Proof: Targeting Landing Pages by Keyword Improves Paid Search
Conversion Rates Dramatically


CHALLENGE: Like many traditional sales-driven organizations,
Pronexus Inc's marketing department has generally taken a
backseat to the sales department.

The marketing team did what they were asked to do -- producing
support materials, trade magazine space ads, direct postal
mailings, and handling the logistics for trade show booths.
Results were fine (the Company's been in business for more than a
decade) but not terribly exciting.

When new Marketing Director Chris Biber came on board last year,
he was afire with eagerness to challenge old tactics, and show
the CEO how cost-efficiently his team could generate leads. It
was time for the marketing department to be the rock star.
"I've occasionally been tempted to write something like,
'Marketing on a shoestring'," he admits. Now was his chance to
turn theories into reality.

CAMPAIGN: The one tactic neither Pronexus, nor many of its
competitors in the computer telephony software world, had tried
was reaching prospects by paid search ads and optimization (the
science of appearing in regular organic listings for relevant
search terms.)

Biber's team started by testing paid ads for "the most obvious
keywords" on three engines - Google, Overture and Espotting.com
(a paid search service for Europe.) He focused on two tactics to
maximize results:

-> Tactic #1 -- Testing Landing Pages
From the start, ads linked to a landing page that Biber's IT
department built for him.

"What blows my mind is people who spend money on ads and then
drive traffic to their home page. What's wrong with this
picture? You've done 50% of the work and then you just leave the
rest to chance? That's just not going to fly here."

His initial tests used a generic landing page (link to screenshot
below) that gave visitors two options - they could view a four-
minute Flash presentation or they could register to receive a
downloadable software demo file.

(It's worth noting that although Pronexus' Flash demo is great,
they resisted the temptation to force visitors to view it. They
did not use it as an intro. Instead, the landing page is in
static HTML and visitors must click of their own accord to see
the Flash.)

Biber hoped that the less qualified leads would surf the Flash
presentation, and perhaps be persuaded to convert, while the
highest qualified leads would grab the download right away.
He also arranged for the landing page to tie into his CRM system
so leads could be tracked according to where they came from and
how they behaved.

The landing page was better-designed than many we've seen in the
b-to-b space. But Biber wasn't remotely satisfied.

He began testing three different landing page tactics:
a. Targeted-generic pages - these were landing pages that were
served to searchers coming from any one of a related group of
keywords such as "customer service" and "customer care". The
terms were similar enough in nature that Biber hoped a targeted-
generic page would work for them.
The copywriting for these pages only focused on points of
specific interest to these searchers, even through Pronexus'
software has many other benefits and features.
Why? "You only have something like 10 seconds of attention -
they want to know they've come to the right spot. If it's not
directly relevant to their search, they're leaving again."
b. Targeted by term - these were landing pages that were
specifically built to serve searchers who came from a specific
search term. Biber put the exact search term in the headline of
the page, and again made sure the rest of the copy was very
narrowly focused.
His webmaster helped this effort by creating a template in Pronexus'
content
management system that Biber's team could use to create a new
landing page in fewer than 15 minutes whenever they wanted to.
c. Translated pages - Pronexus sells globally, so Biber
wanted to see if searchers coming from other countries would
prefer a landing page in their own language, even though these
businesspeople who would almost certainly know some English, and
the download itself is in English.
Biber is a native-German speaker (working in Ottawa), so he
tested a German landing page first.

-> Tactic #2: Aggressively Seeking New Search Terms

Once you've got a landing page system that converts as many
visitors as possible, and you can measure results, it's time to
push for more search terms to advertise under.
Biber quickly discovered finding relevant search terms can be a
full-time job. They are often far less obvious than you think.
In fact, the words you use to describe your service rarely match
the terms the majority of searchers use. Three of Biber's
tactics to find more terms were:
a. Asking verbally
Biber had the sales team ask customers and prospects what terms
they would use to describe the product, and what they were
looking for when they found Pronexus.
He paid particular attention to longer descriptions, because
roughly 35% of Net searchers use three or more words in their
search. So, a customer who said, "We were looking for something
to tie with Visual Basic on an Octel platform" might lead to
Biber testing the search term "visual basic" + "Octel" together,
though he might never buy the words separately apart because they
might be too broad to produce viable results.
b. Checking corporate site search logs
Biber also checked Pronexus site's internal search logs to find
out what terms people tried when they found the site.
c. Acquiring an industry portal & checking its logs
When Biber heard an industry enthusiast wanted to sell the home-
grown site, The CT Portal at ComputerTelephony.org, he
immediately offered to buy it for a low price.
"We said this is an experiment, we didn't go in with preconceived
notions. It looked interesting, I looked at my marketing budget
and said ok this is what I can afford. I didn't base it on his
traffic, because there were no hard conclusions we could reach
about its value."
The Portal listed 1,800 companies and products in the field,
including hotlinks and white paper PDFs. Biber decided to let
every company willing to update their entry stay in the listings
on a complimentary basis. Yes, even his direct competitors.
"The point is to say it's really an industry portal. We can only
make that claim if we allow competitors to be there. Of course
the portal has internal search and when visitors search, we come
up first."
Although Biber hoped the portal might send him some traffic, the
main potential value was for search term mining. He used the
logs of internal site searches to discover new terms he could
advertise under at engines.
Plus, because it's a portal with loads of relevant content, the
site is ranked quite high in organic (regular, non-paid) search
results. So, Biber watched site logs to see which terms search
engine-driven visitors had used to find the portal in the first
place.
RESULTS: 70% of Pronexus new business sales leads are now coming
from the Web instead of traditional marketing. Of the
Web-generated leads, 60% are directly attributable to the paid
search campaigns.
Targeted landing pages have made a world of difference. A
generic landing page was responsible for the campaign's lowest
results at .5% conversion-to-download and 12.5% conversion-to-
browse rate. (Browsers are people who click on the Flash demo
link and other links to learn more about Pronexus, without
registering completely for the download.)
The campaign generating the best results Pronexus could report to
us featured a highly targeted landing page specifically built for
a targeted group of words. That page gets a 7.1% conversion rate
and in addition an 18.2% browse rate.
Pronexus could not release results from individually targeted
pages to us, but we strongly suspect those will get even higher
conversion rates.
The German-language landing pages worked the best for ads using
German keywords, however Biber ceased his espotting.com ads.
"We have found Google does a much better job covering Europe."
After reviewing logs, Biber learned some people try to cheat the
landing page by either giving a false email address or by trying
to guess on their own at what the URL for the download might be.
He added clear wording in two places explaining that a valid
email address is required. He also made sure the download URL is
next-to-impossible to guess.
Interestingly, although Biber's team pinged Portal listees
multiple times to get fresh entries and white papers to load up,
only about 30% of marketers at still-in-business companies have
bothered to get back. (Come on guys, this is complimentary
advertising.)
Biber's list of keyterms has grown from 15, to 60, to now more
than 200. His goal is to create a landing page for each term.
"We're still nowhere where we want to be with that. There's work
we're continuously doing."
Useful links related to this article:
Samples of some landing pages (note: these are not the specific
pages for the % results we reported above, but they are
indicative of the type of pages that do and don?t work for
Pronexus)
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/px/ad.html
Pronexus home http://www.pronexus.com
CT Portal http://www.computertelephony.org