I’m Kenneth Vogt, Commerical Director of Bitesize Bio and founder of Vera Claritas Inc. I play the role of Richard Roeper, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert all rolled into one, reviewing and highlighting the webinars and video presentations found at the Life Science Marketing Society.
Today I’m commenting on the presentation entitled:
It’s About Psychology, Not Technology: The Quick Start Guide To Winning With AdWords
It is described this way:
Are your paid search campaigns underperforming? Or are you just taking your first steps into the world of AdWords, but don’t know where to start?
Marketing is about psychology, not technology. By keeping in mind the simple principles of relating to people, you can sidestep the errors most companies make in their paid search efforts.
Join us for a fireside chat on how to win with AdWords.
- Supercharge your results by understanding that it’s not about you
- Why landing pages don’t convert
- Why you’re probably focusing on all the wrong things
- How to get started immediately without putting your budget at risk
In this presentation, Harrison Wright interviews Andy Black of Digital Insight Ltd. Andy Black is a self-proclaimed data geek and he uses his unique talents and acquired skills and experience to help businesses generate more leads and sales through paid search advertising like AdWords.
Andy Black backed into being an AdWords specialist. He was in a related but different business where a client of his got to talking to him about why his AdWords campaign wasn’t getting him the results he desired. When Andy dug into it, a stream of epiphanies came to him, and Digital Insight Ltd. was born.
What were those insights? Read on:
1) It’s not about you
Most people want to create a website that pontificates about everything they want to say to the world and everything they think the world ought to love them for. Then, they want a flood of people to stream into that precious website, devour its every praise and promise of their company, and hand over cash in large stacks.
And then they wake up…
That, of course, DOES NOT WORK. It is not a model that functionally exists in the real world.
Here is what does work. First, you start with what people are searching for online. You pay attention to the words and phrases they use, and you forget about the ones you wish they would use. You do this because the very environment of online search warms up what would otherwise be cold traffic. Give people what they are looking for and you have a high probability of converting them to a lead or even a sale.
It’s obvious, really. The low hanging fruit is where the buyers in the marketplace are in unfiltered fashion telling you exactly what they want. But in online search this this isn’t merely low hanging fruit, it’s even better than that. “Apples” aren’t just hanging on the trees, they are falling off on a regular basis. So with paid search advertising you don’t even have to pick these apples, you just put your baskets under the trees and watch the fruit drop in.
2) Your landing pages are all wrong
Do you only have a few or even a single landing page, covering in a few places or only one place every possibility that an online searcher might want? Then you are doomed.
Landing pages need to be many, short, direct and specific. How specific? The landing page should have the exact same language as your AdWords ad. And your AdWords ad should have the exact same language as what your prospect typed into their Google search window.
So if they typed, “emergency plumber in dublin”, what do you suppose would most interest them right now, ad #1, #2 or #3?
Ad #1
Professional plumbing
Construction, remodel, repair
We do all things plumbing, water,
natural gas, you name it.
Servicing all Ireland.
Ad #2
Have a plumbing problem?
Dublin, 24/7 any time, any day
If you have an emergency
right now, we are your
professional plumbers.
Ad #3
Emergency plumber in Dublin
Call us for immediate dispatch
We are your
emergency plumber in Dublin.
Call now before it gets any wetter!
You could run the ads yourself and test them. But Andy already did. And he finds, time after time, the closer the ad is to the search term entered by the prospect, the better the response.
Then guess what your land page should say prominently and dominantly?
“Emergency plumber in Dublin”
It’s not rocket science but it is as unforgiving as rocket science — small mistakes make for disastrous results. You have to give people what they want, step after step after step.
3) Why you’ve been getting it all wrong
Aside from thinking that it is all about you when it is really all about them, you next have to dig into the psyche of the average searcher.
Are they an information seeker or a buyer? You can discern their intent by the terms they use. There is a big difference between “dublin plumbing repair”, “dublin plumbing classes” and “dublin plumbing jobs”. The first likely needs to hire a plumber. The second wants to learn to be a plumber. The third wants a job as a plumber.
A typical newbie error is to go too general. Targeting the keyword phrase “dublin plumbing” will cast too wide a net and will bring in a lot of people who are not bonafide prospects.
The beauty of Adwords is you don’t just buy AdWords to get leads, you use it to get real time market research data. You can then focus your resources where the search volume is. You may adore installing antique plumbing fixtures. But if search volume for related phrases is anemic, you will starve. So look for what works, not just vanity search terms.
With a budget as little as $100 you can gather a tremendous amount of valuable market research data, and at the same time even get a little traffic. So spend your upfront money on ads, not landing pages. After you figure out what people want, then start creating landing pages for the winners only.
Never forget, you are not looking for leads or traffic or clicks or visitors or users or sign ups, you are looking for people. It’s people who convert, not ads and not landing pages.
4) How to fix it now, under budget
So what do you do, now that you have your head in the right place?
- Find out what they want (not what they need, humans are funny about that).
- Find out how to sell it to them (what ads/landing pages appeal to them).
- Find out if you can make it profitable.
- If if doesn’t work, kill it. If it works, scale it.
The bottom line is you need to get the right people to the right offer, then get out of the way. Make it simple, dump the fluff and reap the rewards.
Like most great interviews, Harrison asks a few important questions but Andy does most of the talking. And like most great reviews (I suggest with all due humility), we have only scratched the surface here today. So be sure to experience the whole interview here:
It’s About Psychology, Not Technology: The Quick Start Guide To Winning With AdWords
For more analysis, observation and witty repartee, be sure to check out our podcast with our very own Dr. Nick Oswald and Harrison Wright, plus interesting and exciting guests. Here is the specific episode examining the presentation above.
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