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Page 1 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Landing Page Cash Machine How To Turn Google Adwords And Your Own Website Into Your Own Gold-Filled, 24-Hour Online ATM By Mark Widawer www.AskAboutAdwords.com/LandingPages www.TrafficAndConversion.com Version 1.01 December, 2005 Limits of Liability & Disclaimer of Warranty The author and publisher of this ebook and the associated materials have used their best efforts in preparing this material. The author and publisher make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy, applicability, fitness, or completeness of the contents of this material. They disclaim any warranties expressed or implied, merchantability, or fitness for any particular purpose. The author and publisher shall in no event be held liable for any loss or other damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. If you have any doubts about anything, the advice of a competent legal, tax, accounting or other professional should be sought. This material contains elements protected under International and Federal Copywright laws and treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. Page 2 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Table of Contents Table of Contents ............................................................................. 3 About the Author .............................................................................. 6 Introduction ...................................................................................... 7 Prerequisites................................................................................... 10 Basic Optimization Strategies....................................................... 11 Targeted Landing pages .....................................................................................12 What to do on your website: ............................................................................12 Here's how you do it: .......................................................................................13 Your Takeaway: ..............................................................................................15 Continue the Conversation .................................................................................16 What to do on your website: ............................................................................16 Use The Google Conversion Code On Your Thank You Page ...........................17 What to do on your website: ............................................................................17 Your Takeaway ...............................................................................................21 Define Your Goal -- What Action Do You Want Your Visitor To Take? ...............22 What to do on your website .............................................................................22 Your Takeaway ...............................................................................................22 Opt-in form to an autoresponder placed prominently ..........................................23 What to do on your website .............................................................................28 Your Takeaway ...............................................................................................28 Reduce distracting elements...............................................................................29 Page 3 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com What to do on your website .............................................................................32 Your Takeaway ...............................................................................................33 Basic Optimization Summary ..............................................................................34 Advanced Optimization.................................................................. 35 Test individual URLs for the landing pages.........................................................36 What to do on your website .............................................................................37 Your Takeaway ...............................................................................................37 Split test landing pages.......................................................................................38 What to do on your website .............................................................................38 Your Takeaway ...............................................................................................39 Upselling to Increase Your Revenue and Rocket Your Profit..............................40 Do you want fries with that? ............................................................................40 Would you like to Supersize That? ..................................................................41 What to do on your website .............................................................................42 Your Takeaway ...............................................................................................42 Another Way to Double Your Revenue: Increasing the Lifetime Customer Value ............................................................................................................................43 What to do on your website .............................................................................43 Your Takeaway ...............................................................................................44 The More You Tell, the More You Sell ................................................................45 What to do on your website .............................................................................45 Your Takeaway ...............................................................................................45 How Fast Can YOU Spend A Million Dollars? ....................................................46 What to do on your website .............................................................................46 More to Come -- Expert Optimization ........................................... 47 Page 4 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Taguchi and MultiVariable Testing......................................................................47 Using Secret Google Info To Customize Your Landing Pages for Every Visitor .47 More Effective Layout .........................................................................................47 In Closing ........................................................................................ 48 Page 5 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com About the Author Mark Widawer is an Internet Marketer and Google Adwords Qualified Professional. Mark's AskAboutAdwords programs help Adwords users learn more about the right ways to run Adwords effectively, and his Keyword TurboCharger keyword program help users discover new traffic for their websites and those elusive one-penny clicks that you often hear about but seldom see. Mark has been working on the internet and with electronic commerce since 1995, when he was with the Los Angeles Times, and he ran his first payper-click marketing campaigns in 2003. He failed miserably. Since then he has studied with Perry Marshall and other top marketers, practiced, and became incredibly successful at creating a system for running Pay Per Click campaigns that focuses on predictive keyword creation, compelling ad copy, effective landing pages, and extreme and constant measurement and testing. Mark and his staff help their clients by managing their Adwords campaigns in his Autopilot program, or he Coaches his clients in his Copilot Coaching program, and something brand new which he is going to announce publicly for the first time on this call. Perry Marshall, Alex Mandossian, and David Garfinkel all refer clients to Mark and his team, with good reason. Mark has many websites related to internet marketing, but to learn more about Mark you can start with www.AskAboutAdwords.com and www.TrafficAndConversion.com. You can reach Mark at [email protected] Page 6 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Introduction Before you spend your first nickel sending traffic to your website using Google Adwords or any other Pay Per Click or targeted lead method, you need to know that your website is going to be able to convert your flood of new visitors to leads or sales. Too many times, people think they are going to make their millions with Google Adwords. They are convinced that all they have to do is get a thousand people to visit their site, and they'll certainly sell or convert a few hundred. They'll quickly start up their campaign using very general and expensive keywords, drive several thousand people to their site, and sell to no one. They are now out hundreds or thousands of dollars, weeks of time, their optimism is dashed, and they are left with a big bill from Google on their high interest credit card. Hope and Prayer are no way to run a business. There are countless resources to learn how to set up a Google Adwords campaign. Perry Marshall has the most popular resource on the internet. His Definitive Guide to Google Adwords is, in fact, the definitive guide. You can't do much better than investing in his materials. You'll also benefit greatly from reading more specific works on running Adwords campaigns, including the AskAboutAdwords teleseminar and ebook series, of which this ebook is a part. But the book you are reading now has little to do with how to set up campaigns and adgroups, selecting keywords, or managing your account. It has everything to do, however, with multiplying the effectiveness of every penny you spend in your Adwords campaign. This ebook is all about preparing your website to receive the massive traffic that Google Adwords can send to your site so that you can start making withdrawals from your own private, gold-filled ATM. Adwords remains the most effective, cost efficient, quick and massive method of driving traffic to your website. You won't find anywhere on this planet a method of driving more targeted traffic to your site. If you're not familiar with how it works, imagine this Advertising Fantasy: You sell Travel Packages to Hawaii. In the past, you've advertised in newspapers. You'd select a newspaper that targets the area you want to find clients. Then you pick which section of that newspaper you think would be most effective. And you pay. Then you hope that someone who happens to want to travel to Hawaii actually lands on the page that contains your ad. If Adwords were a newspaper, it would work this way. Page 7 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com You tell the newspaper "I want my ad to appear every time someone thinks of traveling to Hawaii". They say "OK". Five minutes later, a father in Detroit thinks to himself "I think it would be great to take the family on a trip". He turns the page, and your ad appears. A single woman in New York thinks to herself "I just have to get out of this cold weather". She opens turns the page and sees your ad. Grandma and Grandpa are having a chat over breakfast, thinking about that big trip to Hawaii they never took. They sip their coffee, open the newspaper, and your ad appears. In every case, the magical newspaper serves up the ads that are most relevant to the thoughts and desires of your readers. And the magic newspaper ONLY charges you when your prospects pick up the phone to call. How much business would YOU have if your advertising worked this way? Well, this magic newspaper does exist, and it's called Google Adwords. There's no other advertising method on the planet that works as well, in exactly this way. People who previously relied on traditional offline advertising, word of mouth or organic search results have seen sales skyrocket by millions after they start running Adwords campaigns for their existing business. Other people start businesses that run exclusively on Adwords. Many of my own clients spend $1,000 to $5,000 per month on Adwords. And some spend much more. Why? Because it works. But none of this success is possible unless you know that when you spend a dollar with Google, you'll get more than a dollar out of your website. If that doesn't happen, you'll eventually go out of business. Sometimes my new clients ask us to develop sites for them that are "pretty" and that have lots of Flash. Sites like this tend to feed the owner's ego more than their wallet. Pretty sites just don't sell as well as sites that have been tested and tweaked. Just take a look at Amazon.com. There are thousands of websites that are prettier than Amazon, but few (if any) sell more. The site is constantly being tested and improved, and every last percent of success is sucked from those pages. When Amazon makes a change, they do it based on testing and research, not on what someone thinks will work better. Page 8 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Making a site that's pretty isn't critical to selling. In fact, it may hurt sales. What people like has little to do with what sells. An offline example: Robert Cialdini, among the most respected educators on the topic of Influence, likes to tell the story about the man who led the protest against the Coca Cola company when they introduced New Coke. He did media interviews, arranged boycotts, and generally made a lot of noise. All of this, even though in blind taste test after taste test, much to his own dismay, he repeatedly preferred the flavor of New Coke to Old. His protests continued, even after those tests. The lesson here? People don't always act consistent with their likes and dislikes. There are often other motivations. This ebook is a shortcut to help you set up your site properly to receive targeted Adwords traffic. If your site can't convert Adwords traffic, it's unlikely to convert other less efficient, less targeted traffic. Whether you implement some or all of these methods, your work is just beginning. You must test, tweak and repeat until you've also sucked every last cent from your traffic. Google Adwords, and Internet Marketing in general, is not an event. It's a process. This ebook is divided into two sections. Don't have time? The Basic section contains the Minimum requirements to help ensure you won't be wasting your money when you drive traffic to your site with Adwords. It provides basic layout and conversion methods, and some beginnerlevel testing recommendations. The Advanced section virtually ensures your path to a positive ROI, and recommends more comprehensive measurement and testing so that results can improve more rapidly. It takes more work, but it's worth it. Future Bonus: The Expert section will be added in a later version of this ebook, due to be released by December 15, 2005. When complete, it will accelerate the improvement of your site greatly. Its methods make the most out of each and every visitor. Each recommendation not only increases your sales, but gives you immediate feedback on how to improve your page. Page 9 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Prerequisites I'll assume you already have the ability and knowledge to update your website. If you don't, then find a webmaster to do this for you. Any capable webmaster should be able to handle all of the techniques in this ebook. Many of the recommendations can be done with a minimum of work. Some don't even require you change anything on your site. 1ShoppingCart is referenced throughout this ebook because it has within it a fantastic collection of tools to help the online marketer. You can save hundreds or thousands of dollars by simply using 1ShoppingCart for your online store. If you don't have it yet, I encourage you to take a look at it. You should also have an Adwords account. Many of these strategies will work with other Pay Per Click systems, and will even help optimize your pages for more general traffic too. Still, Adwords provides extremely targeted traffic. Concentrate on selling to Adwords traffic before you try to sell to other traffic. It's a much easier path. Page 10 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Basic Optimization Strategies These basic optimization strategies are the minimum requirements to ensure you won't be wasting your money when you drive traffic to your site with Adwords. They also provide a basic measurement of results and your campaign's effectiveness. Beyond ensuring that you won't be wasting your own money, the real important thing here, at least form your visitor's perspective, is that you will also be respectful of their time and their attention. That means giving them the information they want as quickly as possible, helping them as much as you can, and making it EASY for them to buy from you. DON'T put things in their way that make it harder or distracting to buy or opt in on your website. Respect your visitors and they will respect you back. And they'll pay their respects with their dollars. Page 11 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Targeted Landing pages If someone is searching for Kodak DX7590 Camera, don't take him to the home page of your mega store. Take him to the Kodak DX7590 page. It's harder and it takes more work, but it's an entirely worthwhile investment in time. Look at it this way. . . 1) Your prospect will subconsciously realize that you value your own time more than his. That will translate into resentment on at least some level. And when you are trying to get someone to buy from you, every little element in your favor is going to help. 2) Some Google searchers will purposely NOT click on an ad. They will type in the URL they see in the ad. They do this because some people fear being tracked, or they fear cookies. Some people are generally distrustful and type in just about everything. 3) Not everyone buys right away. In fact, most don't. So making your URL easily understandable and memorable is a great advantage for repeat visitors. Besides, if you don't make it memorable, you're almost forcing them to search for your product again at a later time just to find the page they've already been to. And that means you'll be paying twice for the same visitor, and that's not good at all. It's hard enough to get someone to your website in the first place. It's even harder to get them to buy once they are there. Why make it harder for them? So send your users to the exact page they deserve. What to do on your website: If you don't have pages for individual products already, create them. Then send users there directly. Create on your website an actual directory path that tells the user you are taking them EXACTLY to the page they want. Give them the confidence that they are only one click away from the information they are looking for. Here's how: 1) Let the user know that you've taken the time to make it easy for him. So when you build your directory structure, don't make this directory path a bunch of gibberish. Have a legible directory structure that a human being, as well as a computer, can understand. That means don't set up your pages and directories so they are cryptic and hard for a person of reasonable intelligence to read and understand. Make it English. So instead of setting up your website with directories like this: http://www.mywebsite.com/x/digcam/sku12321 Page 12 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com you might consider making it something more legible like this: http://www.mywebsite.com/kodakdx7590 2) If your landing pages are coded cryptically, such as if the pages are being built from data in a database, like this: http://www.mywebsite.com/products.php?i=1232&desc=kodak%20easysh are%20dx7590&cat=7890&mode=std&typ=12 you've got exactly the same problem as before, only worse. First, this URL can't even fit in the display url space of your Adwords ad. Second, even if it did, no one would know it was leading them to where they wanted to go without a bit of study. And like I said, there's no reason to make them work any harder than they need to. Look, you really WANT to let your user know he's going to exactly the right place. The solution to these two problems is NOT to send them to your home page. The solution is to send them to simple, legible page names. But let's say your website is already set up with an extensive and complicated directory structure, or that your shopping cart is built on a database (as it should be). What can you do about it without totally re-engineering your website? Simple. Create redirect pages. A redirect page is a page whose only purpose is to immediately send the user to another page. That means you can have someone type http://www.mywebsite.com/kodak7590 and they can actually be sent to http://www.mywebsite.com/x/digcam/sku12321 Here's how you do it: First, there are three bits of information you need to have before you start 1) What scripting language does your website use? The three most common are ASP, PHP and none! But even if you have none, don't worry. There's still a way to get this done. 2) What is the path you want to create? (ie www.mywebsite.com/kodak7590) 3) What is the actual destination you want to send the visitor to? (ie http://www.mywebsite.com/x/digcam/sku12321) Page 13 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Here's what to do if you use ASP: Create a directory called /kodak7590 In that directory, create a plain text file called "default.asp" In that file, type the following: <% response.redirect ("http://www.mywebsite.com/x/digcam/sku12321") %> Save the file. That's it! Now, when a user goes to http://www.mywebsite.com/kodak7590, they'll instead be shown http://www.mywebsite.com/x/digcam/sku12321. Here's what to do if you use PHP: Create a directory called /kodak7590 In that directory, create a plain text file called "index.php" In that file, type the following: <?php header("Location: http://www.mywebsite.com/x/digcam/sku12321"); exit; ?> Save the file. That's it! Now, when a user goes to http://www.mywebsite.com/kodak7590, they'll instead be shown http://www.mywebsite.com/x/digcam/sku12321. Here's what to do if you use neither: Create a directory called /kodak7590 In that directory, create a plain text file called "index.htm" or "index.html", depending your web server. <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://www.mywebsite.com/x/digcam/sku12321"> </head> </html> Save the file. Same deal. . . when the user goes to the /kodak7590 page, he'll be sent to the actual product page. Page 14 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com NOTE: If you don't understand this, DON'T WORRY! ANY webmaster can do this for you, and they probably know this information already. Your Takeaway: Give your visitors what they want. Give your visitors confidence they are going to get what they want, even before they get to your website. Make it easy for them to buy Page 15 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Continue the Conversation If you've read any information about Google Adwords at all, you've probably heard the phrase "Continue the conversation". What that means is that your prospect has already gone to Google and typed in "web hosting". He's looked at a number of Adwords ads about web hosting. He's clicked your ad about web hosting. Please, take him to a page about web hosting. But what if he used a keyword like "secure web hosting"? If your web page talks about how inexpensive and competitive your hosting service is, there's not a very good chance you'll get the visitor to accept your offer. You've got to send him to a page all about "secure web hosting". What to do on your website: The best thing to do is to set up separate pages for the individual selling points you are advertising for. You may very well be advertising for both "cheap web hosting" and "secure web hosting" in Adwords, but if you are running your Adwords campaign properly, you aren't putting those keywords in the same adgroup and using the same ad for both themes. Similarly, you should have separate adgroups and ads for those two themes. And you should have separate landing pages as well. In other words, write a compelling case for the security of your web hosting service. Now, it's not unreasonable that someone who wants "secure" web hosting also wants it "cheap". So take this easy path to covering all the bases. Write one good page that talks all about your excellent web hosting service. Create one paragraph that highlights each of your excellent features. Then, copy the page for each theme and change the lead paragraph as appropriate. Write a good headline (see "Resources" section) to match the theme. Name the page consistent with the theme, too. Now, you've got a targeted landing page with a minimum of effort. Page 16 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Use The Google Conversion Code On Your Thank You Page "I know that 50% of my advertising is wasted. I just don't know which half," said retail guru John Wanamaker in 1886. It's funny, but it's often very true. Especially of Google Adwords newbies. Fortunately, Google provides an absolutely FREE tool to help you know exactly which of your keywords is working, and which ones aren't. There are other tracking methods and systems, but Google's is free and accurate. On the downside, it doesn't update right away. . .it sometimes takes a few hours, but it's plenty good for assessing all of your traffic up until the prior day. It's an easy way to begin tracking for the first time. The Google Conversion code is a little bit of javascript code that you paste into the page a user goes to once they've done an action you want to track. So, if you want to track optins to your autoresponder, then put the Google Conversion Code on your page that says "Thanks for signing up". If you want to track sales, put the Google Conversion Code on your "Thanks for buying" page. What to do on your website: First, locate a spot on the Thank You page to put the code. When it runs, it simply says "Google Site Stats". It's very inobtrusive and is hardly noticeable. You can even specify a background color for the message. Typically, the best place to put the code is at the bottom of the page, centered. (Add screen shot of bottom of KTC page here) Take a look at my own signup page at Keyword Turbocharger.com Log into your Google Account and click the "Conversion Tracking link" Page 17 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com On the left, choose the "Get Conversion Page Code" link. Click the kind of thing you want to track. Your choices are: • Sale • Lead • Signup • View of a Key Page Then click the Continue button. Page 18 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com On the next page, you'll choose the appearance of the Site Stats text. You can select the background colors and the layout (single or double line). Make your choices based on what would look best on your web page. I typically use a single line with a white background, but it doesn't affect anything at all but aesthetics. Page 19 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Click the Continue button once you've made your choices. On the very next page, Google will give you your own conversion code. Click in the text box with the code, and copy and paste it into your Thank You page. Make sure you get all of the code. The first line will always read: <!-- Google Code for Lead Conversion Page --> And the last line will be: </noscript> Once this is on your Thank You page, all of your clicks will be tracked and reported to you in your Adwords account adjacent to each of your keywords. You'll now have two additional columns of information. Conversion Rate: This is the percentage of people who took action on your website out of all of those who clicked. So, if you had 100 impressions, 25 clicks, and 10 actions, you'd have a 40% conversion rate. Page 20 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Cost/Conversion: This is your cost per conversion. If you spent 50 cents for each of those clicks, and you had to get 25 clicks to get 10 actions, then your cost per conversion is 25 * 50 cents / 10 = $1.25. Check your conversion figures daily. Your goal is to make sure that your cost per conversion is less than your value per conversion. In other words, if you are tracking sales, and you get 2 sales of your $30 ebook for every 100 visitors, your value per visitor is 60 cents (2*$30 / 100 = 0.60). So, you can spend up to 60 cents per click before you start to lose money. Your Takeaway Here's why this is important: You need to have objective measurements of the success (or lack of success) of your web marketing. It should be very clear to you if you how well you are doing, and the effect of specific changes to your marketing program. Page 21 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Define Your Goal. What Action Do You Want Your Visitor To Take? We had a client for our Adwords Autopilot just recently who came from the "old school" of advertising. His stated goal didn't match what he was measuring, and it got us all into trouble. Here's what happened. All he wanted was for people to call him on the phone. That's an okay goal, because not every business is truly an online business. Now, his was a business that certainly could have taken advantage of some online automation for capturing leads, entering them into autoresponder sequences, and even taking deposits for the Auto Warranties he was selling. But he didn't want to do that. But all he wanted were phone calls. Each time we suggested an actual opt0in form, he would reply that he didn't want to be pen pals with anyone. He just wanted to sell his service. His business operated from 9am to 5pm central time. So, he had a "contact me" form on his site, buried on the Contact page. (You had to click "Contact us" on the menu to get there.) He counted phone calls received and contact forms filled out, but that is not what he was measuring. What he measured were how many people entered in a little bit of data into an Auto Warranty Estimate form. The form only asked for the manufacturer and year of the vehicle. It did not ask for the name or email address of the prospect. So, using the Adwords conversion code, he measured the entries of data onto that form. And that's what he wanted us to optimize. We managed to drop his cost per click by more than half (from about $5 to a little over $2), and drove more targeted traffic to his site. And although we had plenty of people filling out that form, there wasn't an appreciable increase in phone calls. What to do on your website Build your website in such a way that visitors are led down a straight line in the direction that benefits them most and make you money. Your Takeaway Measure what is important and that you want to improve. Page 22 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Opt-in form to an Autoresponder placed prominently This may come as a shock to you, but 99% of all of your web traffic isn't going to buy anything from you on their first visit. Expect this. Now, your number may vary from this a little, but the point here is that an overwhelming majority of your traffic is there to learn, browse, and research your topic. Even if you manage to sell to 5% of your traffic, that still means that 19 out of every 20 visitors to your site aren't going to buy from you. But let's assume that the number for your figure is actually 99%. Looked at another way, 99% of all of your marketing dollars are wasted. Would you like to reclaim at least part of your investment in this traffic? Here's how. Seth Godin wrote about this in his book "Permission Marketing". It's also called "relationship marketing" and "drip marketing". The way it works is this: Trade some information of value for the visitor's name and email address. Get his permission to send him the information he asked for, and other related information. That's it, nothing more. Note: This is NOT spam. You are specifically receiving his permission to send him this information that he is interested in, and he is granting you that permission. On your website, you can offer a white paper, an ebook, a multi-part course delivered via email (called mini-course), or even a free registration for a teleseminar. Put the signup form (called an "opt-in form") on your website near the top, well highlighted, and very clear. Make an offer to your visitor for this free information. All he has to do is enter his name and email address and they will receive the information via email. Take a look at my website at TrafficAndConversion.com, and you'll see how this works. Here's a screen shot of my home page. Page 23 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Here are some important points to know about adding an opt-in form to your site: Have something of value to offer. Newsletters don't draw much attention any more. . . people don't need "news" from people who typically care more about themselves and their own business than the people they are writing to. So, make sure your whitepaper, free course, or other offer is content-rich with information designed to appeal directly to your target audience. And call it something besides a newsletter. Take a moment now to think about what you can offer of value to your prospects. Page 24 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Use an automatic system for supplying the content Automatic emailing systems are called "autoresponders". If you don’t already a shopping cart, you just can't beat the integrated features of 1ShoppingCart. It's truly a marvelous piece of technology. Special Recommendation! There are tons of shopping carts that you can buy or subscribe to, from free carts with no support all the way up to IBM's enterprise level solutions. But the one thing you'll find most in common with all of those is that they are made by technical people for technical people. 1ShoppingCart was made for marketing people by marketing people. Rob Bell, the owner of 1ShoppingCart, is a marketer. As a result, 1ShoppingCart has numerous marketing features built in, including a fantastic autoresponder and broadcast system. It also has a very simple method of adding the signup form code to your web page. That's exactly what I did with the form you just saw. I used 1ShoppingCart's form tool to create the form, then just changed the color and added some text. If you haven't seen 1ShoppingCart yet, it's definitely worth a look. As of the date of this writing, 1ShoppingCart is extending all of my readers a free month of service. If nothing else, you can check out how the Autoresponder system works. 1ShoppingCart will come in handy for a few of the other steps in this ebook as well. Claim your free trial here: 1ShoppingCart One other option for you, if you already have a shopping cart system and you just want to add an autoresponder system to it. Take a look at AWeber. It's top notch if all you need is the autoresponder. Whatever system you are using, place the opt-in form above the fold. That means put it on the screen in an area that your visitors will see immediately and without scrolling. Top Right or Top Left on the screen is usually best. Both 1ShoppingCart and Aweber have tools to help you make and place the forms on your website. Use a Hover Pop Another great way to present your opt-in form is to use a popup window. Popups are annoying, but they work! Page 25 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com However, this is a problem with Google because it is against their policy to send Adwords users to a page with a popup window. Even pop-under windows (windows that appear only when you leave a website) are not allowed. Fortunately, 1ShoppingCart has a way around that. Commonly called a "Hover Pop", they call it a Strategic Popup. It's a little bit of high tech magic that looks like a popup ad, but is actually part of the current web page. Google has no problem with these, and they are even more effective than popups. Why? Because not only has Google disallowed them, but popup blockers are now standard on many browsers and toolbars (including Google's). These Strategic Popups cannot be blocked by popup blockers, so your popup form will be seen more often. In 1ShoppingCart, go make your form using the Form tab, then click the Popups tab and choose Strategic Popup. Paste your form code into the window and follow the prompts. Put the code they give you on your web page. Aweber has a similar feature, but they call them "Pop-overs". You'll find it on the "Leads | Web Form Generator" page. Assure email privacy People are nervous and suspicious when they visit websites. With all of the spam, spyware, viruses and identity theft, it's hard to blame them. You can't do much about the rest of the internet, but you *can* control your own little corner of it. On your optin form, assure your visitors that you will keep their information secure and not share it with anyone outside of your organization. My friend Alex Mandossian likes to use this text: "We respect your email privacy". He adds: "We will never sell, barter, or rent your email address to any unauthorized third party. Period." Whether you use this exact text or some variation, assure your visitors of the security of their information. It will actually increase your opt-in rate. Optin button text Arguably, it's one of the most popular words on the entire internet, appearing 805 on million web pages as of this writing, according to Google. Page 26 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com The regular button label you see on web forms is "submit". But what does that mean? It doesn't mean anything except "send" in a very bland, boring, and technical way. Take the opportunity to inspire and encourage your visitors. Replace that "submit" button with a "Tell me more!" button, or a "Yes! Sign Me Up!" button. Get the idea? Thank You page After signing up, your prospect will see your Thank You page. This page will typically Thank the prospect for signing up for your autoresponder. Use this opportunity to elevate her excitement even more, and even upsell to an actual sale. According to Robert Cialdini in his book "Influence, the Power of Persuasion" (a fascinating book for any marketer), when someone says Yes to you, they are more likely to say Yes again. So, your thank you page is an excellent place to repeat your sales message, and even include an added bonus. This has a tendency to tip the scales in your favor. Follow up According to Yanik Silver, author of Autoresponder Magic, 80% of people who inquire about a product or service will buy it within one year of their initial inquiry. However, more than 90% of the time, they don't buy from the same company that they made their initial contact with. Amazing, isn't it? What can you do to encourage sales of your product or service, AND make sure that those sales go to you? Autoresponders are the answer. So make sure your Autoresponder sequence is effective and accomplishes these five things: • Demonstrates (not claims) that you are an expert • Educates your prospect about your field • Helps your prospect self-qualify herself • Helps your prospect know, like, and trust you • Encourages her to BUY your product Page 27 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com By far the best material I've ever seen on the power of autoresponders is Yanik's Autoresponder Magic ebook. It is filled with actual autoresponder templates you can copy and use. If you don't know where to start when building your own autoresponder sequence, check out his Autoresponder Magic product. It's a great bargain (you won't believe the price). What to do on your website Sign up for 1ShoppingCart or Aweber, depending on your personal situation. Both are excellent, but 1ShoppingCart has so many amazing marketing tools built into it, it's become my favorite. Create your initial offer material, and several follow ups. Make the sequence at least twice as long as your normal sales cycle. Add the optin form to your site. Build a Thank You page that reinforces your message and once again asks for the sale. Your Takeaway Autoresponders teach your prospect how to be your customer. Helps them self qualify. . . don't be afraid of scaring people away. They either do or don't need your product or service. Those who do will follow your lead. Those who don't weren't good prospects anyway. Autoresponders systemetize your operations. Actually reduces the amount of work you need to do in prospecting, and increases the amount of selling you get to do. Autoresponders are the key to recapturing the value of your otherwise wasted marketing expense. Don't leave out the autoresponders! They are the key to building your online business. Page 28 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Reduce distracting elements One of my real pet peeves about many websites is the inclusion of distracting graphic and multimedia elements on a landing page. Your goal is to get someone to either buy from you or sign up on your autoresponder. That's it. The main thing that a sales website should NOT be is a tool to fulfill the owner's ego, and I see this far too often. What's worse is when an unsuspecting website owner engages a designer with a big ego, and he ends up with a website that fulfills the designer's ego. Back in 2000, I worked at a web design and marketing company. The owner had no ego at all about his website. He just wanted it to look businesslike and respectable. His web designer was a red-headed ivy league graduate whose primary value was design, not marketing. As a result, when he redesigned the website, it was built entirely in Flash, with lots of bouncing and tumbling graphical elements that seemed to float in mid-air. The images occupied roughly one third of the screen, with thick bands of white space above and below the images. It was beautiful. It was a technological and graphical marvel. But it was a horrible business website. Here's a screen shot of that old site. (I kid you not.) Page 29 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com I'm sure the website had nothing to do with the demise of the company just two months later, but it sure didn't help the company get more business, and that can't be too far from the actual purpose of having the website in the first place. Don't make this mistake on your website. Please, follow these six simple tips: 1) Don't build your website entirely in Flash. It's expensive. It's cool. It's beautiful. But it also is hard to update on the fly, and creates web pages that are totally invisible to search engines. You usually can't even send targeted pay per click traffic to a specific page inside the site, either. It's a big waste. Don't do it. 2) Small, independent flash elements are okay for hover buttons and other small uses. 3) Don't present your website text in Graphics. I once had a client whose advertising agency was responsible for the look of my client's website. I was excited to work with an advertising agency because of all of the clients it could potentially refer. But as soon as I saw the agency's website, I knew we were in for trouble. The entire site's text was rendered into graphical images. As a result, none of it was visible to the search engines. It could also (like the Flash site) not be updated quickly and easily. If the Page 30 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com pages were long (they weren't in this case) they would take longer to load. Here's a screen shot of that agency's site. I've obscured the name of the site to protect their identify (My goal isn't to slam someone as much as it is to educate you). This happened because the ad agency held the image as a higher value than actual sales. Be careful when working with an advertising agency. Make sure they are up to speed on the value of search engines, pay per click marketing, and the principles of direct response. (I am working with one of those more progressive advertising agencies now. Write me at [email protected] if you are in need of an excellent agency.) 4) Avoid distracting music and sound elements. If you think that someone wants to hear space-invader sound effects when they hover over your menu buttons, you're wrong. They also don't want to be assaulted with music or other loud noises, especially if your site is one that someone is likely to visit while at work (cubicles don't do much to prevent sound from traveling). If you are going to use sound, have it be something that will extend your marketing message. We often put up "Ask" survey pages, and on those pages, we often use Audio to provide additional information to the visitor to encourage him to fill out the form. . We almost always test the effect of having the audio start automatically versus having it start when someone clicks a "Play" button. Usually, we get more responses on the website with the optional audio. I once installed audio on a landing page and tracked an 80% increase in optins. That may have been unusual, and I haven't been able to repeat it since, but I keep trying (and regularly come close). Page 31 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com If you are considering putting audio on your landing pages, take a look at Audio Generator. They make it incredibly easy to add audio to a website, and even provide the custom buttons to place on your site. You can see and hear it in action here. What to do on your website Ask a friend to look at your new website. Watch his eyes and his face as he first sees it. Watch how his eyes track across and around the page. Watch his eyes squint, or wander. Watch his expression change. Take notes, then ask him what his experience was. Encourage him to be very candid with you so you can do your best to improve your site. Page 32 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com What you want to learn about most are which elements distracted him from doing what you asked him to do. If he dwells particularly long at a photo you added for "atmosphere", or has to scroll around the screen too much to do what you want him to do, then you've got some changes to make. In the event you don't have someone you know and trust to do this website review for you, take a look at my QuickLaunch service, which includes this exact kind of analysis, and about 26 other important points. Your Takeaway When my clients start talking to me about the design of their new website, they often tell me how pretty or attractive they want it to look. Or, they talk about specific elements they want to include, such as flash, sound, or certain images. I answer them this way "Given the choice between having a website that sells, and a website that looks good, which would you prefer?" Page 33 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Basic Optimization Summary The one thing you need to keep in mind, over everything else, is that your goal is to make it easy for people to buy from you. Don't put obstacles in their way. Allow the relationship to progress naturally. You don't often hear of a man and a woman meeting for the first time, and a proposal of marriage being made moments later. The same is true for business relationships. There is a natural progression from strangers, to curiosity, to familiarity, to commitment. Sometimes that takes time. And, as Yanik Silver says, it can take up to a year. I have a client that manufactures ERP software. They've had a typical website up until now, which spends a great deal of time talking about the company and their offerings, and almost nothing about their clients and prospects. We're working now on changing all of that. In doing that, we expect to build a list of prospects of considerable size. And over time, we expect this list will take in hundreds of suspects, turn them into prospects, and eventually into clients. It's going to take a long time, perhaps a year or more, to fully implement all of the strategies we are going to recommend. But that year is going to pass one way or another. It's much better for the year to deliver buyers for my clients $30,000 software package along the way. Page 34 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Advanced Optimization These more advanced optimization techniques virtually guarantee a thunderous response to your quality product or service. The general goal here is to acquire new knowledge and then implement that new knowledge in your marketing. So, it should be no surprise that there is a lot of testing going on in this level. I have a standard answer if someone suggests something new to try on a web page. If the suggestion is not directly contrary to what we know will not work (ie an all-flash website) and has a low cost to implement (ie a specific headline or offer text), my pat answer is not "Yes" or "No". My answer is "It's worth testing". Testing is the backbone of increasing sales. "What you measure you can improve", my friend Alex Mandossian is fond of saying. "And what you measure and publicize, you can improve exponentially." Imagine measuring, testing and improving your Adwords keyword clickthrough rate by just 25%. That means you're increasing your clickthrough rate from 2% to 2.5%. Is that an achievable goal? Sure it is. Now imagine you've done the same for for the Optin form on your landing page. Let's say you get 25% instead of 20% to sign up. Certainly, an extra 5% can't be too far out of reach. Now let's do the same with your sales conversion. So you now sell to 5% instead of 4%. Your total increase in sales, as a result of increasing each of these measurements by 25% is about a 95% increase in your sales. In most online business -- especially those selling information products -- that represents almost double the profit! This section is about doing exactly that. Page 35 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Test individual URLs for the landing pages Last year I had a coaching client who made outrageous videos of four by four trucks and other odd vehicles crawling over huge rocks and mountains. It's something far from my own experience, but these movies were a blast to watch. You just gotta wonder what made these people want to drive up a 60% rock face, wheels spinning, smoke billowing, and dust and debris flying out from behind their trucks. The name of his website was the name of his production company, which was something like "XYZ productions". He had been running Adwords ads and barely getting any clicks. In several months of having his website up, he had sold exactly ONE video. Things weren't going well. I made my first suggestion to him: Go buy another domain name more appropriate to what your audience is looking for. So he went out and bought the domain name Extreme4x4videos.com. His Click Through Rate immediately shot up from 1.1% to 4.0%. His cost per click went down by an inverse amount, and now he's finally making sales. Too often, we don't take advantage of the resources at our disposal, and that was what Mike was doing. Adwords Ads are four lines long: One line of 25 characters, and three lines of 35 characters. That last line is the website's URL, and it represents a fourth of the impact of your ad. In fact, it's the second most influential piece of copy in your Ad. A traditional advertising agency would want to promote your "brand" (as represented by your URL), no matter what the level of success. If there were low sales, keep on pressing in the same direction! Well, if it's one thing I've learned about Internet Marketing, no matter how far up the ladder you climb, it just doesn't matter if you've got it pitched against the wrong wall. Take some time right now to figure out if your website's name is the RIGHT name for your company. Think about your product or service from your client's perspective, not yours. If your URL is now xyzplumbling.com, do you think your customer might react better to UnclogMyDrain.com ? If you are an attorney specializing in disability cases, do you think JoeSmithLaw.com is the right name? Page 36 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Or do you think that DisabilityAttorney.com might help people remember you better? What to do on your website Write down at least ten domain names that might apply to your business. Pick the two you think best describe what you do. Go to your favorite registrar (I like Godaddy.com) and buy them. Make sure your domain registrar has the ability to "forward" your domain to another website or URL. Godaddy has this ability. If your registrar doesn't do domain forwarding, either consider switching, or use a service like ZoneEdit, which will allow you to set up domain forwarding. It can get a little complex, which is why GoDaddy is a much better choice, if possible. In other words, you can tell GoDaddy that all traffic that is requested for UnclogMyDrain.com be redirected to xyzplumbing.com. Now, go into your Adwords account and into your top ad group. Delete all but the most popular ad. Then create two new ads, exactly identical to the top ad, except change the URL to the two new domain names you just bought. Google will run each of the three ads in rotation. The ad that gets the most click is for the domain name you should be using in your Ads. At least for now. Run the test again, using this winning domain name and two more, and see which wins. You'll be extremely sure that you're using the best domain name for your website in a short amount of time. You do NOT have to actually change the name of your website if you don't want to. You are just buying a "shadown" domain name for your official domain. Now, if your website gets very popular as a result of this change, you might consider officiallychanging the name of your site. Buy several domain names Build a Thank You page that reinforces your message and once again asks for the sale. Your Takeaway Don’t' suppose you know everything. The ONLY opinion that matters in internet marketing is the one belonging to your customer. Listen to him, not by his words, but by his actions. He'll gladly vote with his wallet, if you let him. Page 37 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Split test landing pages After your click through rate has shot through the roof with the selection of a better domain name, it's time to work on your landing pages. Again, the same theories apply. Let your customer decide what works best. And he will if you give him a chance. We'll do that by split testing your landing pages. The simplest kind of test to run is to split up your traffic between two or more different landing pages and then count which one sells more. That's all that split testing is. (and it's what you just did with your Ads). Getting it set up and running right can be another matter entirely, if you don't know what you are doing. You can buy some split testing software and install it on your website. It's not that hard to do if you know Perl, PHP, ASP or whatever language the software is written in. I had avoided using the 1ShoppingCart's Ad Trackers, which will automatically split test pages for you, for months in favor of building my own programs (which turned out to be not so precise). I felt pretty silly once I saw how easy the Ad Trackers were to use, and how much excellent information they give you. What to do on your website Create two identical landing pages. We'll call them page A and page B. Change just one thing on one of the pages. The headline is usually the most influential factor that determines whether someone will buy or not, so change that on the B page. Set up an Ad Tracker for this test. You'll put the URL for these two pages into the Ad Tracker. 1ShoppingCart will give you a URL for the ad tracker. Modify your Adwords Ads to send traffic to this new URL (enter it as the destination URL). Send traffic to the Ad Tracker until one of the pages makes 30 sales or opt-ins. You can see up-to-the-moment statistics by just clicking on the Ad Tracker in 1ShoppingCart. The page that reaches 30 actions first is the winner. Page 38 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Congratulations! You probably increased your sales by a significant percentage. It's rare that both pages will reach 30 at the same time. It's also rare for them to be close, if you've written a truly unique new headline. But let's not stop there. Repeat the test. The winner from the last test becomes A for the new test. Your goal each time is to be the prior test's winner. In later rounds of testing, try testing your price, your offer text, your PS, or anything you think will be influential in getting people to buy. Your Takeaway Be prepared for a surprise or two along the path of Split Testing. Results don't always turn out the way you expect them to. Just promise yourself that, barring any errors, you'll go with the winning results Page 39 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Upselling to Increase Your Revenue and Rocket Your Profit To maximize the profit you make from each visitor to your site, sell more to each buyer. It's not a revolutionary concept, but it's something that most people thing is hard to do. With the right tools, it's not. Upselling can take two forms, both of which you have probably been exposed to almost every day. Do you want fries with that? The first kind of upsell is to suggest another complementary purchase to one that your customer has just agreed to. Just as the clerk at McDonalds asks if you want fries (this phrase alone has added billions of dollars to McDonald's sales), you can suggest to your customer that he make an additional purchase, too. For example, if you are selling digital cameras, a natural upsell would be a case, a neck strap, and some memory cards. Here's an example of what we did for a client of ours who sells a Backup Sensor called BAK-TALK. (An excellent safety device and convenience, by the way. I have one on my own car.) He upsells to an extended warranty using this page: Page 40 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Many shopping carts don't have an easy way to do this. They just send every buyer back to the catalog page or home page after adding something to their cart. 1ShoppingCart has the ability to send the buyer anywhere on the Internet. Robert Cialdini notes that buyers are most easily influenced to buy something from you when they are already buying something else. They get in the habit of saying yes. That's why it's smart to show your customer a sales page after he opts into your list, and why it's smart to ask for a second sale immediately after the first. Would you like to Supersize That? The second method of upselling is to just upgrade the current purchase itself. So, if someone is wants to purchase the Model 100 digital camera, politely suggesting that they instead by the Model 200 for only $20 more -- especially if it is a good value -- is a good way to increase the value of each sale, and your overall revenues. Page 41 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com You can add a link to your product page with a heading like "Customers who considered this item frequently upgraded to this one:". Or simply "Upgrade to the Model 200 with more memory and a better lens for just $20." What to do on your website Here's how you implement the "Fries" type of upsells on your website, again using 1ShoppingCart as an example. Let's assume you sell iPods. Once someone adds that to their cart you can send them to a page that offers one or more accessories. You'll need the URL for the accessories you want to sell. Click the "Products" tab and then the product you want to upsell after. I this case, it's the iPod. In the Destination URL field, put in the URL for the Accessories page. Click Save. That's it! Now, when a buyer adds the iPod to their cart, and they click "continue shopping", they'll go to the Accessories page. Rather than giving the buyer a choice, would you like to force them to go to the Accessories page? Rather than using the regular "buy me" link for the iPod, use the One-Click BuyMe link instead. It's as simple as that. Your Takeaway Among the most often quoted sales and marketing statistics is that it costs 7 times more to sell to a new customer than to an old one. Whether the number is accurate or not, you can greatly increase your bottom line by upselling on your website. Page 42 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com Another Way to Double Your Revenue: Increasing the Lifetime Customer Value In a prior part of this ebook, we talked about using Autoresponders to capture the wasted traffic that flows into your website every day. That's an excellent use of Autoresponders, but certainly not the only one. Provided that you provide good service at a good value, your most likely customers are your current customers. Even if they didn't "want fries with that" the last time they bought from your site, they certainly will need to eat again. Using the same thinking for your website, how can you help ensure that your customer's next purchase goes to you? Here's how. What to do on your website Earlier we talked about Pre-Sales autoresponders. This step is all about postsales autoresponders. 1ShoppingCart has the ability to add your buyers to an autoresponder automatically. Do this by creating an autoresponder, let's call it "Buyers". Then go to the product page and pick the "Buyers" autoresponder from the Autoresponder drop down. Now that you've got the mechanics of this down, what do you put into the autoresponder messages? Give them information that will be of value to them in any of the following ways; • Maintain their excitement for your product after the purchase. • Give them documentation, or "what to do first" instructions • Teach them how to consume your product. This is especially useful if you sell information products. Then you can refer to particular chapters or areas of your content that you want them to concentrate on. • Ask them for referrals to friends • Ask for testimonials, an extremely powerful persuader on any website (if done right). • Encourage them to continue to use your product. Returns are highest when people buy a product and never use it. Page 43 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com • Deliver bonus materials or information just before the money back guarantee period expires. And promise additional "unadvertised" bonuses for just after the guarantee expires. That will help reduce the number of refund requests you get. • Tell them about other products. Or, if your product gets used up, encourage them to buy more. The bottom line is that you want to keep your store in their mind so that when it comes time to buy again, they remember your URL, and know, like and trust you even more. Remember, Autoresponders in 1ShoppingCart are FREE with most versions of the cart. That means any new sales you get from repeat customers have a ZERO marketing cost. And that increases your Return On Investment of Adwords. Your Takeaway You might be wondering "Why all of this shopping cart stuff in an ebook about Adwords?" The reason is this. The higher your value per visitor, the more you can spend on advertising. The more you spend on (effective) advertising, the more sales you get. The ironic thing is that the more you spend effectively on Google Adwords, the less it will ultimately cost you. You will eventually have such a steamroller business that you can squeeze other advertisers out of the market, raise their cost per click, and lower your own. You'll capture more clicks, and make it harder for your competitors to compete. Ultimately, you make more money because you have the latitude to test, experiment and dominate your market with Adwords. Page 44 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com The More You Tell, the More You Sell Claude Hopkins, in his best selling and ancient book called "Scientific Advertising", says "The more you tell, the more you sell." I like to surround myself with experts, and Hopkins has been quoted on this point thousands of times. The point is that people like to be educated about what they are buying. It's not only because they want to be convinced by you, but they want to convince themselves to buy what you offer. Help your customers buy what you have. Do this by considering a change to your website to a long copy format. This may be tough if you have dozens or hundreds of items. It may even be inappropriate. But, if you have only a few items for sale, teach your prospect as much as you possibly can. What to do on your website It's beyond the scope of this ebook to teach you how to write long copy. One thing I know for sure is that I am not the authority on writing long copy. I can refer you to two people who are. These two men are among the elite of internet copywriting. David Garfinkel is the master copywriting teacher on the planet. His personal mission is to rid the world of bad copy. (We all have our crosses to bear). I'm a student of David's and I know of no one who can teach copy better than he. You can sign up for his free Marketing Letter at his website. But, if you want to have copy written for your website, you can't do much better than Harlan Kilstein. Take a look at his website to see how effective long copy can be. If you aren't ready to dive into your wallet by the time you're half way through reading his letter, you've got icewater in your veins. He's writing copy now for a client of mine, and I've referred him more. He writes extremely compelling copy. Take a look. Your Takeaway Long copy is worth testing! Didn't you buy this book from a page that featured long copy? Page 45 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com How Fast Can YOU Spend A Million Dollars? Try this question on for size: "How fast can I spend a million dollars?". It's fun to ask yourself because the implication is that you have a million dollars to spend. But you can be in a position to ask that question once you learn the two most important numbers in Internet Marketing, and how to use them. These two numbers are your cost per visitor and your value per visitor. The cost per visitor is the average cost to get a visitor to come to your website. The value per visitor is how much, on average, you make from each visitor. Google Adwords traffic represents the most targeted traffic you will ever discover anywhere on the internet. If you learn how to get accurate data from your internet marketing system, you'll be able to turn Adwords and 1ShoppingCart into your own private gold-filled ATM. You can use 1ShoppingCart and Google Adwords to figure out what these two numbers are for your website. What to do on your website Google constantly maintains an Average Cost Per Click for your each Campaign, Ad Group and Keyword. Think of this as your Cost Per Visitor. 1ShoppingCart's ad trackers will track visitors to your site, too. But, they won't know how much you are spending on your traffic. Google gives us that number for its own traffic. Make an Ad Tracker in 1ShoppingCart for your traffic for each Ad Group. Use that as your Destination URL in your Adwords ads in that Ad Group. Now, all of your traffic from that Ad Group will be counted by the Ad Tracker. Each time you get a click, get a lead, or make a sale, 1ShoppingCart will tally the numbers. Just a glance at the Ad Tracker will tell you the magic number you need: The Visitor Value. Compare the Cost Per Click from Adwords to your Visitor value in 1ShoppingCart. The further apart these two numbers are, the more money you are making. And once you discover that you are making more money than your are spending, your next question is "How fast can I spend a million dollars?" But don’t stop there. You can do better. It now becomes your job to improve your landing page using split testing and other methods. Test and measure whatever you do. Keep good records, and you'll soon have your website running on Automatic Pilot. Page 46 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com More to Come -- Expert Optimization Soon to come are some expert optimization secrets for truly preparing your website for maximum profits with Adwords traffic. This section will be added in version 2.0 of this ebook, which all registered buyers will receive for free before December 15, 2005. Taguchi and MultiVariable Testing Imagine running multiple split tests at once, using the same traffic for multiple tests. You'll be able to learn exponentially more from your traffic and about your website using Taguchi Testing. Using Secret Google Info To Customize Your Landing Pages for Every Visitor Few people know how to use the Keyword Substution code in Adwords. Even less know that you can use it in other places besides the headline. You'll learn where and how in the next version of this ebook, including one secret that I've never heard anyone mention at any time anywhere about Adwords. More Effective Layout Certain elements belong in certain spots on the page. A company I know has done extensive research into what goes where, and why. Believe it or not, some fonts work better than others. Some colors work better than others. Copy works together with layout to provide a single unified message to the buyer. All of this takes a significant amount of research. I'll be summarizing for you the six steps to landing page design, and a number of other more advanced and esoteric changes you can make to your website to increase conversions even more. Your free upgrade to the next version of this ebook is coming soon. Watch for it mid- December of 2005. Page 47 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com In Closing One of the magical things about optimizing your website for Adwords traffic is that you can multiply the profits you take home every day without increasing your advertising spending by a penny. It takes just a little bit of knowledge, like what you've just discovered in this ebook. Often, the task is easier than deciding which task to work on. Hopefully, this ebook has helped you on that score, too. I am truly interested in your feedback. There's a bonus waiting for you if you send me feedback, whether good or bad, about your experience with this ebook. So please visit http://www.KeywordTurbocharger.com/testimonials Let me know what you think, and then email me at Feedback@AskAboutAdwords with your comments. I promise a reply, and a bonus gift. Best of success to you. --Mark Widawer http://www.TrafficAndConversion.com http://www.AskAboutAdwords.com/LandingPages Page 48 Copyright © 2005 Mark Widawer and West Hills Web, Inc. All Rights Reserved. www.LandingPageCashMachine.com
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