describes how New York City reduced its crime rate suddenly and significantly beginning in the early 90s. How did this happen? By focusing entirely on small, seemingly insignificant things. The city began strictly enforcing laws against petty crimes like subway fare-dodging and public drinking. Graffiti and litter removal city-wide was made a top priority. The city did not suddenly hire thousands more policemen nor make any significant changes to policing methods. Yet, a 2001 study proved that those “small” changes they did make caused a dramatic, immediate, and sustained drop in both petty and felony crimes. Today, the FBI reports that New York City is the safest large city in America, by a long-shot.

The story of New York City’s sudden, drastic reduction in crime serves as an important real-world example of how making small changes can produce a huge difference. Consider the “Request for Insurance Quote”  form on your company’s web site. To many, the design of this element is an afterthought. The logic goes, if a potential customer wants a quote, they will fill it out and if not, they won’t. Not so. A web visitor who wants a quote still must be convinced that filling out your form is worth their time, and that their information will be treated respectfully. Does your form look professionally designed? Does it give a positive first impression?

Try this: Show your Request a Quote page to a few folks who have no vested interest in you or your company and ask them for their candid first impression. Their opinions very likely reflect those of every other visitor to your site. If the reaction is not positive, it’s time for a redesign.

This same concept applies to many other elements of your online marketing campaign. Take your Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising on Google, for example. A title and two lines of 35 characters each is all you are given to convince the user to click on your ad – that is half as long as this sentence. It’s shorter than an elevator pitch, so you had better make it count. The right ad copy is the difference between very little traffic and noticeable traffic. It is the difference between a high conversion rate and a complete waste of money. Our team at Astonish Results has over 10 years of experience writing ad copy for PPC campaigns and the results truly deliver.

Does your staff answer the phone with a friendly, upbeat tone? If not, you could be losing customers. It has been proven time and time again that people buy from those they like – even if you do not have the best price. If your front-line people answering the phone sound miserable or give the impression that the caller is bothering them, you have already put a huge dent in your firm’s likeability and the customer has not even spoken to you yet. It is absolutely critical that potential customers get a positive first impression, and it starts with the initial phone call to your firm. It costs nothing to answer calls in a friendly, upbeat voice and yet it can set the tone for entire conversation.

Sure, you’ve heard a real-world example of how sweating the small stuff can make a difference in big-city crime reduction, but what about a real-world business example? Look no further than America’s most valuable company, Apple. The maker of the most popular MP3 player, smartphone, and tablet computer got to their position by worrying tirelessly about tiny seemingly-inconsequential details that their competition completely overlooked. By concentrating not only on the product itself, but things as rudimentary as the product packaging, Apple developed a reputation for not just cool products, but high-quality products. Apple not only sells the most of their latest gadget, but they charge the most, too. The perceived value they have created by focusing on the finest details makes this possible. The same concept can be applied to your insurance agency. By focusing on the little things that your competition ignores, you will not only have an edge in landing new customers, but you will realize benefits in reduced churn, higher margins, and a healthier bottom line.

Most users flock to the internet’s search engines for one thing: to find help.  Help in finding the answer to a question.  Help in solving a problem that they have. Help in purchasing the right car at their local dealership.

Being visible on a variety of keyword searches in Google is applicable and valuable for businesses in every industry.  The world’s largest companies use their websites as the best (and most accessible) source of information about their brand, products, or services. At the same time the world’s smallest companies have established a web presence as a vital lifeline to previously inaccessible markets.

In the end, search engines pull them all together: the smallest companies can compete right next to the largest.  Search engines are the great equalizer of digital marketing.

Or are they?

Not all markets are the same. The search “landscape” for certain industries are more competitive than others.  The big box electronics chains are fighting tooth and nail for top position on keywords like“blu ray dvd player” and “flat screen tv”.

The insurance industry, both personal and commercial products, is no different.  In fact, one leading industry blog just proclaimed the search landscape for insurance-related searches to be the most competitive amongst all PPC keywords. A study conducted on the average cost-per-click (CPC) across millions of keywords found that insurance-related terms were the most expensive, ahead of keyword groups such as “mortgage” and “loans”.

Does that mean that this search landscape is inaccessible and cost-inefficient for the smaller agencies in the industry?  I would offer an emphatic “NO”.  In fact, I believe just the opposite: the high competition in this particular realm indicates the sheer demand for insurance information that potential customers are looking for. Does that mean that smaller agencies should focus their PPC marketing dollars into bids for high-dollar keywords like “car insurance”?  No.  It simply means that these agencies need to have their paid search campaigns strategies modified to get the biggest “bang” for their marketing buck. There is room in this competitive space to be active…and profitable!  After all, if 80% of all insurance customers are beginning their search for their policy online, can you afford to ignore this marketing tactic?

Here are some strategies to be competitive in a competitive paid search marketplace:

With these simple steps, you are well on your way to becoming effective in a competitive advertising space.  Companies of any size can be active in this marketing medium, and capitalize on all of those people who are saying “HELP!” to their search engines.

Here it is — the last installment of my series on driving qualified visitors through your paid search (SEM) campaign.  In part one of this series, I discussed PPC keyword selection as the first two steps in qualifying traffic, and in part two I showed you how to optimize your ad copy in order to drive traffic from the visitors that you’d most prefer.

Remember that qualifying your paid search traffic has two parts:

Also remember that, as compared to organic search traffic (where you welcome visitors in all phases of the sales funnel), the most effective and efficient SEM campaigns can focus on driving visits that produce conversions.  Let your organic search optimization efforts drive the “information-gathering” traffic, use your PPC campaign to target the “purchasing” consumer.

Now that we’ve covered three steps to improve your campaign, let’s dive into the next tactic that will help you drive valuable clicks:

Step 4: Create Landing Pages to Promote Your Conversion Point

You’ve set up your PPC keywords, you’ve created some unbelievably enticing ad copy to get your audience to click … now what? The process of converting your traffic from visitors into customers is technically over, as you’ve now received a visitor from your SEM campaign.  But the most effective PPC campaigns do not stop optimization until after the most important part of this process – the conversion point.  If I am running a campaign to sell a widget, and I’ve received my captive audience through paid search, I want to make darn sure that I make the final piece of their purchasing process is both obvious and easy.

Once I’ve paid for this click, the last thing that I want the visitor to do is get distracted, bored, confused or frustrated. I want to subtly but firmly guide them through the conversion (or transactional) process.  That’s why the landing page in a paid search campaign is so important.  I’ll give you three quick tips to create an effective landing page, all geared towards promoting a conversion point.

Note that the page is simple, does not contain too much text, and provides no linking away from this page.  The visitor, who has arrived on a very specific keyword search (including the word “quote”) is confronted with exactly the type of information that they have requested, and are more likely to convert as a result!

There you have it – four easy steps to generating and converting qualified paid search traffic! Apply these tactics to your campaign and you just might get a more efficient use of your marketing dollars.