Back in September I wrote about the paradox of testing vs. granularization and got some great insights from my readers. Today I would like to hear how you PPC managers & companies with PPC management deals handle the paradox of PPC vs. Conversion Optimization/Landing Page Optimization.
The Paradox
Tell me if this story feels familiar:
You take over management of a PPC account and make a lot of changes that quickly improves CTR, lowers CPC and brings up the overall QS of the account. All these indicate that you’re doing a good job of improving their account. However, the client isn’t very happy because they’re paying you a lot of money but haven’t seen a bunch more sales.
Herein lies the paradox. PPC management in it’s purest form involves choosing relevant keywords, setting appropriate bids, writing compelling ad copy, sending that traffic to designated pages and testing constantly. You’ll notice this definition doesn’t put you in a position to directly affect the number you’re being judged by: sales. At the end of the day, to justify yourself you need to show that your efforts are contributing to the bottom line, but your efforts are getting filtered through their conversion funnel and/or sales process. So what do you do?
Solutions?
At my last gig we attacked the paradox by helping design better landing pages and providing conversion optimization consulting as part of the package. We did this to protect the contract and add value, but unfortunately we were probably leaving money on the table by not seeking additional compensation for our additional efforts. Yes this created some very loyal customers (who wouldn’t be happy about a 20% increase in their conversion rate and thousands more in revenue each month or twice as many leads from the same click budget?) So how do you deal with this situation?
