How to use Keyword Research to Find New Landing Page Testing Ideas

Conversion rate optimization is all about finding the right elements on a page to test. Should you test a new value proposition, image, headline or redesign a page completely?

All of these things are worth looking into when considering what to try but finding the right elements to A/B test can be very difficult.

Today, I'm going to introduce a shortcut for coming up with winning test ideas. Instead of staring at your page over and over again to come up with one or two new ideas, you can use this shortcut to generate a plethora of ideas in a short amount of time.

Introducing Competitive Keyword Research

Competitive keyword research helps PPC advertisers find out which keywords their competitors are bidding on. This can be done using tools like iSpionage, TheSearchMonitor or Adgooroo. Not only do the tools make you feel like the James Bond of search advertising, but you can then use the competitive data to find profitable keywords you aren't bidding on and to identify new ad groups you should create.

It's possible your competitors will send you down a rabbit hole of unprofitable keywords if they don't know what they're doing, but it's even more possible that you'll uncover keyword opportunities you haven't thought of yet.

Think about it this way: When you do keyword research with the AdWords Keyword Planner, you're limited to the number of ad group ideas that you come up with on your own and that AdWords suggests. Oftentimes there are keywords you aren't bidding on that have high volume and low cost per click. You'll catch these types of terms by doing competitive keyword research and learning from what the top advertisers are doing in your industry.

Being able to start with a keyword list that's already working for someone else will shorten your time to profitability. But not only can you use it to find new keywords, you can also use it to spy on your competitors' landing pages in order to come up with testing ideas. Here's how.

How to Spy on Your Competitors' Landing Pages

To begin, you need to choose a competitor to spy on. We're going to use SalesForce for our example and enter their domain into iSpionage to get started.

Conducting a search like this provides a lot of useful information. You'll learn approximately how much SalesForce is spending per month on PPC ads, their top keywords, their top competitors and their top ads, all of which is very useful.

But, as we mentioned before, the most helpful information for CRO is which landing pages your competitors direct their traffic to, which is something we can find out by clicking on the destination URL for an ad.

 

After clicking, you're taken to the exact landing page SalesForce uses for each ad in its account. When we do that for the two ads listed above, we're taken to the following page for the Keyword: "partner portal."

 

We are taken to this page below for the keyword: "sales team tracking software."

 

So what can we learn from these pages?

• Salesforce uses a very simple design that places the emphasis on the demo sign-up form.
• They offer access to all of their demos through a single sign up.
• The offer on the landing page matches the keyword being bid on. Instead of directing their ads to the same landing page, they direct visitors to a page with copy that matches what people are searching for. They also reuse the same template, which saves design and development resources in order to efficiently create landing pages that match the keywords without costing a ton of money or time.
• They include stats to show how customers benefit from using their product.
• Trust symbols are placed at the bottom of the page to make visitors feel more secure about giving their information.
• A phone number is included at the bottom in case people want to pick up the phone and talk with a real human. Yes, some people still like to use the phone.

These are very useful bits of information and reveal that SalesForce employs a number of industry best practices with its landing pages. And as mentioned before, you can use this information to come up with testing ideas for your own site.

For example, maybe you aren't currently using landing pages. Your boss hasn't bought into the idea or approved the budget to design and create landing pages for your products or services. You can create a presentation with screenshots of your competitors' landing pages and explain, "We're getting killed -- they're using custom landing pages for different keyword groups. If we want to keep up, we need to do the same."

Those are some of the main things we can learn from ethically spying on competitors' landing pages without clicking on their ads and making them pay. Although who doesn't want to drive up your competitor's AdEords bill? Ha.

But -- wait, there's more.

When we do a keyword search for "CRM software," we see the following list of top ads.

 

SalesForce has the top ad listed, but there are four more competitors: QuickBase from Intuit, Syspro, Zoho and Oracle. Let's look at QuickBase's landing page to see what we learn.

 

Here are some things that stand out from the page:

• They offer a 30-day free trial compared to SalesForce's offer to view demos.
• They include a link to learn more about QuickBase in case the information on the page isn't sufficient.
• They show off the fact that 50 Fortune 100 companies use the product.
• They also include trust symbols and mention the other award-winning products they've created: Quickbooks, Quicken and TurboTax.

 So what could you test from this page?

• You could consider offering a 30-day free trial on a landing page in place of your current offer to see if conversions go up.
• You could consider including a link to learn more to see if that leads to more conversions compared to only offering the information included on the landing page.
• You could consider adding logos of your top customers to show off your clientele and gain more credibility.

Do you see how this works? You can go page by page to learn the best practices of advertisers in your industry or in industries with effective advertising practices.

The best part about it is that you learn from the tests that companies with big budgets have run. It's possible that SalesForce and Intuit have A/B tested their pages 100 times to get to the version they currently use. If you know an advertiser takes A/B testing seriously, you can piggy-back off of their tests, glean some lessons and ideas and then test those ideas to see if you can tighten your funnel and improve conversion rates.

In summary, you can use competitive keyword research to:

• Find profitable keywords you're not currently bidding on
• Improve ad copy by learning what the top advertisers have written
• Come up with A/B testing ideas by studying your competitors' pages

So go ahead and do it. Conduct some keyword research, write down some notes, take some screenshots and show your boss how much you've learned about the competition and how you can use the insights to improve your company's conversion rates. Any comments or other examples of how to generate landing page testing ideas are welcome.

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How to attain Paid search success

Many people miss is digging into the search phrase report that shows what other queries are being matched to these keywords.

Remarketing List for Search Ads (RLSAs) is possibly the biggest innovation and opportunity in search in a long time.

No longer do you have to show the same ad to a customer who comes back every week as you do to a brand-new customer.

Now you can show the customer that you know them, welcome them back, or create specific ad copy that directs that customer to your customer service section vs.

Anyone who feels like they have reached the limit of their campaign to dig just a little bit deeper and take that extra cut of data or extra step to target to see what can be squeezed out.

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Bing Ads "Top Movers" Report Gives the "Why" Behind Campaign Changes

Bing Ads has expanded its reporting features for added visibility into an account's performance. In an announcement, Bing Ads says its "top movers" report would give a snapshot of significant changes to advertisers' accounts and possible reasons behind the fluctuations.

From the announcement:

A "top movers" list [includes] up to 10 campaigns and/or ad groups that have experienced the largest performance change — by size, not percent — during two specified time [frames]. With this list, you can quickly identify which campaigns have contributed most to your account’s performance variation, from both a positive and negative perspective.

The new reporting goes beyond just showing changes and attempts to predict why they are happening.

"Whereas other search providers only offer possible causes based on changes made within your account, [the] Bing Ads Top Movers report takes three types of changes into consideration," the announcement says.

Those three areas include the account, search traffic, and competitor data. 

Another differentiator of this new feature is the "opportunities" tab, which allows advertisers to "explore keyword, bid, budget, and other factors that can drive an increase in clicks/spend" for those campaigns or ad groups that have experienced the most negative change, the announcement says.

A comparison feature allows advertisers to view performance over a time period to view clicks and spend "week over week, two weeks over two weeks, or even four weeks over four weeks," says the announcement.

"Even when overall account performance appears stable, the Top Movers report helps you highlight big moves that may be easily overlooked. It can also be used to regularly track account performance on a weekly or monthly basis," says Bing.

The Bing Ads team also cited a plan to soon expand reports to support metrics like conversions.

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17 Keys to Success in Social PPC

If you haven't jumped on the social PPC bandwagon yet, it's time you gave it some serious thought. While social PPC won't replace Google AdWords any time soon, it's become an effective source of incremental leads and sales for savvy businesses.

What follows are 17 keys to running successful social PPC campaigns. The first four apply to all social PPC, then we'll talk about keys to success for each major social PPC engine.

Social PPC Keys to Success

1. Identify Your Target Audience

In search, the target audience is "anyone who searches using my keywords." In social, much more thought must be put into the people and personas you'd like to reach. Are they consumers? Business owners? Teenagers? What do they like to do? Where do they work, shop, play?

Defining your audience is critical to success in social PPC.

2. Identify the Marketing Challenge That Paid Social Solves

Think about why you want to use paid social in the first place. Are you active organically in social media, but need a larger or more engaged audience? Are you struggling to reach a B2B audience because consumers also search on your keywords? Do you need awareness of your product, service, or company?

All of these can be great reasons to use paid social – the key is to think about what problem social PPC will solve for you.

3. Define Your Paid Social Strategy and Objectives

If you've done the first two steps, this will be easy.

If your audience is B2B decision makers, and your objective is lead generation, then you'll want to define your strategy and objectives as such. If your goal is audience growth, build that in to your strategy.

Mapping strategy out ahead of time sets you up for good results.

4. Segment Your Audience Based on How You'll be Posting

This is an overlooked and yet important part of social PPC setup.

It isn't unusual for advertisers to have multiple segments within their target audience. You might have different types of businesses that you want to reach, or you may be targeting both men and women, for example.

Look at your current social posts to see what audience they're intended to reach – and then set up your social PPC campaigns accordingly.

LinkedIn Keys to Success

5. Carefully Identify Your Target Companies and Job Levels

LinkedIn's targeting options are great for targeting individuals at specific companies and job levels; it's especially effective for B2B. But think carefully about how you want to target.

Do you want narrow targeting with specific job titles and companies, or do you want to cast a wider net and focus on categories rather than specifics?

Be especially careful about seniority targeting. If you need to reach decision-makers, you'll probably want to exclude entry level people. But be aware that the higher level you target, the higher your minimum CPC will be.

6. Be Ready to Pay $5+ Per Click

Speaking of minimum CPCs, LinkedIn's CPCs run much higher than other social PPC channels. The results are often worth it, but be prepared to pay $5 or more per click and optimize accordingly.

7. Use Sponsored Updates if Possible

LinkedIn Ads have two types of campaigns: sponsored ads and sponsored updates. In my experience, sponsored updates perform much better than sponsored ads. Sponsored updates show in a user's news feed, giving you premium placement.

If you're actively posting updates to LinkedIn, use sponsored updates whenever possible.

8. Segment Your Audience Based on How You'll be Posting

Think about how you'll be posting, and segment your audience accordingly. The LinkedIn user interface isn't very user-friendly, so it's more efficient to set up segmented campaigns at the outset.

Twitter Keys to Success

9. Carefully Identify Your Target Accounts or Keywords

Twitter Ads often feel familiar to those used to Google AdWords and Bing Ads, because you cantarget using keywords. You can also target individual user accounts. It's important to decide which option makes sense for you.

If you want to reach consumers, for example, make sure the keywords or accounts you target are focused on consumer content.

10. Use Images and Hashtags With Caution

It's important to note that Twitter Ads are a pay-per-engagement, not pay-per-click, program. You pay for anything that can be clicked (links, @ handles, hashtags, and images), as well as for each reply, follow, and retweet.

Twitter Ads are great for driving engagement and leads, but be aware that you'll pay for much more than just clicks to your website.

11. Test Lead Generation Cards

Twitter lead generation cards enable advertisers to create a virtual "card" that attaches to a tweet. Users can take an action with one click, without leaving Twitter. The options for lead gen cards are nearly endless, and in my experience they perform very well.

12. Segment Your Audience Based on How You'll be Posting

You'll notice that segmentation is a theme here, because it's important. The Twitter Ads interface isn't much better than LinkedIn's, so it's easiest to think about targeting up front.

Facebook Keys to Success

13. Have at Least 1,000 Users in Your Custom Audience

Much has been said about Facebook custom audiences. They're a powerful way to reach specific users on Facebook.

Having a big enough audience is key to a successful campaign, though. We recently ran a test with about 150 users in a custom audience, and we got very few impressions and clicks. Hitting the minimum number of users is really important.

14. Use Sponsored Posts in Newsfeed When Possible

Similar to LinkedIn, Facebook offers both right-rail and sponsored post ads. Facebook has become so large that I'm not sure anyone looks at the right rail ads anymore – and they don't even show at all on most mobile devices. Make the most of your advertising efforts by using sponsored posts whenever possible.

15. Relentlessly Test Images

It's common advice for Facebook ads, and with good reason. The image is what really attracts the attention to your ad – the actual copy is almost irrelevant if you have a good image.

Aggressively test images to learn which ones work best.

16. Use Lookalike Segments

An added bonus of using custom audiences is the ability to build lookalike audiences. A lookalike audience is a larger audience that Facebook builds of users similar to your custom audience. You can further customize the lookalike audience with exclusions.

If you aren't getting the results you expected from custom audiences, try using a lookalike audience.

17. Use Custom Audiences to Build Lookalike Segments

I've heard from a number of people that they create custom audiences not for ad targeting, but for the sole purpose of creating lookalike audiences. This is a creative way to have both specific and broad reach.

Conclusion

Social PPC is becoming an important part of the online marketing toolbox. Use these tips the next time you launch a paid social campaign.

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Retailers Outspend Luxury Brands on Luxury Keywords in Paid Search [Report]

In the battle for luxury shoppers, top retailers in 2013 outspent top luxury brands on Google AdWords paid search ads in four of five categories: apparel, beauty and cosmetics, shoes, and watches, according to a new AdGooroo report.

Handbags was the only category in which luxury brands outspent retailers.

Below is a breakdown of the investment in U.S. paid search spending for luxury apparel.

In 2013 alone, five of the top personal luxury brands spent nearly $22 million on paid search in Google AdWords. This didn't include the money invested in mobile search or Product Listing Ads.

Let's look at some additional findings.

The Biggest Luxury Apparel Spenders

Which brands are investing the most in paid search for luxury apparel? Below you'll find the top 10 brands by spend. Louis Vuitton claimed first place with $1.3 million, which is more than double the next brand on the list.

Retailers aren't far behind in their ad spend. In fact, many retailers spent more than the luxury apparel brands themselves on PPC. You'll notice that six of the top 10 retailers by spend are department stores.

Luxury Beauty & Cosmetics

For their 2013 report, AdGooroo collected data on 810 luxury beauty and cosmetic keywords. There is a significant gap in spend between the top brands and retailers and those that came in at the end of the top 10.

Luxury Footwear Brands & Retailers

The ads spend for luxury shoes is significantly less than that of luxury apparel and luxury beauty and cosmetics. Here are the top 10 brands and retailers by ad spend:

Luxury Handbags

Chanel, the top brand by spend in the handbag category spent $816,000 in 2013 while the brand in tenth place (Burberry) spent only $53,000. The gap was not so significant between retailers with Neiman Marcus spending $480,000 in position number one and The Luxury Closet spending $135,000 for 2013.

Luxury Watches

It's no surprise that Rolex came in number one in Paid Search by spend with $149,000. The next brand (Cartier) spent $50,000 less on paid search. Below you'll find the breakdown by brand and retailers for the top ten by spend in each category.

What Are Advertisers Getting for their Investment?

Based on the significant investment that advertisers are making in paid search, it is essential that we understand what their impression share is off of that budget.

• Louis Vuitton's ad spend far surpassed that of any other brand or retailer in luxury apparel. However they only had a 3.45 percent impression share, and was steamrolled by retailers.
• The top retailers by spend in beauty and cosmetics got their money's worth. Amazon came in with nearly 11 percent of share of voice, but brands didn't fair so well in this category.
• Retailers also dominated luxury shoes. Saks Fifth Avenue, which had the top spend for retail, had a 9.87 percent impression share.
• Amazon and Saks Fifth Avenue also dominated handbags, with 6.79 percent and 5.06 percent impression share, respectively.
• Websites that sold luxury watches at a discounted price were winning the war in this category. The top retail spender was authenticwatches.com and they had the highest impression share, 8.72 percent.

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Insights on State of Paid Search in Q2

We just recently saw Q2 come to a close, and a flurry of findings of Q2 activity in the paid search arena have been published. Three reports hit our inboxes yesterday, one from Adobe’s Digital Marketing, one from Kenshoo and one from The Search Agency – all highlighting paid search spend, click-through rates, cost per click and more by engine and device in Q2. Here’s a snapshot of some of those findings. 

Spend

Spend is up across the board, according to the three studies.

United States

The Search Agency reported a 22 percent increase year-over-year (YoY) in paid search spend. Here's a snapshot of not only spend, but also clicks, click-through rate, and cost per click YoY:

The Americas

For North America and South America combined, Kenshoo reported a total of 25 percent spend increase YoY.

Here, Kenshoo shows spend relative to revenue YoY:

U.S. + U.K. and Germany

Adobe’s data showed the three countries with a collective 25 percent growth in spend YoY.

Clicks and Click-Through Rate (CTR) by Engine

When it came to clicks and CTR in Q2, results were mixed.

United States

The Search Agency showed clicks were up on both Google and Bing in Q2, 38 percent and 20 percent, respectively. An increased CTR plus the increase in advertising spend, said The Search Agency, “is indicative of a strengthened economy."

U.S. + U.K. and Germany

Adobe reported CTR on Bing-Yahoo was down, while Google’s CTR rose 20 percent in Q2 2014, and said it was likely due to “Google changing its text ad formats for search queries (denoted by a subtle yellow 'Ad' icon opposed to being explicitly highlighted as ad or sponsored result).”

The Americas

Kenshoo data showed CTR was up 2.3 percent in Q2 in the Americas. 

Cost per Click (CPC)

CPC data varied by study in the Q2 roundup.

United States

Google’s CPC decreased by 16 percent, while Bing CPC increased 27 percent in Q2, The Search Agency reported.

U.S. + U.K. and Germany

Adobe’s stats show CPC growing in Q2 for all but Yahoo-Bing in the U.S. Overall, said Adobe, Google CPC increased 4 percent YoY.

The Americas

Kenshoo data showed the average CPC in Q2 for the Americas at $0.63.

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