B2B and B2C marketing is used to differentiate the internet commerce business. There are companies that sell primarily to businesses while others sell primarily to end customer. Marketing programs are the same for each type of business but they differ in executions and the outcomes of the marketing activities.

B2C (Business to Consumer) marketing campaigns are concerned with the transaction. They are usually shorter because they need to capture the customer’s attention immediately. These campaigns usually offer special deals such as discounts and vouchers that can be used both online and in the store. Their goal is to get their customers to buy immediately. B2B (Business-to-Business) marketing process is longer and is more involved. Although its goal is to turn prospects into customers, a B2B company needs to focus on building long-term relationships with their clients. They use marketing to educate their customers about their products. In an email campaign, you usually see contact information for offline transactions and contain more information on the features of the product, benefits and the prices. This marketing strategy is usually the first step, and it usually includes direct mail, telemarketing, and newsletters and follows up by a sales representative who will discuss the business’ requirement in more detail and walk the prospect through the sales cycle.

The main difference between the B2B and B2C marketing comes down to the buyer’s emotional perspective about the purchase. Consumers buying decisions are based on status, security, comfort and quality. On the other hand, business buyers base their decisions on increasing profitability, reducing costs and enhancing productivity.

In online marketing, if you are offering products and services to businesses, it is wise to invest on a marketing budget that focuses on marketing programs and materials that offer your target market what they need in order for them to make a rational business decision. Help them determine the value of your products and services through quality materials, testimonials and other activities that builds your credibility. If you are offering your products and services to end consumers, understand the motivation of your buyer and the emotional aspect of the decision. It is best to create compelling materials that build awareness of your brand and project the quality service and best price. Always remember what is important to your target audience and create an online marketing program that will reach out to them and convince them to buy your products and services.

At Generate UK we can help advise you to optimise your Online Marketing Strategy to reach your desired target audience. Our consultants are specialists in online marketing and can help focus you campaign on either B2B Marketing of B2C marketing. If you would like to discuss your Online Marketing further please do not hesitate to get in contact with us, we’d love to talk with you.

Marketing online is a cost effective way to market efficiently and effectively. Some of these benefits can be seen right away while some tend to happen further down the line - benefits that build upon those that are already in place. Listed below are some of the benefits of online marketing;

1. One advantage of marketing online versus the traditional marketing such as placing advertisements on the television, radios, magazines and newspapers is that you can change them anytime. By keeping track of your ads’ progress, if it is effective or not, you can decide to change a part of the ad, any wording or graphic, or the whole ad altogether, without any problems.

2.  Marketing online gives you real time figures and statistics. This can help you in determining your marketing campaign’s performance to help you in making key decisions that could mean the success or failure of your business. Although there are ways to track performance of traditional marketing efforts, results could not be delivered real-time.

3. The internet is available 24/7. Your ads can be seen anytime, anywhere compared to the limited airtime available in televisions and radios and limited space in newspapers and other prints.

4. On the internet, there is a variety of methods to advertise. You can use email, audio, blog, video, social media and newsletters. You have so many options in just one venue – the internet. If you opt to use these methods in traditional marketing, you would have to select several different media outlets, which can be tedious and very costly.

5. Marketing online allows you to target specific demographics – gender, age, location. You can even target would-be customers from specific income levels, education levels and occupation. This can also be done in traditional marketing but it often requires more effort.

Increasing traffic in your website is essential for marketing online. The more that you are able to get those interested in your products and services to go to your website, the better your leads are to make sales. You will get to see additional benefits of internet marketing when your website stands out from the rest. If your customers find the information they need from your website and the website is easy for them to navigate.

If you have a website and are looking for advice on how to market it effectively then why not get in contact with one of our consultants. Generate UK are a commercially thinking online marketing agency. We advise our clients on the best online options to suit their business processes, resource and available budget.

 I am now on a mission to make Sitekit the coolest CMS out there…. especially the latest version 9.

Ok, the title suggests 10 reasons why I like Sitekit, so here goes:

1. As a project manager, it’s nice to know that my back is covered when it comes to support. With the best will in the world, it is impossible to know everything about a piece of software. So it is reassuring that you’re only ever a step or two away from the chaps responsible for building and maintaining the software.

2. The audit trail functionality is very powerful. It is one of those features that appeals to larger organisations with extensive publishing processes. However, the ability to roll back to previous versions of content is a great feature for medium sized organisations too. Also, it’s always nice to know who made that fatal change!

3. We’ve built Sitekit websites with version 8 and version 9 and it is no surprise to know that version 9 is an improvement on version 8. What is surprising is how much of an improvement it is. The back end console and usability is a lot stronger and the time to make changes has been reduced. The objective was to go for a more Microsoft style backend that users are familiar with, which comes across really well.

4. Sitekit won’t mind me saying that their system is not for all customers. It has a price point that frankly can put smaller businesses off considering it as a tool, however larger customers with mature online strategies can do a lot with Sitekit. One area that helps to lower the total cost of ownership is the ability to manage multiple sites through Sitekit. With the right license you can manage your sites via one console, reducing your complexity and reliance on multiple systems. It also means you can train your staff on just one system.

5. The flexibility of Sitekit is very good, there are one or two quirks like the hosting and certain APIs, however in the main you can do pretty much what you need to do with the out of the box Sitekit license. I would advise you to check your requirements off with one of the Sitekit staff if you have a lot of bespoke work to do though. The other great thing about Sitekit is that you can create or migrate your existing Intranet onto the Sitekit platform and manage the pages through the system securely.

6. We were able to roll out a new website for an NHS customer within 8 weeks. This site involved nearly 200 pages, different templates for each area and unique imagery. The site was also set up for an Intranet.

7. So far, all of our customers with Sitekit have really liked it. Each customer is different and experience different reasons for considering an enterprise class content management system. Usually, the pain you’re experiencing with non-content managed website can be alleviated with Sitekit, we’d love to have a conversation with you about this.

8. Search engine optimisation is critical to the success of your website; Sitekit really helps you to set up your site in a way that is truly optimised for the search engines. Taking care of your unique page titles, search engine friendly URLs, keywords and meta. As well as integrating directly with your Google Analytics account.

9. One of the less sexy features is the file and image library. You would expect a file and image library in all content management systems, yet the way it is set up with Sitekit really makes sense once you understand the concept. The latest version extends the file and image library to an asset library, which is even easier to use.

10. The last and most important reason we use Sitekit is that is makes us look good. As a digital marketing agency, we’re keen to work with best of breed technology partners. This enables us to focus on our customer’s business objectives and really work closely with them to deliver a website aligned to their goals.

I’ve worked with many content management systems, from open source to big time expensive and most things in between. The criteria I use to gauge how good a system is, is how easy it is for the customer to manage their site and how flexible the site is once built. Sitekit does really well on both points, yes it has its quirks and you’ll need to do a bit of leg work to understand some of the Sitekit specific commands, but this is the same for any new piece of software.

If you’d like to learn more about Sitekit and how it might fit within your organisation, please do feel free to contact us. Depending on your business needs, there are some really compelling reasons for Sitekit both financially and technically. We’d be happy to discuss these with you in more detail.

1 ) Pick a trusted easy to use platform. The industry favourites are Google adwords and Yahoo search marketing. Most advertisers use Google, this is because more users search on Google in comparison to other search engines.

2 ) Select a budget. Decide on an overall maximum daily budget, this will determine how many clicks you can afford, the more money the more clicks. Secondly decide on how much you want to bid for each click (Cost per Click). The average bid for a click is between 80p and £1.20. Remember that you can always increase you budget once you know what keywords are working for you. There is no need to go in guns blazing.

3 ) Select Key words that are relevant to the website you are trying to promote.  These are the words which users will search for. Think of what users will type into Google to find your products, make sure your key words match the description of what you are offering. If your advert is displayed for keywords that have no relevance to your website, you will be wasting money on clicks which will not convert to sales.

4 ) Create an Objective. If you’re looking for the result of a campaign to be a sale, then create a target objective within the platform so that you can trace how many clicks convert to sales. You’ll end up with a percentage of clicks that meets your objective. The higher the percentage the more successful your ad.

5 ) Watch and observe. Keep a close eye on your campaigns, preferably daily. Analyse which campaigns are doing well, what key words are working, what the click through rate is. This will help you re-direct your campaigns.

6 ) Select key words round two. If certain keywords have low click through rates it could mean that customers are looking for a different product to what you are offering. If Keywords aren’t performing then change them, this technique will overtime refine your campaign to optimise your success.

7 ) Look out for CTR. As mentioned above click trough rate is a ‘must’ to measure. You want a high CTR percentage as this shows that the users clicking your advert are finding what they were looking for. A low CTR means the keywords aren’t working and it’s time for change!

8 ) Move on and expand. As your campaign moves forward add more keywords. If you are using Google adwords, they can recommend some for you or try being more specific about certain products you’re offering. If your adverts are receiving a maximum amount of clicks for the budget you’ve set, why not increase your daily allowance to gain more traffic.

9 ) Keyword Quality. This is important to maximise your budget and results. Quality keywords will have a high click through rate, these are the keywords you want to focus your money on. Any keywords not relevant to your website and with a low CTR will be dead weight to you and a drain on your budget.

10 ) Get your ad ranked. You want your advert to be placed as high as possible. The three main areas to improve ranking are relevance, quality and maximum bid. By creating relevant keywords and a quality site you will defiantly help improve your ranking amongst other adverts. But remember a large factor is your keyword bid; companies that have a higher bid are more likely to have a higher ranking.

If you would like to learn more about PPC please get in contact, we would love to chat to you. Alternatively if you would like to add to our tips, why not post a comment below.

‘Online marketing’ doesn’t mean an awful lot to someone like me, who had never given it much thought. From what I have realised, a company’s website is crucial to advertising their products or services and to help raise awareness of their brand. This is done by building and designing an aesthetically pleasing site, which has all the different functions a company may require, for example, purchasing goods online. Although, once a website has been created it needs to be marketed effectively, otherwise it is completely useless as nobody would know that it existed, and it would go to waste. It can be marketed using: 

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - This increases visibility in search engines escalating the venue’s profile, by improving search engine listings.
• Email marketing campaigns - sending highly targeted emails to a selection of people to promote a client.
• Pay per click - advertising via the internet using search engines.
• Content management systems are used to manage a business’s site.
• And a few more that I haven’t grasped yet, but I’m in the process of familiarizing myself with them.

Once I managed to come to terms with SEO and all that jazz, it was time to start making the phone calls and to book meetings with potential clients. In preparation, I did some ghost calls, where he would pretend to be a potential client, and I would attempt to sell Generate UK’s services. This was very entertaining, as my colleague got into different characters to make it more authentic, but as a result, I couldn’t stop laughing! Nonetheless, they proved to be very useful, and prepared me for the different reactions I received. The rest of the team helped me feel really relaxed, were very encouraging, and great at explaining all the technical terms I struggled with, and they all managed with my excessive amount of questions fired at them.

The biggest challenge I came across this week was; the term ‘search engine optimisation’ (which still sounds a bit alien). The challenge lies with learning about what Generate UK actually does and then attempting to sell their services… What a challenge that was. But, now I’ve got the basic knowledge I need, and my confidence is slowly growing, I’ll look forward to achieving even more next week and having fun along the way.

I’ll look forward to continuing my journey next week, and sharing it with you.

Gone are the days when you threw as much as you could at the wall hoping for something to stick or you position your meta data and keywords in their rightful places and hope for the best, let’s start thinking a little bit beyond the stale old marketing techniques and start embracing the new online world. The quicker you do it and understand it the quicker you’ll get to where you need to be. Some might say you’ve already missed the boat? Personally I completely disagree, I speak to many companies daily and 70% of these companies are still nowhere near where they need to be in terms of technology, skills and knowledge so you still have time. 

We’ve reported in past blogs that online marketing is set to increase dramatically over during 2009 and the reason is ‘The Stats Don’t Lie!’ 

Let’s look at things in a simplistic manner, would you go out and buy a new Mini without test driving it first? Read a review or two? Listen to a mate who raves about how good his Mini is? No of course not, because you want to know that you’re not wasting your money and let’s be honest there’s obviously a few spare Minis out there at the moment so you’re bound to pick up a bargain. 

Thinking about the above scenario within the marketing spectrum any sensible business owner, marketing manager/director will want to be able test, track, analyse and basically understand the metrics. This will enable them to see if the activities they’re looking to invest into are going to provide them with the desired return which inevitably is sales, or switching back to the above scenario an enjoyable and reliable drive that’s not going to be a waste of your hard earned cash. 

I used to sell advertising and while I still love magazines and buy into the whole print media industry from a marketer’s perspective it’s a gamble. You can place numerous promotional codes on the advertisement however you can never really understand the full mechanics and your exact returns.  When I used to sell advertising I always dreaded the renewal process. Having to present to an advertiser, who the year before spent £30k with me on a repeat half page colour ad on page 7, why they should sign up for another year without any hard core facts and figures, barring the fact that our circulation had increased by 3000 was always a challenge. 

Spending money on marketing always represents a gamble however marketing online represents far less of a gamble as you can test and measure. I love that ability, test and measure! It makes everything a lot clearer and my decisions a lot easier. 

Online Marketing needs to be embraced and if you haven’t yet fear not, there is still the window of opportunity.  I spoke to a company the other day who basically was bragging that they had x amount of traffic to their site and x amount of back links which was true, however where this company failed in the online spectrum was the analytics and measuring part of equation. As, when we looked into the traffic 80% of it came from America and Google.com not Google.co.uk and the fact that they only sold to the UK was quite concerning and in relation to their links 60% came from one source which isn’t bad but isn’t really helping their SEO cause. 

Whatever online activity you feel is going to help your business, take a step and trial it as the Stats Don’t Lie! Good luck and if you need any advice call 01635 550 431 and speak to the Generate UK Team.

The blog world was buzzing with the news that the finance related blog Bankholic.com has been acquired for $15m this week. It’s a huge amount of cash for a blog that has until now been run by one person.

After taking a good look at the site, it is interesting to try and break down what was attractive about this site. In terms of traffic, it is receiving around 8,000 hits a day, not huge by any stretch of the imagination, however it is a very competitive market and 8,000 visitors to a site with high paying affiliate advertisements is not to be sniffed at.

The ads are very well positioned and integrated well into the content; I would guess that this site is making a lot of money via the affiliate adverts. This is a highly competitive market, one that pays top rate for qualified leads so I would not be surprised if this site was turning over mid to high six figures per annum.

The site is also very well indexed in the search engines, such a large footprint would take a lot of time to achieve, so this would be very attractive to a potential buyer. Remember, this has all been achieved by the hands of one person, imagine what could happen if you put a team of professional finance writers on the site.

This site is a lesson for all businesses on how to make the most from a web property. It focuses on a specific market and provides quality information and content to its readers.  The site’s clear objective is to attract visitors and encourage them to click through the lucrative adverts.

Is the site worth $15m? This is hard to say, the buyers were bankrate.com. Their revenue for the first six months of 2008 was $82.7m, so they’re a decent sized company who are looking to continue their growth. You could argue that bankholic.com was a competitor, so who is to know whether this was a purchase designed to open their market.

If you’re toiling away on your own blog and wondering why you’re doing it; remember that there may be $15m reasons just around the corner. If you’re still wondering, visit the site quickly to see what they are doing well that can be implemented on your own site.

Do you have a view about this blog post? Please feel free to comment below, if you would like to speak to someone at Generate UK please call us on 0845 388 9185 or email us.

BlogCatalog

1. We don’t understand why we would need a blog, it is just an online diary so how can this help us? This is quite a popular excuse and one that is usually made at the top of the management tree. Once senior management understand that by blogging you are opening the door to an increase in targeted traffic to your website, they usually see the light.
2. I don’t want just anyone within my company making posts on our behalf This is usually said by a business owner or a managing director. It’s still very surprising how many business leaders do not trust or allow their staff to make blog posts. This is strange because it is no different to other forms of marketing. This is easily overcome with an internal blog post approval process or a blogging policy which are being widely adopted. If you’re already working with an agency, perhaps this is something else they can do for you?
3. Your marketing department or PR guys have said that blogging is a bad idea This is a very interesting situation and although it is happening less and less, there are a few PR guys and marketing people out there that are advising against setting up blogs. If this is happening, you need to challenge them and ask them why it would not work for your business. Test their understanding of Internet Marketing, ask them how a blog works. If they can not talk to you about RSS, pings and how important they are from a search engine marketing perspective, then they do not know what they are talking about. As a result, you can be sure that their advice is based upon them protecting your monthly payment to them and not based upon the interests of your business.
4. Controlling quality would be very difficult This should not be a deal breaker. Usually this excuse can be overcome with some training and an internal blog approval policy. All posts should be submitted to an approving editor before they go live, this way you ensure that quality remains high. You should also guide your staff about the topics that you would like covered, if you have a flower business, then you ask your staff to write about something that relates to flowers. If you’re really buying into the whole blog idea, then you will have articles written that relate to keyphrases you have identified as part of your keyword research. Once you’re at this level, you’ll really start to see your blog work for you.
5. We’re waiting for the technical department to sort this out Don’t leave the blog in the hands of the technical department, do some research or talk to people who know about the benefits of blogs and tell the IT guys to just take care of the installation. Your choice of blog software and the type of blog you go with will determine how successful your project is. This is all about understanding your marketing objectives, you’re better placed than your IT guys to do this.
6. We have not got anything to talk or blog about This probably should have been the number one excuse for setting up a blog. All companies have something to write about, it is just working out what it is. If you sell products or services, then you might consider writing guides for their use. If you have happy customers, then you might interview them about why they think you are so good. If there is something important happening within your industry, then the blog is a great place to have your say.
7. There is no one available to spend time writing blog posts So just how many blog posts are you thinking of writing? Even if you wrote one article once a week, you would only require an hour or so. If you prefer to post more, then perhaps you might want to move some of your marketing budget around. The great thing about a blog is that you can measure the success of it from a marketing perspective. At the very worst case, you can hire an English student to write some posts for you in exchange for their Saturday night money.
8. It is difficult to predict the return on investment, until we can be more sure we are not interested This is a tough excuse to overcome because it is used by very risk averse companies. We would look at the other forms of advertising the company may use and ask how they measure the ROI with those campaigns. If there is a performance management culture, we will compare their metrics with what can be achieved with blogs. There is always the intangible benefits of advertising, such as brand awareness, thought leadership and sometimes the expectation that you just have to be there. There is also the feedback you receive from your customers and prospects, this is great for research purposes and can help you identify new markets and opportunities.You will have access to analytics and visitor details on your blog. If you’re using the blog to compliment your SEO strategy, then you will very quickly be able to measure the impact. If your blog is a sales type of blog, your ROI will be measured based upon conversions.
9. Blogging is just some hype, we’re waiting for the next big thing It could be a long wait. Blogging has been around for many years now and continues to grow, it has definitely reached the stage where it is mainstream. Adding a blog to your site just to compliment your search engine optimisation strategies will ensure a return on your time and investment. That’s before you consider the potential to increase your branding, expertise and enquires from local press.
10. It’s just too difficult and we don’t know where to start This is really not a good excuse. Blogs can be set up so that you’re ready to go in an hour. If you’re still not sure, speak to an agency or have some training. You won’t need a lot, once you know you will wonder why you took so long to get onboard.

What to do next? Do you think we are being fair?We’d love to hear from you, post your comments and feedback below. If you would like to speak to Generate UK, please feel free to contact us on 0845 388 9185 or via our contact page.

Special Offer: If you have read this post and would like to learn more about launching your own blog, contact us immediately for details of how we can take your blog site from conception to go live. Quote the title of this blog for a 20% discount.

The reason why people love pay per click (PPC) advertising is that it allows every advertiser to have a fair crack at the whip and advertise their company online via a level playing field. This is the idea anyway, the small time service providers taking on and winning against the largest companies in the world. In actual fact, this is not always the case, like most things in life, money talks. This is certainly true for pay per click.

Speaking to some potential advertiser they do get put off by PPC as they feel they cannot compete with the big companies who have the big wallets and appear to have an unlimited marketing budget to attract clicks to their keywords. So whilst PPC does level the playing field, the usual rules of marketing apply.

It is important to remember that PPC is not a silver bullet, it is part of a wider strategy and the more planning, information gathering and research you put into your PPC campaign the better your results will be. For example, instead of using highly competitive keywords try using a series of phases known as a ‘long tail strategy’ enabling you to spread your budget over a longer period. Often you’ll find that if you’re found under a specific phrase the enquiry is a more serious enquiry so the conversion rate theoretically should be higher.

The trick to PPC is to encourage people to your site who are likely to be interested in your products and services. The general rule is that the more detailed the search phrase, the more targeted the user is. It is important if you are a new PPC advertiser to try different words and phrases and continually monitor your budget and success rate. I can not stress enough how important it is to research your keywords and phrases. You can find out the average traffic for your keywords and phrases by using the keyword traffic indicators when setting up your campaigns however these are only estimates and nothing beats the real thing. Don’t be afraid to use a thesaurus and definitely put yourselves in the mind of your customers who are doing the searches. Often the best place to find good keyword information is your web site statistics. (LINK THROUGH)

Another advantage with PPC is you can cap your budget, I am a PPC advertiser and limit my monthly budget to an amount my business can firstly afford and secondly what provides me with a return on my investment. You can use Google’s Budget Optimiser, which will automatically adjust your maximum CPC (Cost Per Click) according to your budget and will seek out the most clicks possible within your budget. If you’re new to PPC spend some time familiarising yourself with these types of tools and remember that ultimately Google want you to spend money with them, s don’t always do what they suggest.

Something that is often overlooked by inexperienced users of PPC is the effectiveness of their landing page. If you’re paying for people to visit your site, you have to work hard to ensure that they stay on your page and they convert to whatever objective you set for your PPC campaign. This sounds basic, yet we receive many calls a month from companies telling us they are spending thousands without a return, and when we look into it their landing page is their home page. If your PPC advertising is about green dishwashers, make sure the landing page is about green dishwashers and definitely make sure there is a click to action on that page.

PPC does work, especially in the case of an online publishing company who regularly spend £10,000 a month. This sounds like an awful lot of cash to be spending on PPC, however his returns are usually in the region of £20,000 per month, so to this company it makes absolute sense. Their focus is now on improving the conversation rate and capturing as much information about their visitors as possible, so that in future they can market to them directly via email, which is obviously less expensive.

This blog article referred to the beauty and the beast of PPC advertising. Hopefully it is clear what the beauty of PPC is by now? Just to recap, the beauty of PPC is the opportunity to quickly create targeted traffic to your web site. Now it is time to cover some of the beast elements of PPC.

In my mind, there are few areas of PPC to be cautious about… the beasts. One of these is to make sure that you do not have a beast of a landing page. We’ve covered that already in this article, more information can be found by clicking on creating a landing page. If your landing page does not convert then you are wasting your traffic and making Google (or whatever PPC engine you use) richer and yourself poorer.

Another beastly element of PPC is the potential for click fraud. This is when a user, a script or a computer programme clicks through on adverts in order to use up the advertisers budget quicker. An example of this might be your competitor clicking on your adds with no intention of buying your service. This problem does exist, you need to be aware that it exists. The major PPC providers do track the clicks, however it is very important that you monitor and analyse your own data and question any unusual click activities.

There’s also the problem of MFA (made for advertising) sites, these are web sites that have been created with the sole purpose of encouraging their users to click through on the ads their showing. The benefit for these sites is that they earn a fee every time an ad they show is clicked on. These types of sites have been in the spotlight for a few years now and I know that Google for one are doing everything to combat these types of sites. Unfortunately, the truth is that MFA sites are good for Google because they encourage clicks and therefore boost their profits. This is not always in the best interest of the advertiser though.

I’d be interested in hearing about your own pay per click experiences (bad and good) as there is some interesting anecdotal evidence that you receive a boost in the organic SERPs when you start using PPC. We’ve been testing this internally with a number of clients and there seems to be some truth in this rumour, however it is very difficult to prove.

As always, please feel free to post your comments below.

Before reading this post, we recommend that you

This week we are looking into Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising in more detail. Since online advertising is set to grow beyond TV advertising in the next five years, there are a lot of companies out there that are going to start exploring whether they should be using PPC.

This is great news for Google shareholders and one of the reasons Microsoft fought so hard in their attempts to buy Yahoo. Their revenues will continue to grow as they jostle for supremacy in the PPC market. It also means that there will be a growth in the number of competitors for advertisers, so differentiating themselves and running better, more effective campaigns that work within their budgets is going to be high on their agendas.

The same rules of supply and demand apply to PPC, so it is a fair bet that as more companies consider moving greater portions of their budgets to online advertising, the higher the bid costs for competitive PPC markets will be.

With that in mind, we thought that it would be useful to start our PPC week by covering the most important facet of PPC. A facet that in our opinion is also the most overlooked; the landing page.

Firstly, in order to avoid confusion; the landing page is the page your visitor arrives on after clicking through via one of your adverts. The landing page is your shop window, as soon as your visitor clicks through it is no longer about just PPC, it is all about marketing and converting your visitors.

As a digital marketing agency, our role is to advise and assist our clients by identifying the right technology that we think will help them to exceed their marketing goals. When we talk to clients, we make this point more than once because in our mind Internet Marketing is a vehicle. It is a vehicle to deliver you more sales and more leads. In this analogy, PPC is the vehicle that is delivering the potential for more sales and leads.

If you take the “Internet” away from “Internet Marketing”, you’re left with just marketing. The same rules of marketing apply on the Internet as they did in the very early nineties pre Internet. The vehicle may be slightly different and the presentation may be more virtual, however the pride you would take in how your office might look to potential visitors should be the same as if the same visitors come to your web site. Perhaps more so if you read the hype about the average web user taking 5 seconds to make up their mind about whether a page or site is of interest to them before going elsewhere.

Hopefully the reason why your landing page is so important is now obvious. If not, let’s look at it another way. You spend a huge amount of time creating your online advert, you spend time researching your keyphrases and the content to attract qualified visitors, you set the campaign up and….. wait, where do you send your visitors. Your home page? Wrong answer, but a lot of people do this. Your contact page? No, but again a popular answer. Our rule is simple with this one, if you are spending money to attract visitors, make them think as little as possible. This means, make the landing page as simple and as clear as possible and relevant to the traffic.

Often what happens is companies create a hastily put together landing page. And because of this, all of their hard work and budget is very likely to be wasted. The number one take away from this article should be that the landing page is the most important part of a PPC campaign.

So now that we have covered some of the theory, let’s look at what we can be doing in order to create the perfect landing page.

Process for Creating Landing Pages that Convert

• Identify your objective for your campaign. Are you trying to sell something, capture their details, encourage them to click through to another page? Whatever it is, take the time to fully understand what your marketing objectives are and then plan agree on what will make the campaign a success. Only by agreeing success metrics can you measure how good or bad a campaign was.
• Do your keyword research. There are plenty of tools available that will help you and often the PPC engine provides help in this area. The keywords should be the words that your potential customers are using to search for your products or services. We’ll cover how to create keyword groups in more detail later in the week.
• Have one action per page if possible. Try not to give your visitors too much choice. This is about having a good campaign objective, if your goal is to grow your list then your page should have one action only, encouraging them to sign up.

• Make sure that your landing page includes the search phrase for which you are targeting. If you include the phrase that your customer used as the page header/title, they are likely to stay on your page for longer.
• Rightly or wrongly, we all lack patience and we all seem to have lost the ability to read an entire page of text. Consider this when creating your landing pages and cater for your audience who might not have the time or the inclination to read everything. The general marketing here is “am I appealing to my audience”.
• Carry out the “So what” test on your landing page. This is when you say “so what” to the points you make. This is a process that is designed to make you think about how you differentiate yourself and become more relevant to your visitors by highlighting the benefits and what is in it for them.
• Check the page a number of times before going live. Is it clear? Does it describe clearly what you want your visitor to do? Has it passed the “so what” test? Does it provide enough benefits to encourage your visitor to complete your desired action?
• Deliver what your adverts say. If you’re offering a solution to a problem, provide this information. This is about making your landing page as specific as possible, don’t make your visitors go looking for this information, this is why they clicked on your ad in the first place.
• Take pride in your landing pages, these are important sales tools. If you’re selling third party products, take the time to rewrite the sales copy. Make your page different to everyone else and differentiate yourselves.
• Ensure that your landing page has the ability to capture the details of your visitors. If they have clicked your advert, they are interested in the topic, take advantage of this by offering them something in return for them giving you their details. Next time you have something interesting to say, you can email market them, which is much cheaper than PPC.
• The benefits of marketing on the Internet is that you have access to the results in an instant. Don’t waste this information, use the analytic and improve your landing pages. If your bounce rate is high, then you need to improve your message. Read through this page again and you will improve this. Try different products, different actions, lay the page out differently. Test, rinse, repeat.

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