Last year my friend and mentor, Bryan Eisenberg, exposed the biggest lie of pay-per-click marketing: “Keywords don’t fail to convert!!!  It’s we who fail to convert visitors from those keywords.” Bryan’s point is that as long as:

1. the keyword phrase is relevant to your business, and
2. the keyword-based ads are relevant enough to your prospects to cause them to click on the ads,

then failure to convert is caused by poor persuasive web content and/or a mismatch between the promise of the ad and the delivery on the post-click experience. In other words, the problem isn’t with the lead source, it’s with your online salesmanship. And my point is that this applies every bit as much to Facebook Advertising as Google AdWords. Even more so, in my opinion, because marketers seem more likely to blame Facebook traffic as “non-converting” than to take a hard look at their post-click experience. The displayed ad for leftlanesports.com is good example of this — not because the blow the post-click experience, but because they do a fair-but-not-perfect job of it. Here’s the ad: Notice how they use a pair of Vibram Five Finger (aka VFF) shoes combined with the 70% off headline to catch the viewers attention. This works well because VFFs are, in fact, eye-catching, and because they also aren’t ever discounted, at least that I’ve seen. Now the messaging makes it clear that the 70% off is an “up to” 70% off that applies to all sorts of running & cycling brands, not just the pictured VFFs.  But I think the overwhelming mental image that would cause most people to click would be the idea of getting a pair of Vibram Five Fingers, normally about a $ 100 shoe, at something significantly cheaper, even if it was “only” discounted half of 70% for, say, a solid $ 35 off. So what shows up when someone clicks on the ad?  This: The good thing about this landing page is that Left Lane Sports definitely emphasize the large discounts right away.  If you clicked because of the “up to” 70% off, you instantly see that the discounts are indeed in that ballpark.  And that those discounts are on quality, name-brand stuff. This is good. How do you think it might be better? Well, they may or may not have Vibram Five Finger shoes available at discount. But perhaps they could show discounts on other barefoot running shoes?  Would they have to fill up the page with barefoot running options? No.  But rather than plugging the asics, they might use that space to show discounts on Inov-8 or other lightweight or “barefoot” running shoes.  That would increase the felt “match” between the promise of the ad and the delivery of the post-click experience. What about your ads?  Are you managing the post-click experience for maximum conversion, or are you blaming low converstion rates on “non-converting” Facebook Ads? Do you want to be a PPC Hero ally? If you'd like to guest blog for us send an email to [email protected]. Related posts:

1. Are Facebook Leads Less Valuable Than Google Leads?
2. How To Increase Your Online and In-Store Holiday Sales With Coupon Codes, Sales and Promos
3. Facebook Ad Autopsy
4. Catch the BEST Leads, Not the MOST Leads by Using Qualifiers in Your Ad Text
5. How to Use Your Holiday Shipping Information To Reduce Risk and Boost Your Seasonal Sales!

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 11th, 2012 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Facebook. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.