Setting up a landing page to effectively capture sales leads can be a confusing task, until now…

This article is going to show you a simple, yet extremely powerful blueprint for building a landing page to capture sales leads for your business.

This landing page layout is proven, we use it everyday to generate leads for our clients. If you want to start out with a solid foundation for your landing page, follow this example.

The 3 elements setting up a landing page :

1. Headline - Tell your reader what he/she is going to get. Be very clear here. “How to” headlines work well.
2. Bullet Points - This is where you tell your reader a bit more about what he/she is going to receive by registering.
3. Simple Registration Form - Only ask for the information that you need. The fewer fields you have the better your conversion rate will be.

This landing page may seem overly simple and there’s a reason for this. This landing page layout has been tested over and over again and it works! Plain and simple.

Note: The only way to build the best landing page possible is to test your landing pages. Google offers a free tool called ”
Website Optimizer”. This tool is amazing and you should be using it. This tool tests multiple versions of your headline, bullet points, graphics etc and tells you over time which combination of these elements have led to the most conversions (leads).

I hope that you use this landing page layout for your landing pages and find great success! Please feel free to leave a post or email us with questions.

To your Success,

Jeremiah Baker

Setting up a landing page

You want to hire a PPC Management Firm to manage your pay per click campaigns but you don’t want to get ripped off, right?

You know that a good firm can help you get more leads and more sales but you’ve heard all the stories about people getting ripped off by less than reputable PPC firms.

What’s The problem with most PPC Services Firms?

First, it’s very easy for anyone to put up a website and call themselves a PPC Management firm. You don’t have to go to college or get certified to manage pay per click campaigns. This makes it far too easy for anyone to get into the business.

Second, many large firms hire inexperienced people to manage their client’s accounts. You don’t want someone less experienced than you managing your account do you?

Just because a company has a nice looking website or appears to be big have a large list of well known companies as client’s does not mean that they’re the right firm for you.

You must be prepared to ask every firm you’re considering a series of tough questions to ensure that you don’t get ripped off.

12 Questions to ask every PPC Firm before you hire them!

Setup a phone call: I suggest getting on the phone and speaking with your potential ppc management firm. You can learn a lot about someone just by speaking with them on phone. (For example I offer a 30 minute free consultation where you can get on the phone with me and we’ll review your PPC accounts and you can ask any questions that you have.)

Who will be managing your account?: This is very important! Many firms will simply assign a lower level account manager to your account. You want to make sure that this does not happen to you. The main reason that you’re hiring a firm to manage your account is so that you have someone with more experience than you doing the work. Be sure to sit down in person or on the phone with the exact person that is going to manage your account. Make sure that they understand your business and can show you how he/she personally has helped other firms just like your firm to achieve success with Pay Per Click advertising. Here’s my background to use as a reference point.

Make sure the firm’s main focus is to help you generate leads or sales: Many firms will talk about clicks and traffic and not about leads and sales. Pay Per Click advertising is a direct response advertising medium. Everything you do should be focused on generating a lead or a sale. Ask your prospective firm how they intend to generate more leads or sales for your business. How will they show you that they’re making improvements over time.

Track conversions: A conversion refers to someone taking your desired action. If someone fills out a registration form on your website or orders your product that is called a conversion. Google and the other major pay per click search engines offer a free tool for tracking conversions. You want to make sure that your firm of choice is tracking conversions on your website. Tracking conversions allows you to measure the success of your pay per click campaigns. If no one is converting into a lead or a sale then something is wrong. If you aren’t tracking conversions then you’ll never know the true success or failure of your campaigns.

Make sure that your Pay Per Click traffic is sent to a specific landing page: You want all of your traffic or visitors to be sent to a page that contains a specific offer. Do not send your traffic to your homepage. You want to make sure that the firm you choose intends to build specific landing pages for you. These pages will capture leads or offer your products for sale. Your firm will then track the success of your program against the number of leads or sales that are generated as a result of your Pay Per Click advertising campaigns.

Does your firm continuously conduct split tests on your ads? The success of your pay per click advertising campaigns is a direct result of continuous testing. The best way to reduce your costs over time and increase your traffic is to continuously split test your ads. If your potential firm does not openly talk about split testing your ads be very cautious!

Does your firm use Google’s Website Optimizer tool to test your landing pages? Google offers a free tool for testing your landing pages. This tool is called Website Optimizer. This tool allows you to automatically run a series of tests on your landing pages to improve your conversion rates. If you want to generate more leads or more sales it is absolutely necessary to use this tool. Make sure that your potential firm speaks openly about using this tool for your landing pages. Make them show you how they’ve used this tool to help their clients. Here’s an example of how we used Website Optimizer to help one of our clients.

Are you targeting the right keywords? Keywords are the foundation of every successful pay per click advertising campaign. You need to find the right keywords and enough of them. Keywords are the words that your potential customers are typing into the search engines when looking for your products and services. Every firm that you’re considering should use third party tools to research keywords for your campaigns. WordTracker and KeyCompete are 2 of the most powerful and popular tools for keyword research. Ask your potential firm what tools they use for keyword research and see if they mention either of these tools.

What should you giveaway to your potential customers if you’re goal is to generate sales leads? The most effective lead generation pieces are Demos, Software Trials, White Papers, Webinars, and Teleseminars. Ask your potential firm which piece would work best for your goals. Ask them what experience they’ve had with the above lead generation pieces. This will give you a better feeling for how much your potential firm can help you.

Do you pay month-by-month or are you locked into a long term contract?: Be very careful here. Many firms will try to charge you a large up front fee to setup your account (usually a few thousand dollars) then they’ll charge you and on going monthly fee to manage your account. Many firms will also try to lock you into a 3, 6, or even 12 month contract. Be very cautious of this. Any firm worth their weight will allow you to pay month-by-month without a large setup fee. You want your firm to prove themselves to you. A month by month relationship is the best format for this. You need the option to get out of your agreement if pay per click advertising is not working for your business.

Will they answer the phone when you call? If you have questions your firm should be there to answer them. Make sure to ask how much phone/email support is available to you.

Ask to speak to as many current customers as you can: One of the best ways to get to know your potential pay per click advertising firm is to ask to speak with their customers. Ask their customers the same questions that you see here on this guide. This will give you a good gut feel for how good your potential pay per click firm is. Do not skip this step!

Conclusion:

Print out this guide and use it every time you speak to a pay per click advertising firm. It’s in your best interest to do so.

I offer a free 30 minute consultation where you and I will sit down over the telephone and log into your pay per click account. I’ll look for all the problem areas and areas for improvement. After our call I will send you my suggestions. This is not a sales call, simply a call for you and I to get to know each other better.

Click here to sign up for your 30 minute free consultation. I look forward to speaking with you.

To your success,

Jeremiah Baker
Pay Per Click Advertising Specialist
President- Jeremiah Baker LLC.

Here’s one of the most common mistakes that I see on a daily basis regarding Google AdWords.

“Poorly organized Ad Groups and Keywords”

Here’s the problem, putting too many different types of keywords under just one ad in Google AdWords causes your ads to be less releavant and Google punishes you by disabling your ads and asking you to pay $1, $2, even $5 or more per click just to reactivate your ad(s).

Have you ever logged into your AdWords account to see on of your ads or keywords disabled and Google is asking you to pay $5 just to get it up and running again?

Note: Google rewards you for relevancy and punishes you for being irrelevant.

Here’s the best way to ensure that your ads and keywords are as relevant as possible.

1. Group your keywords into tiny groups of 1-5 closely related keyword terms.
2. Write an ad for each of your closely related keyword groups and put your keywords in the title and copy of your ads.
3. After a searcher clicks on your ads send them to a specific page that contains the same keywords that are in your ad groups.

Here’s the worst thing that you can do with your Google AdWord’s campaigns.

1. Put all of your keyowords in on AdGroup
2. Send all of your traffic to your home page

If you want to avoid having your keywords disabled and having to pay $5 or more per click follow the 3 steps outlined above and you should be well on your way to lowering your average cost per click.

To your success,

Jeremiah Baker - PPC Management

• How to generate sales leads for your business using the power of Google AdWords
• What to give away as your lead generation piece
• How to build a landing page to capture leads

One of the most common questions I’m asked by my clients is, “how do I build a landing page to capture leads for my business?”

After many tests here’s the necessary elements that your landing page must have.

1. Your logo displayed at the top of the page.
2. A headline that clearly tells the reader what he/she is going to get by registering on your landing page.
3. A short description that further supports what you said in your headline.
4. 3-5 benefit driven bullet points telling the reader what he/she is going to get by registering.
5. An opt-in box or registration form.
6. Only one call to action (remember, your goal is to get your visitors to fill out your opt-in form.)

The main goal of your landing page is to get your visitors to take your call to action which is to fill out your opt-in form, in turn becoming a lead for you.

If you have questions about building a landing page for your business please visit www.jeremiahbaker.com and type your question into the live chat box located at the top right of your screen.

To your success,

Jeremiah Baker

Generate more B2B sales leads using Google AdWords.

The Quick Start Guide to Getting the Most Out of Your Google AdWords Campaigns

Google and the other major search engines have made it extremely easy for you to setup an account and start spending money with them.

Yet, they haven’t made it as easy for you to get the most for your money.

Don’t let anyone fool you! PPC advertizing is no silver bullet solution to your marketing challenges.

There’s no magic behind Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, MSN AdCenter or any other pay per click search engine. Your success with pay per click advertising comes from following a proven system day-in-and-day-out.

Here’s the 3 major components to every PPC campaign that you must pay contstant attention to.

1. Keywords
2. Ads
3. Landing Pages

Step One - Choose keywords that are highly relevant to your offer

Step Two - Write ad copy that directly relates to your keywords and your offer

Step Three -Build landing pages that offer exactly what your ad said it would give the searcher

Ok, if you only do these 3 things well you’ll be far ahead of most advertizers online today.

But, if you really want to crush your competition and get the most for you money follow these tips closely…

• When researching your keywords group them into highly related groups. You may only have 10-12 keywords in each group, this is perfect! Don’t put 50-100 keywords under one ad. There is no way one ad can support that many keywords. You want your ads to be as relevant to each keyword as possible.
• Use keyword matching options on all your keywords. Broad match, “phrase match”, [exact match], and - negative match. Here’s a link to Google’s article on keyword matching. This will give you the full details.
• Don’t get overly creative with your ads. Use Google to tell you which ads are already performing well for your desired keywords and use those ads as your starting point. You can find out what ads are already getting clicked on by typing in your keyword or phrase with a wild-card after your phrase, something like this. Keyword 6785. When you do this Google will show you only the ads that are getting a “decent” number of clicks. Use this technique right now to see what ads are peforming well for your keyword(s). Remember, your ads should always have a clear offer that is of great value to your potential customers. Want more clicks? Give your searches exactly what they want in your ad copy and they’ll gladly click on your ads.
• Split test your ads continuously to outsmart your competition, and get more clicks for less money. Split testing is simply writing 2 ads and letting Google split the traffic between them evenly. Google will track which ad gets more clicks. With this information you can delete the lesser performing ad and create a new one right away to take its place. This type of testing will give you higher Click-Through-Ratios over time. This is good for you, because Google will place your ad above your compeitors if you are getting a better CTR than them. Google does this because they want to show searchers the most relevant ads. If your ad gets clicked on the most they see it as being the most relevant. More on how to split test ads from Google. In order for split testing to work you must first “edit campaign settings in AdWords and select “rotate ads”. After about 30 clicks you should see a clear winner. The ad with the higher CTR. Keep that ad and delete the lesser performing and then create your new ad right away. Keep testing like this for the life of your campaign.
• Build your landing pages with your offer in mind. The biggest mistake advertizers make today is sending traffic to their home page or to a page that has no clear call to action on it. Don’t do this, you’ll just waste your money! Here’s an example of one of Google’s own landing pages. It is a good landing page to emulate for your own campaigns. Don’t be fooled by its simplicity. It is designed to capture the visitors contact details and give them the information offered.
• Use the free Google conversion tracking tool with your AdWords account. This conversion tracking tool will show you how many of your visitors turned into a sale, or lead. This tool will also tell you how much your leads or sales are costing you. Here’s Google’s guide on conversion tracking.
• Multi Variable test your landing pages using Google’s free Website Optimizer tool. This tool allows you to test multiple elements on your landing pages at once. It is absolutely necessary to use this tool. If you don’t use this tool you’ll never know if you are converting as many visitors as possible into leads or sales. Watch Google’s overview of Website Optimizer here…
• Last but not least… Go back and remove keywords that are generating clicks, but no leads or sales. This alone will help save you a lot of money with your campaigns.

I hope you found this guide useful. I know that it is a lot of information, but you’ll be glad that you followed these steps with your own PPC advertizing campaigns.

Seem like too much work or too confusing?

Contact us for a free overview of how we can help you get the most out of your pay per click campaigns.

Jeremiah Baker

ppc advertizing firm

If you’re considering hiring a firm to help you, here’s what to look out for.

6 Questions to Ask Every PPC/Pay Per Click Management Firm You Are Considering

1. Do they specialize in your area of business? Do you sell to other business (B2B) and want to generate sales leads? Do you sell via e-commerce to consumers? Choose a firm that has proven experience helping other businesses like yours. There are a lot of PPC firms out there to choose from, but make sure you choose the one that has proven experience and understands your business goals.
2. Can they back up their claims-Please be careful of hyped up claims and false promises. There are many firms out there that claim the world in their sales pitch, but turn out to promise more than they deliver. If it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Ask to speak with a few of their clients to get a true understanding of how they measure up to their claims & promises. This is the best way to feel out a potential ppc/pay per click management firm.
3. Do they test keywords, ad copy, and landing pages? The most powerful aspect of pay per click advertising is the ability to test everything. You want a firm that clearly describes how they test keywords, ad copy, and landing pages. If you get the feeling that the firm you are talking with is simply going to set up your campaign and let it run please put your hand on your wallet and run away as fast as you can.
4. Do they have a set schedule to meet with you and your team to discuss the performance of your campaigns once they’re up and running? Your PPC firm should meet with you at least once a week if not more to discuss your campaigns status and provide a strategy for improvement. Pay per click advertising is a dynamic advertising medium where everything changes as new competitors move in on your keywords & ads. You also need to make constant improvements to your keywords, ad copy and landing pages to get the most out of your campaigns. You want to constantly improve your lead generation or sales conversion efforts.
5. Do they lock you into long term contracts and charge you a setup fee? A lot of search marketing firms try to lock you into a long term contract. Don’t stand for this! If a search marketing firm is worth their salt they’ll only charge you month to month. A month to month relationship is good for you, because it forces the firm you are working with to perform and earn your business. A lot of search marketing firms also try to charge a set up fee anywhere from $500 to several thousands of dollars. You can find firms that don’t charge this extra fee, they simply charge you a fixed monthly fee and your setup is included in that.
6. Do they offer full reporting? Show me the numbers! In order to fully understand how well you are doing with your pay per click advertising campaigns you need to look at the following reports:

• CTR’s or click-through-ratios. CTR is the number of people who saw your ad versus the number of people who clicked on it. In Google a high CTR will allow your ads to be positioned above your competitors ads without having to increase your cost per click. Through optimization your firm of choice should increase your CTR’s over time. A high CTR equals more visitors.
• Conversion Rates. If you’re generating B2B sales leads or actual sales on your website you need to know how many visitors you’re turning into customers, this is known as your conversion rate. You want to convert as many visitors as possible. Remember you’re paying for every click/visitors that comes to your website. Testing your ads and landing pages will result in higher conversion rates over time.
• Cost per lead/sale. You will definitely want to see this number. You need to know how much it’s costing you to generate a lead or sale. Without knowing your cost per lead or cost per sale you’ll never know how cost-effective your ppc campaigns are.

Conclusion: Take your time when choosing a (ppc) pay per click management firm. Ask as many questions as you can, this is your business and your success at stake. Ask to speak with the search marketing firms client’s. Speak to as many as you can.

To your success,

Jeremiah Baker

PPC Management , Pay per click Management firm- JeremiahBaker.com

Let’s assume that your main goal is to send traffic to your website and convert this traffic into leads by getting your visitors to register for a free giveaway.

One of the biggest mistakes pay per click marketers make is sending traffic to their home page. Unless your homepage has a clear offer with few choices on it except for your lead capture form, do not send traffic to your homepage.

Note:  The goal of your landing page is to get your visitors to take action, to fill out your registration form and become a lead.  You don’t want to give your visitors too many options where they could leave your landing page and not fill our your lead capture form.  Focus on one goal, getting the lead.

Here’s 5 elements of every successful lead generation ppc landing page

1. A clean simple design that focuses on getting the registration.  Here’s and example of one of Google’s landing pages
2. Include a powerful benefit driven headline at the top of the page telling your visitors what they’ll receive by registering on your landing page.  This is arguably the most important element.
3. Create a short opening paragraph that explains your giveaway after your headline.
4. Create 3-5 bullet points below your opening paragraph that reinforce the benefits of your giveaway.
5. Include your registration form. Note, the shorter your registration form the higher your conversion rates will be.  Don’t ask your visitors too much in this step, just get them to register and give you enough information so that you can follow up with them. 

Here’s some example landing pages that you can use for reference.

• Google’s landing page
• GoToMeeting

Conclusion:  These landing page tips should give you enough to get started.  Note that the key to successful landing pages is testing.  Try different variations of your headline, opening paragraph, bullet points, and registration form.

To your success,

Jeremiah Baker

Google AdWords Experts - B2B Lead Generation

PPC Landing Page Design in 5 Easy Steps

Here’s the benefits of having high click-through-ratios on your ads in Google.

• If your ad has a higher click-through-ratio than the other ads on the search results page in Google your ad will move up to the top of the search results without having to increase your cost per click
• You’ll get more visits per impression of your ad and the potential to convert more visitors into leads or sales
• If your ads aren’t reaching Google’s minimum click-through-ratios they’ll disable your keywords and you dont’ want this to happen.  You’re goal is to get the highest click-through-ratios as possible.

Here’s how to find out what ads are already performing well in Google

1. Go to Google and type in your desired or target key phrase.
2. Do you see ads showing up for this key phrase? If so Good!
3. Next, type in the exact same key phrase as above, but this time put a wild card after your key phrase.  Here’s an example; (crm software 8756). Click the search button and see what ads are showing up.
4. The ads that Google returns are generally going to be the ads that are already getting a decent click-through-ratio.
5. You can now emulate the messaging in the top ads giving your ads a better chance of performing well from the start.

Why does adding a wild card after your key phrase make Google show you the ads that are already performing well?

The theory is that obviously no one would bid on the term, crm software 8756 and Google compensates by displaying well performing ads that most closely match the key phrase with the wild card.

If you’re having trouble coming with ad copy for your AdWords campaigns give this technique a try.  Let us know what you find, or feel free to send us a question or two.  We’d be glad to here from you.

 To your success,

 Jeremiah Baker

Google AdWords Experts

If you’re not testing your landing pages using Google’s Website Optimizer tool, you should be and here’s why!

One of our clients was doing extremely well with their landing page. They were converting visitors to sales leads for their trial software offer and they were generating sales every month.

We were generating leads for a mere 6 dollars per lead. Sounds great right?

Well sort of….

About 2 weeks ago we setup Google’s Website Optimizer tool on this already well performing landing page. We decided to test 5 more headlines on the landing page to see if we could find a better performing headline than the existing one. The end goal was higher conversion rates and more leads.

We setup a Google’s Website Optimizer tool to test the 5 different headlines. It only took us about 15 minutes to setup our test.

We activated our test and let Google split the traffic evenly between each 5 test headlines. After about 2 weeks of landing page optimization testing we found a clear winner. The 4th headline we tested performed 117% better than our original headlilne. Headline 4 converted 117% more visitors into leads.

The best part about Google’s Website Optimizer is that it’s “FREE” and it only takes minutes to setup.

You can learn more about setting up Website Optimizer on your own landing pages here.

Learn more about Google’s Website Optimizer tool Landing Page Optimization from Google.

To your success,

Jeremiah Baker

President, JeremiahBaker.com

Landing Page Optimization