Affiliate Marketing: A Guaranteed Way To Boost Sales
Anyone serious about affiliate marketing has most likely considered using
Google AdWords. It's a great way to get instant traffic to your site, and if
you know what you're doing you can get that traffic for much less than it's
worth. But most beginners do it all wrong, lose a bunch of money, and then
pause their AdWords accounts without having seen a single sale. There is a
way to avoid this.
Let's say you've got a site that sells iPod accessories. (It doesn't matter
what the product is, really, or if you're an affiliate or a vendor.) Your
site has a separate page for dozens of different iPod accessories, from
carrying cases to battery packs to stereo docks, each with a picture, a
little blurb (preferably a review), and a purchase link. So how do you set
up an AdWords account to sell this stuff? Most people fill up a single ad
group with keywords like "ipods," "ipod accessories," "ipod headphones,"
etc., write an all-purpose ad that sends visitors to their home page, and
then watch as click after click -- all of which cost anywhere from $0.10 to
a couple of bucks -- fails to result in a sale. A few hundred clicks and
you're deep in the hole with nothing to show for it.
Where did you go wrong? First (and most important), you should have
different ad groups for different sets of keywords. For example, an ad group
for headphones, an ad group for cases, an ad group for stereo units, etc.
This makes it easier to write targeted ads for specific products. Someone
looking to buy a pair of headphones is much more likely to click on an ad
for "iPod headphones" than one for a general term like "iPod accessories."
Second, your keywords are all wrong. They're too general. The people who
click on ads for general terms are usually in an early stage of the buying
cycle -- they're just looking around, not really sure what they want to buy
or if they want to buy anything at all. You want to catch people after
they've looked around and decided what they want to buy. To do this, you've
got to focus in on super-specific keywords. Don't just bid on "ipod
headphones"; this term will be far too competitive and the clicks will be
too expensive. Bid on "Etymotic Research ER-6i earphones" or "Shure E4c
earphones." Use the exact name of each product on your site, stick it in its
own ad group with its own highly targeted ad, and send users to the purchase
page for that specific product. The clicks you'll get for these ads will be
ready to buy and may convert hundreds of times better than clicks for more
general terms. Of course, setting up all those different ad groups can take
a lot of time, especially if you're selling hundreds or thousands of
different products.
(Check out my article on dynamic keyword insertion for some tips on how to
automate a big chunk of this task. You'll find the link at the end of this
article.)
Last but not least, you need a good landing page. This is the page a user
will see after he clicks your ad. This should never be your home page.
Someone searching for a specific product doesn't want to find a link for it
only to be taken to a catalog where he'll have to find it all over again.
He'll click the back button before your page finishes loading. If the ad is
for "Shure E4c earphones," for example, the landing page should be your
Shure E4c earphones page. This should contain a headline
-- "Shure E4c Earphones" -- a picture, maybe a star rating, and a blurb or
review, followed by your purchase link. That's it.
No AdSense ads, no banners -- no "traffic leaks," in other words. It should
be very clear what you want the user to do:
you want him to see that he's on the right page (by reading the headline and
looking at the picture), read about the product (thus confirming that, yes,
he wants it), and then follow your link to buy it. Don't give him any other
options.
Set up your AdWords accounts following this blueprint, and you can't lose.
With paid clicks, it's all about quality over quantity. (Would you rather
get 300 clicks and no sales, or 60 clicks and 10 sales?) You won't get as
much traffic this way, but the clicks will be cheaper and more targeted, and
your conversion rates will go from abysmal to awe-inspiring, just like that.
About The Author: Ryan Cole runs
http://www.theinternetmarketingblog.org. To learn more about affiliate
marketing through Google AdWords, check out his
http://www.theinternetmarketingblog.org/2006/08/30/chris-mcneeneys-adwords-m
iracle/
