There are three main processes in our relationship...

          Engagement

               Coaching, Consulting and Managing your Campaign

                    Conversion Optimization

Establishing trust - First, I need to earn your trust and respect. A lot of this comes from your understanding my approach and unique value proposition. That usually involves having a phone conversation which could last anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, and may include me reviewing your AdWords account. If we are a good fit, things usually move along quickly.

Let’s get serious - If you are serious about hiring a professional, then you should be willing to make an investment of time and money. You must be willing to put up $1,000 as a retainer for my services, even if you only use a few hours. But remember, we have no contract and you can stop whenever you like and the unused portion of the retainer will be returned without question.

Commitment - The formal process begins with me sending you an email message. The message contains three things; a Paypal invoice for $1,000, a client information form which you complete and a link to my MOU (Memorandum of Understanding). I ask that you read the MOU before sending me any money. It is not a contract, just my attempt to be as open and honest about this journey we are about to take together.

The Paypal invoice is in the form of a link which brings you to Paypal and allows you to log into your account and authorize the payment. I don’t take checks or credit cards, although you can link your Paypal account to any one of a number of credit cards or bank accounts. The customer information form helps me get to know you and your business, as well as providing information about accessing your accounts. Once the payment has been made, I have access to your AdWords account and received the completed client information form, we are ready to begin.

   Coaching, Consulting and Managing your Campaign

While I have created several campaigns for people who have had no previous experience with internet marketing, most of my clients already have existing AdWords accounts and active campaigns. The steps I describe below are typical, but not without exception.

How I define these processes:

   Coaching - I create the work plan and demonstrate what needs to be done and show you examples of how to do it, but you do most of the work. I review your work and remain available if you have questions or need help.

  Consulting - I take you through the process so you understand what I'm doing, how I'm doing it and why. This will take longer and will cost you more, but you will be in a much better position to take over the on-going management of your account. Please understand, the reason I am successful at this is because I have deep technical knowledge, lots of experience and a proven process. If you want me to do the best I can to improve your account performance, then you need to use my process.

  Managing your campaign - I do most of the work and only communicate with you when necessary, but it is still a collaborative process because you have a much better understanding of your products, your market and your competition.

Critical juncture – Once I have made a preliminary review of your account, I will make a recommendation as to whether we:

1. Pause your existing campaign because it isn’t a good use of your money,
2. Begin making enhancements to your existing campaign's) or
3. Create a new campaign from scratch
 

Web analytics – This is really important! Web analytics are like an EKG machine for your website. It tells me where the visitors are coming from, what search phrases they used, which pages they visited and a whole lot more. This is especially valuable when you don’t have an accurate way of measuring conversions. Having web analytics installed early on allows us to establish a baseline from which to judge my performance.
 

Triage - Assuming your existing campaign has merit, I will look for ways to stop the bleeding of your budget on poor quality traffic. Most novice AdWords advertisers make innocent mistakes with campaign settings, ad group structure, keyword selection, matching options and bidding. Once the triage is complete, we can step back and take a broader look at the situation.

Let’s talk business - It just makes sense. In order to effectively market your business, there are certain things I need to know. Here is the kind of information we will want to discuss:

  ●  Your geographic markets
  ●  Competitors
  ●  What differentiates you from your competition
  ●  Products & Services offered
  ●  Describe your ideal customer
  ●  Is your website optimized for visitors from search
  ●  And more...
 

Landing pages – This topic is a precursor to the next type of service I offer, conversion optimization. However, there is a lot that can be done before we are ready to have that discussion. If you have not implemented some basic principles of landing page design, it will be very difficult to achieve even mediocre results with your campaign. We begin the discussion with Google AdWords best practices.

When it comes to marketing your business online, your website has one primary objective, get the visitor to take  action! A conversion happens when a website visitor takes that action, but not all actions can be easily measured. For example, tracking a phone call to a specific keyword in your campaign is difficult, although not impossible. Also, focusing on an action that is a big leap for a first-time visitor will make it difficult to collect enough statistically significant data to make an informed decision about what to adjust.

Having measurable actions a visitor can take, such as signing up for a newsletter, downloading a white paper or making a purchase, will allow you to collect precise data that can be used to effect positive change in your campaign. So when it comes to having actions your visitor can take, you want the bar to be as low as possible, but still be relevant to your sales process. The conversation you have with a visitor actually begins in their head, but really gets important when they arrive at your landing page.

Your overall website - Before we embark on an aggressive plan to optimize your landing pages, it will be prudent to first step back and assess the website in total. Does it have the features, functions and level of quality that is consistent with your online marketing objectives. You don't want to put a Rolls Royce engine in a VW. Meaning that we don't want to invest in a great landing page if it isn't consistent with the rest of your website. We shouldn't rule out the possibility that a new website design could be the best approach.

AIDA

Landing page design - When a visitor from search arrives at your landing page, you have 3-5 seconds to make a connection or they will bounce! While there are an infinite number of excellent landing page designs, they all share a common architecture, AIDA. AIDA is an acronym for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. Easy to say, another thing to achieve.

A/B split testing - To think that we could design the optimal landing page design the first time would be naive. The most basic form of landing page optimization is A/B split-testing. This is done by having two versions of the page and splitting the traffic equally to determine which one converts best.

Multi-variate testing - If it is warranted, we have the ability to test many different possible designs simultaneously. It involves dividing the page into several physical sections and then creating multiple variations for each section. A sophisticated tool displays different combinations of each variation and arrives at the one that produces the best conversion rate.

If you are still looking for some additional insights, please read my articles on How much will it cost and My ideal client.