I use no-nonsense and established methodologies that I have tested for YEARS to improve the bottom line of my clients
The truth is, pay per click can be confusing, especially for beginners who don’t know the tactics to apply at every stage of their advertising campaign.
If you’re looking to drive targeted clicks to your business and become successful at it, there’s one aspect of a campaign which controls everything. Since many companies spend a large part of their budget on PPC advertising, it’s important to maximize ad spend to get a better ROI.
Before I let you in on this secret, do you know that you could select the best keywords, write the perfect ad, and generate clicks at a reduced cost, and still struggle to get good results from your ad spend?
Has this ever happened to you? What could be the cause?
If your strategy isn’t working, it’s obvious that you have not added this powerful element to the mix. It’s what moves the needle and ensures that your ad performs at its best.
So what’s the answer? …Ad Scent
In this article, I’ll explain to you what Ad Scent means, how to ensure that your PPC ads are created on this premise, and how to improve conversions, reduce CPC, and more.
In PPC advertising, the landing page and the Ad Copy work together. Therefore, they are expected to be congruent in everything. Ad Scent is the concept of matching your ad copy (including text and banner ads) with your landing page elements.
Of course, during landing page optimization you should improve your structure, design, call to action, and copy. But all of these will be a waste of time if the landing page doesn’t “scent” with the Ad copy. Here’s a bad scent match campaign:
They don’t match at all. Different copy, different logo color, different image, image displacements, and more. Don’t run a PPC ad like Insightly.
Worse, have you ever clicked on a link that promised to give you a free ebook about customer retention, and you end up on a blogging site?
In this case, we say it “stinks.”
Often times, the missing element in a landing page is the “scent.” Here’s a perfect example of a scented campaign from the Highrise remarketing ad and their landing page.
They match, right?
Same CTA button design, color, and placement, same copy and design, same girl.
There’s a coordination between the elements on the banner ad, as well as on the landing page.
That’s what scent is all about.
In the rest of this article, we’ll cover what you can do to maintain a strong scent—and have a tailored landing page for each ad you plan to run.
But first…
Before we discuss what campaign tunnel vision means, here’s the truth: when you’re running a PPC ad campaign, there are a lot of metrics to look out for.
You want to track the cost per click (CPC), quality score, click-through rate (CTR), best performing keywords, as well as keywords that generate clicks but no conversions—perhaps you could include these in your negative keywords list.
As you can see, it’s easy to get sidetracked from the most important metric—generated leads.
Your clicks should convert to leads. Make that your #1 priority.
It doesn’t matter how low the CPC might be, and how excited you are about your quality score and CTR. If the clicks aren’t converting to leads, your ad campaign will fail.
The major reason that your ad copy must match your landing page is so that users can click on your ad, visit your landing page, engage, download your report, and eventually purchase your product.
That’s it.
Clicks, visits, total traffic from Google Ads, and the like, are good metrics to track. However, they’re not as important as the number of leads generated. Please bear that in mind.
That said, here are 3 simple steps to improve ad scent and boost your conversion rate:
To help you understand your audience better, you need to create a buyer persona. , It’s also important for you to create a mind map.
Of course this is optional. However, this will help you run a successful ad campaign—and help you build a strong ad scent.
Mind mapping is a popular way to create engaging presentations. As the term implies, mind mapping is typically represented by a diagram that displays visual information about your subject/topic so it can be better understood.
The core subject of the mind map can be found at the center of the map. Other related sub-topics, keywords, ideas, suggestions, and concepts branch out in all directions.
Mind mapping can be even more interesting when you use colors and curvy lines to connect your main subject (e.g., social media marketing) with the related keywords, ideas, and topics (such as social media tools, bloggers, branding, social shares).
With your mapped diagram, you can create ad copy and landing pages that use the same tone, keywords, and related topics.
For example, here’s a Purina ad with good design scent. When you click on the banner ad, it leads you to the landing page.
Same dog, same concept, same lady, same color, some tone. This example smells great!
If you’re going to achieve the right scent between your ad copy and your landing page, you must understand what the user wants.
Note: There’s a difference between what they need and what they want.
I’ll try to simplify it: The keywords they enter into Google are what they need, but the intent (i.e., the purpose for using that keyword) is exactly what they want.
When you understand this concept of “needs” and “wants” you’ll be able to create persuasive copy for your customers. They’ll be hooked!
When writing your landing page title and your ad copy title, you may not always include your keyword. However, if you can address the intent, it will be awesome.
In the example campaign below, HubSpot understands this fact: even though
marketers need a premium inbound marketing solution (we all do, even though we don’t have enough money), what they truly care about is the product demo.
Marketers want to see how it works before investing in it. Consequently, both the landing page and the ad copy smell really sweet. They truly match!
You can’t just slap a form on a page, drive clicks to it, and expect to generate qualified leads for your business.
Well, you could, but you’ll be wasting a lot of money.
What you should do instead, is communicate the same message (i.e., the intent) across your campaigns in your landing page and ad copy.
In other words, if you include a 35% discount in the ad copy, make sure it’s also on your landing page. Even better, if it’s the deal of the day, convey the same message everywhere. This will build confidence in the mind of the customer who clicked on your ad and landed on your page.
Note: What I’ve just shared with you will work best for new customers. However, if you’re going to retarget existing leads or customers with your new ad, you simply have to pre-populate your lead capture landing page form fields as you can.
This will provide a form of personalization for your existing leads or customers, and reduce the friction involved in filling out a form. After all, these people already know you.
At the end of the day, split testing your variables is the only way to determine the best ad campaigns and landing pages. However, to get to that point, don’t forget the “scent.”
