Every successful salesperson knows the value of owning a
list of targeted potential customers. It's a strategy I used
to break sales records and also taught in my sale training
sessions.
Coming from "real" world selling into virtual world selling
presented some unique challenges.
How does one build a list online?
Research revealed many successful marketers recommend using
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search engines to quickly and
effectively build your list.
Selecting targeted keyword to reach your ideal potential
customer give PPC a distinct advantage over other list
building methods.
I decided to put PPC list building method to the test. I
choose to set up a advertising campaign at Google Adwords
and the lesser known
http://www.mpstrategiesfirm.com. The two companies
can have your campaign up an running in a short time.
They display the ads differently. Google Adwords displays
the ad on search engine results and mpstrategiesfirm.com
uses contextual advertising showing the ads on keyword topic
based pages within their network.
Every test needs an objective outcome to gauge the results.
The objective of this test? Visitors sign up to receive a
free health report from a new affiliate program I choose to
promote.
The Test Results
Google Adwords
number of clicks 700
cost per click .23
number of opt-ins 36
total cost 161.00
Conversion rate 5%
MPStrategiesfirm.com
number of clicks 800
cost per click .20
number of opt-ins 53
total cost 160.00
Conversion rate 6.5%
Even though they used different methods to display the ad,
both produced excellent traffic results for the investment.
Surprisingly; the smaller company beat Google this time
around.
Sending traffic was only one factor of the objective.
Remember the ultimate goal is to gain subscribers to build
the list.
A Valuable Marketing Lesson
PPC marketing provided a valuable lesson in online marketing
and I was glad to discover it. The conversion rate looks
great but I was giving away a report, no purchase required,
and expected a higher opt-in number.
1,500 people clicked for the free report, but only 89 put in
their name and e-mail address. I receive 53 subscribers from
mpstrategiesfirm.com and 36 from Google.
This test showed a fatal flaw on the affiliate landing page.
The poor layout of the landing page cause a very low sign
ups. They didn't focus on getting visitors info to access
the free report.
I promptly pulled all advertising leading to that affiliate
page. Imagine the wasted marketing dollars on ad campaigns
if I didn't conduct this test.
PPC marketing is now in my arsenal of marketing tools. Yes,
it can build your list fast but it proved invaluable in
testing the effectiveness of ad campaigns before investing
large sums of money.
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