Hurry, we need an ad. And a landing page.

Earlier today, ion was presented with an excellent last-minute media opportunity. Like most marketers, we love a great deal. And this was one of those deals. But there was a catch. We needed a new text ad and a landing experience for it. Oh, and we wanted to use a new piece of fulfillment. And deliver it via email. Today!

Everyone already had a full docket.

But I wanted to get the deal. And love a good challenge. So I said “I’ll do it myself.”

I needed to:

1. Combine two PDFs to create the fulfillment.
2. Write a new text ad (for an email newsletter).
3. Make a new conversion path to segment the traffic, take registrations and provide the fulfillment. 
4. Create four unique URLs to send along with the ad (for four insertion dates, the nearest of which is tomorrow).

Here’s what I did and how long each step took…

Fulfillment: 20 minutes

We wanted to repurpose a popular blog post. So I remixed ‘31 ways’ into a one-page PDF and combined it with a previously-created one-page sell sheet for LiveBall.

Ad copy: 45 minutes

I went through some versions of this searching for the right combination of 6 lines of 65 characters. I settled on the copy below:

Headline: 31 Ways to Improve Your PPC Landing Pages
Copy line 1: ion’s LiveBall landing page software drives unprecented
Copy line 2: performance. LiveBall customers convert at over 3X the industry
Copy line 3: average. And with quick start, those high-performance experiences
Copy line 4: take only minutes to make and launch.
Call to action: Download Quick Reference: 31 Ways to Improve Your Landing Pages

Landing page: 45 minutes

This took a bit longer than I wanted it to. I had to figure out how I wanted to segment the traffic, how I wanted to convert them and how I wanted to deliver the PDF fulfillment. I used a 2-segment conversion path launch pad in LiveBall and wrote a bit of copy. I also used LiveBall to create an email to deliver the PDF (better data integrity that way). Here’s the conversion path I made. Didn’t have to make any graphics thanks to launch pad. Would have tested a second version, but I don’t think there will be enough traffic volume to get statistically significant results.

Links: 5 minutes

We wanted to independently track the performance of the insertions, so I needed a unique link for each of the four dates. I created four quick traffic sources and LiveBall gave me the links I needed. I sent off the ad copy and the four links to the pub and started to write this post.

Then I added a fifth link to track the traffic that comes from this post independently from my ‘real’ traffic from the paid insertions. And there you have it, I did it myself in about 2 hours (not counting this post), took advantage of the media deal and had a bit of fun at the same time. This economic climate presents a lot of opportunities. Good tools help even a CEO get some work done.

Update on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 at 10:16AM by ion

Quick update on landing page performance:

That first email insertion dropped yesterday. So far, the conversion path (shown above) is segmenting at 73.91% and converting at 43.48%.

Comments

[Gab Goldenberg]

Damn that's an impressive case study! But I think it also obviously simplified things that you had the graphics lying around, plus the content, and layout.

[ion]

Gab,

Actually, the graphics, layouts and flows are all standard parts of our LiveBall quick start package. I had no advantage beyond what our clients have.

I wrote the copy on the fly. That's what really took the 45 minutes.

Thanks for reading.

[mlgreen8753]

Well it's good you are putting so much thought into your PPC campaigns. It sounds like you are doing everything right (segmenting, testing, lead capture, etc.) I'm curious as to why you chose PPC instead of some of some of the free traffic generation methods. It seems that creating a short 5 min video and submitting it to a video network like Adwido would take just as much time and cost less.

[ion]

Actually, this work wasn't for PPC, it was for ads in third-party emails.

Good online marketing features both paid and free vehicles in a mix that fits the mission at hand. There are significant differences in the quality of traffic from varying sources. The very core of our best practices rests on the idea that each source of traffic behaves differently and should be treated differently. By matching landing experiences to these streams, we can affect significant increases in conversion rate and engagement. Video placements — from Adwido or any other similar service — generate the same requirement: matched experiences to capitalize on the clicks they produce.

Thanks for participating.