blue
red
green
yellow
etc, etc
All of them go to affiliate.com?cat=12&aff=345 type URL's...the type G are stamping on from next week.
With the bids I make in AW, I average out around 5th or 6th on the ad classification on G itself. My copy is good and I get good CTR and ROI but I am usually behind at least two other ads linking directly to affiliate.com
My idea was to re-create the whole campaign, equal in everything except landing page. I actually have landing pages on my site already, but as many have already noted THE CONVERSION RATES ARE BETTER IF I SEND DIRECT TO SELL SITE.
So then, from the 12th, if my direct-link ads don't get served, it should then default to my landing page ads....so I should still get ads served for all the same searches as before...or not?
Is there something I am missing here?
I do NOT intend to start doubling my bids to get first place under the new rules as I think that is a speedy trip down the short road to negative ROI. And I would advise those with ideas and tricks to get into first place over the next few days to think about what they are doing....you cannot game the system like that and you are just gonna lose a lot of cash.
I actually have landing pages on my site already, but as many have already noted THE CONVERSION RATES ARE BETTER IF I SEND DIRECT TO SELL SITE.
From my experience that shouldn't be the case. It's easy to assume that statement is universally so but you have to take into account that all landing pages are not created equal.
My landing page content didn't work at first either until I found out how to make my content presell better. Now that ROI is substantially greater with my content focused landing pages, I was only using direct-to-merchant to decide if it was worth creating a landing page so this change didn't affect me much at all. In fact, I'm looking forward to it.
Preselling and creating effective landing pages is just as much an art as SEO is or mastering Adwords.
There is an excellent read on this subject that I can point you to but I'm not sure if links are allowed here so if you or anyone else is affected by this and wants to learn more about preselling, then sticky me and I'll send you the link.
my selling site has 30 day cookies so I get a lot of people going back to that site ten or fifteen days later with my cookie id still on their system.
you don't get that if someone clicks through to my site's landing pages, then changes their minds and clicks elsewhere without going through to affiliate.com
so even if my conversion rate was equal to that of affiliate.com, that cookie difference will always mean ROI is better with direct link ads on AdWords
so then the goal is to make my site landing page's conversion rate even BETTER than the sell site....
By sending visitors to a landing page you are able to offer different products, more merchants, Adsense, an RSS or newsletter sign up, auction listings, and other revenue producing avenues. Direct-to-merchant is a one shot deal.
So what if that one particular merchant gets less sales from you. You have to ask yourself, are you in business to make money for YOURSELF or are you trying to make money for one particular merchant.
When a person does a search obviously they're looking for something. Why they don't buy from your ad could be any number of reasons.... price too high, don't like the merchant's site colors, don't like doing business with large companies, don't like doing business with small companies, customer service issues with a past order, need more information on product first, and etc.
That's why you give them real CONTENT (product info, reviews, your personal experiences, etc.) and several revenue producing options. But like I said earlier there's a certain way you have to do it for maximum return on investment.
I don't mind converting 25% less with one affiliate program if I'm making 50% more through others on the landing page and throughout the site. :-)
