Five Tips to Increase Adwords Conversions & Lower Costs

With the Rising CPC & Cost to Advertisers on Adwords many are now trying new techniques to help lower their CPC & also increase qualified traffic & conversions.

Here’s a list of things I’ve implemented lately that have increased my conversions & helped reduce my monthly spend considerably.

Redirecting to a Squeeze Page, not directly to the Merchant Site

A Squeeze Page is a Presell Page. A page that co-exists between your ad & the merchant site. Generally the rule of thumbs is that if you have qualified traffic that is looking to buy then all they need is a push in the right direction to make the decision. You want them to make that decision & buy through your Affiliate URL.

If you want an example of a good squeeze page simply just type any popular product from Clickbank & view the sponsored results. Here’s an example of a Squeeze Page for Affiliate Project X

Notice how this particular type of page is more of a review from a consumer point of view. He’s not trying to sell you the product because 99% of the time you’re already sold on it. He’s trying to win your trust to buy through his link. To do this he writes phrases like:

I was starting to get anxious, and so I started to browse through the forums, looking for others’ experience with the product. I wanted to see if I had really been suckered by another over-hyped product – or perhaps I had finally hit on the crown jewel of affiliate marketing… After I purchased, it was time to find the real truth.

By doing this he puts himself in the same situation the buyer is in right now, limbo. Not sure whether to actually buy the product or not. The Squeeze Page addresses & rectifies all the doubts the buyer may be having before asking them to buy.

This technique can increase your conversions by anywhere up to 5%

Bid on Brand Terms not Generic Ones

Many people make the mistake of going for very generic terms. Lets say for example I’m running a campaign to promote Adult Friend Finder.

You could go down the patch of promoting terms like:

1. Online Dating
2. Meet People Online
3. Find Love Online

However I find that much too generic. You may get the traffic, it may convert for you. However I’d rather get the high converting traffic.

Nothing converts better than capturing the Brand terms. So for example if I was promoting Adult Friend Finder I would bid on terms like:

1. adult friend finder
2. “adult friend finder”
3. [adult friend finder]
4. “adultfriendfinder”
5. adultfriendfinder
6. [adultfriendfinder]

You get the idea? Not only can you usually get a reasonable price for these terms but also because they are so targeted you usually can get a HUGE click through rate. Anywhere up to & above 20%. The higher your clickthrough rate is the less you can afford to pay per click whilst still keeping your position.

This technique can increase your conversions by anywhere up to 10%

Give away something for Free

Giving away a free gift whilst promoting something on Adwords is a great way to win the sale. You’ll notice on the Squeeze Page I spoke about earlier they are giving away a free video explaining how to use the product.

The more relevant you can make your free gift or bonus item to the product the better.

I usually write my own PDF document with about 10 tips in it, I make the tips relevant to this product but they also secretly sell another product too. I also make the PDF Rebrandable & stress that they can give it away as their own free gift as they like (but it has my affiliate URL’s in it).

Some people also offer discount off the product. You get the idea.

This can increase your conversions by up to 10% & also increase your Offline Conversions (Which is free $$)

Use Subdomains & Folders for Products

We all know that you can’t have the same Display URL as another affiliate. I’ve also found that having the keyword you’re targeting in your Display URL will help increase your Quality Score. Bear this in mind when promoting a product. Perhaps have a look at my previous post about Adwords In Iframes.

So for example for your main creative about toys you may use the domain www.toys.com.

You may want to promote baby toys so you set up a separate group using the url baby.toys.com & so on. This allows you to do a number of things.

1. Keep track of each niche more closely
2. Increase Keywords in your URL’s
3. Increase your Quality Score as each create will also be more targeted

Mirror Your Adwords Campaign

There’s nothing better to knock your competitiors out of the top 10 than to Mirror your campaign & have two Creatives on the front page. If you already know what’s working for you then why not copy it & take advantage of that?

Related Reading:

• Affiliate Project X
• Beating Adwords
• Super Affiliate Handbook

Related Resources:

• Keyword Elite
• Agloco
• Azoogleads